(Transcript) Ep 9: The 3P’s: Pop Culture
Noor Tagouri:
3, 2, 1.
Yusuf Islam:
Well, you asked me on here because I suppose you thought I was, I don't know, Yusuf Islam, that's like my name, but also you may have obviously referred to me as Cat Stevens. So I'm kind of both of those people in a way, I was born Steven Demetre Georgiou. So you can see that immediately my identity issue was quite unclear in the beginning.
Yusuf Islam:
Well, I've kind of made peace with my past, there was a long period where I sort of rejected everything because I'd found what I was looking for, which was actually Islam. Wasn't Islam actually, it was God through Islam. And so therefore I kind of did the natural thing. I was zealous and I had a lot of baggage and people wanted me to keep on carrying that baggage. And I decided, no, this is time for me to be who I am. I discovered who I was. When I was reading the Quran, I came across the chapter of Joseph, and suddenly I said, "That's me, that's me."
Noor Tagouri:
The journey of Joseph or Yusuf in the Quran is of a man turned prophet who evolved his identities as a protection and to find himself in God. The story begins with an attempted murder by his jealous brothers, but Joseph survives, escapes and is presumed dead by his family. Many years later, they crossed paths again. And the brothers don't even know who he is. And it was Joseph's story of being concealed through different identities and then not being recognized by his brothers that affirmed to Cat that he had found his spiritual home as Yusuf.
Yusuf Islam:
I always loved the name Joseph anyway, but the story was an epitome of what my history was and how I'd evolved. Coming to peace with Cat, yeah, no problem. You know, he's pretty good. I mean, he's written some great songs, you know? So I think that I'm very lucky to have inherited, it's me, so I'm still singing and I'm writing. Now I am in the phase of trying to make sure that people understand that whatever my soul and my intentions and my goals and hopes and dreams were, they were really realized with coming to Islam. And so therefore I'm the same person, but I've just been revealed a little bit more, so you can see me better.
Noor Tagouri:
That's the journey, isn't it? Finding different ways and avenues to be revealed a little bit more. And it's the commitment to the journey of knowing yourself that along the way we find ourselves creating, making things, telling stories through all different mediums. And sometimes that process results in something lasting, something that affects others deeply. And we call that art. Art is a way to communicate and connect with our own intimate knowledge. And for some people, when their art takes off with a life of its own, they get thrust into the frothy and highly contentious world we call popular culture.
Yusuf Islam:
Pop culture kind of says, "Hey, I don't belong to this party. I am me and this is my song." I go for the pop thing more because to me that's the chance for somebody to express themselves beyond the public arena as it's perceived to be or should be. So that's why I stick in the popular art arena where the spirit and aesthetics speak louder to us.
Yusuf Islam:
There's one song for instance called I Wish I Wish, and I wish I knew, I wish I knew what makes me me, what makes you you. It's just another point of view, a state of mind I'm going through. So what I see is never true. You know, that was it. Searching for the truth and for stability in one's self and in one's spirit, that was the big journey.
Noor Tagouri:
The big journey, the one we are all on. Throughout this experience of Rep, journey has been the common denominator. And what is a journey but a series of surprises, challenges and unexpected wonders. Journeys require that we reach down into ourselves and connect with our bravest parts, the ones down at that soul level. And that's why this chapter of Rep will feel a little different. Each one has, but this one in particular feels a little extra different, and it begins with an intention. To focus on how each artist brings their soul into their work, while also protecting their rawest self, their most authentic self from the rough turmoil of the world of pop culture.
Noor Tagouri:
For the next of our three Ps, I want to hand you the next tool we'll be using to decode our own stories. The lens of pop culture, as a way to see ourselves, it's always more powerful when we decode a story for ourselves. And in this instance, we have a few story guides to help us as they speak about their approaches to the journey. The one we are all on individually and together.
Noor Tagouri:
At Your Service and iHeartMedia present Rep, chapter eight, Pop Culture.
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
My full name is Yunalis binti Mat Zara'ai, and who am I? I am a singer songwriter from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and I'm based in LA, and I've been here for 10 years. And yeah, I'm still making music. Woo.
Noor Tagouri:
Also 10 years ago is when I came across a video on YouTube of a hijabi singing a cover of a Frank Ocean song, and my jaw had just completely dropped. It was acapella layers of her voice upon her voice. And it was Yuna in her new LA apartment. And then one day in October, 2015, she had commented on an Instagram post of mine, and I freaked out, ran over to her page, saw that she was on tour, and somehow that same day she was performing not 15 minutes away from my house in Maryland. I took my mom as my date, and me and Yuna's friendship began as fate. And now we're having this conversation in LA.
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
Thank you so much.
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
I feel like I was very, very lucky to come out here and had meetings with all these labels and not once they mentioned about how different I look, you know? They would obviously acknowledge he fact that, "Oh, she's unique. Oh, that's so cool, she's Muslim and she plays music," but not once they tried to change me or refer anything negative to the fact that I was me. But in Malaysia, yeah.
Noor Tagouri:
Well, what was the Malaysian experience?
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
Oh, wow. The first time I took up a meeting with the label, they told me to take my scarf off.
Noor Tagouri:
In the Muslim majority country?
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
Yes. This was 15 years ago.
Noor Tagouri:
Why though?
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
Because it wasn't cool. We call hijabis [Malay 00:08:14], you don't see [Malay 00:08:15] girls on TV singing pop songs. It was better if you let your hair out and wear makeup and wearing something sexy on stage. And that was like the norm in the industry. And I was like, "No, I want to be a rock star." You know? I was a rock chick. I want to play the guitar and have my scarf on. So I was like, "Okay, well, this is not for me."
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
But there were a bunch of times, even at photo shoots, "Oh, we need to show your neck because this magazine company, they have set a standard that not allowing a hijabi to be on the cover, but they're making an exception for you, Yuna, but you just have to show a little bit of your shoulders or your collarbone." At the time I wasn't comfortable doing that. And I'm like, so weird, you know?
Noor Tagouri:
What does that tell you about how we perceive ourselves and how we perceive each other?
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
I mean, I don't know, I guess does it matter though? Because at the end of the day, it is just testing you, whether you have the guts to be yourself. Because of course you were shocked to know that, oh, in Malaysia, that this happened to Yuna? I was shocked, but not so shocked. I wasn't like, oh my gosh, how can you say this or do this to me, treat me this way? But it was kind of expected. I was like, hmm, okay, well, you don't get it. It's fine.
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
Because most people are so scared of accepting something different. They don't want to risk. But when I moved out here, music speaks louder than image, and people appreciate talent here. In the US, or the industry, no matter what you want to say about it, anything goes, so you'll find your people. That's what I believed when I came out here, it was just like, well, once I open my mouth, once I get on that stage and open my mouth and play my guitar, they'll get it.
Noor Tagouri:
I'd like you to meet May Calamawy. Some of you may already know her. She's an actress who is currently playing the role of Dena in Hulu and A24's Ramy. She also plays Layla in Disney Plus and Marvel's Moon Knight.
May Calamawy:
I always wanted to act. I wanted to express in some way. When I watch videos of myself, I was really weird. I'm always like, "Dad, what am I doing? What am I doing with my face?" No one asked me to do these moves, I watch how free I was then.
Noor Tagouri:
At around 10 years old, May moved from Bahrain where she was born and raised to Houston, Texas.
May Calamawy:
I was really afraid of people knowing I was Muslim and Arab. My mom is Palestinian and my dad is Egyptian. I would hear my dad sometimes making jokes, his name is Mohammed, if he should change his name when he gets the citizenship, if it should be Mo. But I naturally was nervous. I remember being at school and always sweating if I felt like a conversation was going towards someone asking me where I'm from, or my religion or what. And I was afraid that if I said Muslim, they wouldn't want to be my friend. And then if I met someone who physically looked like they were not from the States, I'd want to connect.
Noor Tagouri:
The fear young people carried and still carry around their friends finding out if they're Muslim or Arab, and the fear children may have of Muslims, Arabs, or those who look the part, proves that even when we aren't able to put feelings to words, there is power in our stories. And because the stories we've engaged with from a young age can be so weighted, they can also be the most challenging to revisit and therefore express. This is true of the journey of Cat to Yusuf.
Yusuf Islam:
When you come to my particular story, then you'll see that I was a pretty shy person. The only way I could communicate was through art and then through music. That's how I spoke to the world. And the only way I could speak. And so you'll hear my voice sort of there, and then I'm kind of changing around a little bit, because oh, that wasn't a hit. So maybe I'll do something else. Lots of changes going on. You're trying to be what people want, especially in the pop business. They want you to be who they want you to be, and the manager's doing the same. So everything is kind of working against your natural vocation and being you. Now today, I feel I've made peace with a lot of the raw edges of my past and I can accept them, and in fact celebrate some of them, most of them actually, because they're all there in my songs.
Noor Tagouri:
Is there a specific part of your story and your past that you think about when you refer to it in the way that you just did?
Yusuf Islam:
I don't think I ever grew beyond 17, actually. That's what I think. I got stuck in 17. No, perhaps the first time I really looked at myself was after I had a serious illness, TB, and in fact I was taken out of the pop business and suddenly I was in hospital and I was looking at the walls and looking at the mirror and saying, "Wow, who is this guy? And where am I going?" That was probably the first time I started looking.
Yusuf Islam:
And then you find that your identity is not firm. You change, grow a beard, suddenly you're someone else almost. So identity is continuously changing, but not your soul, because it's something to do with destiny. When you're looking for your identity, you're really looking for your destiny. And along with that comes purpose. So you're looking for your purpose. You're looking for your identity. You're looking for destiny.
Minhal Baig:
I was very inspired by filmmakers who are exploring a young person's perspective, wrestling with their identity, their wants and needs with the wants and needs of the people around them and specifically their family. And those were the filmmakers that had such an influence on me, and I felt like I have my version of that story to share.
Noor Tagouri:
This is Minhal Baig. I first came across her work when I found out she was a writer on one of my favorite animations, Netflix's BoJack Horseman. She later became a writer on the first season of Ramy, and when Apple TV Plus launched, Minhal's feature film, Hala, was among their first offerings. It's a coming of age story about a young Muslim American woman inspired by Minhal herself.
Minhal Baig:
I really didn't feel comfortable even writing it until my father passed away. That was a turning point for me because I realized life is very short. And my father, as he was getting sicker and sort of was seeing the end of his life kind of unfolding in front of him, had regrets about things that he hadn't done, things that he still wanted to do. And as I was talking to him, I was also feeling that I'm also not really doing what I'm meant to do. I'm not being honest with myself. I'm trying to live a safer, more secure, stable existence because I desire safety, because I've experienced so much instability in my life. And talking to my dad, I realized I don't want to have those regrets.
Minhal Baig:
So after he passed away, it was a little bit like something opened up inside of me where I had a well of emotion and these experiences that I was sitting with by myself for a long time. And it came out very quickly in the form of a 200 page screenplay over a winter break at my family's home in the aftermath of my dad's passing. Kind of like something changed where I felt like, oh, I don't have time anymore and I don't want to have a life full of regrets of things that I wanted to do and didn't have the courage to do.
Noor Tagouri:
Before Yuna pursued music as a career, she was a law student in Malaysia. It was during this time she felt like she was sacrificing her creative side, until one day she felt compelled to buy a guitar. The nearest town to her university was two hours away, so she got on a bus, bought the guitar, and began practicing in her dorm room.
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
I used to be super active with singing and dancing as a kid. That's how it started. I was just like, okay, well, I need to reconnect with this musical Yuna, this creative Yuna. And I knew I wasn't going to drop out. You know? So I was going to finish this and graduate and everything. So my final year was when I started performing my own songs. This was when I released some music on MySpace. I built a fan base, which was just really cool. Maybe 50 people became 5,000 people, 5,000 people became 50,000 people. My goal has always been I want to go to America, I want to go overseas and try and find a label who's going to sign me. That was always the back of my head, I feel like I can really do this.
Noor Tagouri:
And so Yuna moved to Los Angeles to pursue her American dream.
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
(singing)
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
There are no rules. It's a free country. You can do whatever you want, which is great, but at the same time, it's so scary. It's a cowboy land, it's a wild, wild west. If you're making music or if you are making films, this is the place to be. That was what I understood growing up. But at the same time I feel like, well, that's going to be tricky because I'm Muslim and I wear the hijab and I don't know where I can place myself in the industry as well. Because I was trying to be positive about everything, you know? And I am positive about things. So I don't really care about, when people tell me, "You shouldn't go, people hate Muslims in America after 9/11, it's going to be so difficult living over there."
Noor Tagouri:
Who was telling you that?
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
Oh, this is like friends and family. They're like, "Oh, you're crazy trying to do this. You're crazy trying to move to the US and trying to be an artist because who's going to listen to you? You wear the hijab and you're very open." That's the main thing about my whole thing, yeah, I'm very open about the fact that I wear the hijab and I'm Muslim, you know? To me, it's normal. I'm just a normal girl. But yeah, I think that was the story that I got. But at the same time, the dream is bigger than the fear, you know? So I felt like, okay, well I have to try this and just go and see for myself and understand the story myself, or write the story myself.
Noor Tagouri:
May also reconnected with the story of her younger self who loved to perform for the camera. After living in Houston, she moved back to Bahrain, and then back to the United States as an adult to pursue acting. And as an Arab and Muslim woman, her experience in the entertainment industry began with limiting roles.
May Calamawy:
The first couple roles I got were more like really dramatic. I was part of a family where these soldiers were invading in [inaudible 00:21:01] city, it was like high stakes situations. I realized I wasn't fulfilled by them.
Noor Tagouri:
What was it about that that didn't fulfill?
May Calamawy:
Because I was like, there's so many sides to Arabs. I don't want to just show the pain or the problems. I didn't grow up that way. I grew up in the Middle East and I had a really wonderful life. I do think these stories need to be told so that people are more aware, but also I'm like let the world see us as people that they relate to as well, so that when they see us in those situations, "They're like, oh my God, I can't believe, that could be me." As opposed to just seeing this other. And you're like, "Oh yeah, that's their life. That's how they live."
May Calamawy:
And after a few roles, I remember telling my agent, I was like, "I'm not going to do this anymore. Please don't send me out to them." I knew that I might have had to go in because I speak Arabic. Even Madame Secretary, I played a woman who her kid got hit by the car. It's just all really dramatic. And I'm like, you're bringing out these characters that play the drama. I think that I'm not someone who's grown up very political, so I won't always know why this doesn't feel right. Or when I sit with some of my friends who are so well read about the topic, they'll be like, "Well, yeah, it's because this is how people, you felt, you didn't feel truth." Something feels robbed and you're constantly being represented this way.
Arij Mikati:
Representation acts as a mirror into imagining the best versions of ourselves, the strongest version of ourselves, the future version of ourselves. But it also acts as a window. And that window allows us to see beyond ourselves, beyond the communities that we are so familiar with, that we understand so deeply, so that other people can get a look in. And actually it builds empathy. We know this from research that being able to peer into that window, be invited in builds so much empathy.
Noor Tagouri:
That's Arij Mikati. She's the managing director of culture change at Pillars Fund, an organization that provides financial and professional support with the intention to amplify Muslim stories and push back against harmful narratives. And here is Kashif Shaikh, he's the co-founder and president of Pillars.
Kashif Shaikh:
Really how Pillars started in 2010 was a group of people wanting to find more effective ways to support Muslim communities in the United States. So we really were trying to kind of build a new type of institution that was really representative of a new generation of Muslims in the United States. We were working on a project in which we were soliciting a lot of different scripts from Muslim creators, and one sort of observation that Arij and I had or she brought to me was that a lot of the scripts were around national security. A lot of the scripts were around the victim mindset or putting us in the same box that we've been trying to fight.
Arij Mikati:
So to put it in perspective, this project allowed us to seek out scripts from Muslims across America, anyone who identified as Muslim, and we very explicitly shared with them this is your playground. You can talk anything you want. Your story doesn't even have to have Muslims in it or be about Muslims. You can write about anything you want. And we received over 220 scripts and I started to notice this trend. I pulled out the log lines and separated out all the log lines that were about terror or national security. It was over 80% of those 220 scripts. And it broke my heart. Not only because this was a shocking example of how internalized our own Islamophobia is, but also because it was such an indictment of the system that these artists are creating in, that they felt that even in a room where it was Muslim eyes on Muslim scripts, and we were saying, "We're going to pick the best scripts," it's in our hands. I am going to say which ones I like the best.
Arij Mikati:
That they still felt the only thing that I have worth saying, and the most important and valuable thing that I have worth saying, is I am not a terrorist. And I am just consistently broken hearted that we are still in a place where we are defining ourselves by what we are not in defense mode, rather than being able to share the plurality and abundance of what we are. I really hope that we get to a place where we can stop saying, "I'm not this, I am not that," and can start saying, "But this is what I am." And I really think that will heal us in a way that we are not there yet, but I can see glimmers of it.
Noor Tagouri:
When I first watched the show Ramy, a story about an Egyptian American family in New Jersey where both Ramy and his sister Dena are going through struggles on their spiritual journeys, I had big feelings. Oh my gosh, is this what representation feels like? Because it feels like I'm being spied on. That someone has come in and peered into my home life and then broadcast, I feel like I'm going to get in trouble because someone has told all my secrets, that's really what it felt like. And it was such a huge unlock for me because it was only recently that I actually knew what that level of representation felt like.
May Calamawy:
Wow. Well, thanks for that. I love that you felt that when you watched it, because I was in it. So I couldn't have that same response because naturally when I watch it, I'm probably watching different things. When Ramy came along, in many ways I had trouble with that role, because she's not suffering. I mean, she's suffering. I could relate to that from a female perspective, especially having an older brother, but it's not that dramatic. It's not a survival story. Second season of Ramy was personal, because at the time I was experiencing alopecia, and he was like, "What if we just use that?" And I was like, sure. I remember meditating and being like, I never want to try to hide the things I'm ashamed of. I want to show them because I know there's other people experiencing this and we can all go through it together. I've realized after Ramy, I was like, oh, this is my service, what I'm doing is all in service.
Noor Tagouri:
Sharing stories is a form of service. May was of service by exposing parts of her identity that she struggled with herself, and in turn providing more nuanced representation for people who don't usually see themselves on screen. Those moments of seeing yourself represented can completely shift how you view yourself and engage with your own story. And that was my experience when I bought a ticket at my favorite local movie theater in Brooklyn to watch Minhal's film Hala.
Noor Tagouri:
I remember in my head seeing a mother and a daughter kind of like holding hands in the movie theater. And I could tell, it was almost like the film was giving them language for a conversation they were waiting to have.
Minhal Baig:
I think the film touches on a lot of experiences that American Muslims have that they can't openly talk about because there's fear and there's a stigma. So there's a shame and a guilt about not only the experiences you have, but also your feelings about those experiences. And I think frankly also just being a child of... For me, it was a child of immigrant parents who have a different relationship to their emotions than I do. So a couple of my friends, I'm thinking specifically about one person, actually, she said that she shared the film with her parents because down the road she wants to be able to talk to them about her queerness. And she said, "I don't even know where to begin to discuss it if we don't even have the conversation before that." The film is not about queerness, but it is about to some degree sexuality and women's agency. And she felt that this was step one of that process of having a larger conversation about queerness and desire and what kind of relationships she wants to have in her life.
Noor Tagouri:
When Minhal's film was first released, we had several conversations about how difficult it was to put out such a personal story, and what that meant for her own familial relationships. And while her mom and siblings didn't originally watch the film, she often thought about her father.
Minhal Baig:
It's tragic because I think my dad would've actually really enjoyed the movie, and it's super painful to wrestle with that because he loved movies. And I felt like he and I had that kind of connection over art. And though the subject matter of the film, it wouldn't have been easy for him to swallow it and digest it, I do think that he would appreciate it as a work of art.
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
Being a singer songwriter, I always tell myself I have to write about things that I know. I know that if I tell this story, I know that people will listen to it and they'll be able to connect to that story. They'll be able to relate to it, you know? So hopefully this will help them go through anything difficult in their lives, any challenges that they might be going through right now, and listen to my songs and they'll be like, "Oh, okay, Yuna went through that as well and she survived."
Noor Tagouri:
Surviving our journeys is what helped me forge an immediate connection with Yuna, Minhal and so many other people who have also committed to creating art from a place of getting to know one's self.
Noor Tagouri:
When the trailer to Minhal's film Hala first came out, it was heavily misconstrued by people on the internet. A movie trailer is a marketing tool designed to sell a film in three minutes or less. They're rarely if ever created and cut by the director themselves. When Apple released the trailer for Hala, it focused more on the main character's relationship with a love interest who happened to be a white guy at school, but the main dramatic relationship the film was actually about was the bond between Hala and her mother. Nevertheless, many Muslims who only watched the trailer were immediately triggered by what looked to be yet another white savior storyline. Some people insisted on sharing their critiques before they had a chance to find out what the film was really about, you know, as the internet does. And Minhal and I connected because she knew I was also familiar with my story being misrepresented, and in turn other Muslims reacting to me from a place of their own trauma.
Minhal Baig:
In general, the American Muslim community has a deep distrust of media because of the vilification and all of the stereotypes in Hollywood films and television about who we are, and not getting an opportunity to share from our perspective what our lives are and our experiences and our feelings. So I thought because of the deep distrust that perhaps we could overcome the trailer, but I think it's human nature. There's so many stories, it's just in America media in general too. I watch something and I feel like, okay, I think I understand what's going on, and then I read something else from a different source that challenges what I just learned and it presents a totally different side to the story.
Minhal Baig:
I think that we're in a time now where media consumption itself, it is like watching a lot of trailers for things that you don't have any context for, drawing conclusions off those trailers, making decisions, political decisions, life decisions, based off of that, and not really having a full picture.
Noor Tagouri:
Pillars Fund works to quantify how and why we have reached this place where there is a disruptive amount of distrust of what we call the media, and how our cultural beliefs and biases show up in the messages broadcast both intentionally and unintentionally. Pillars was instrumental in a recent study called Missing and Misaligned, The Reality of Muslims in Popular Global Movies.
Arij Mikati:
So when we see, for example, that only a quarter of all Muslim characters on screen in our study were women, and that the majority of those women were in relation to the men in their lives, they're either wives or mothers in the film and that's really their entire identity, is it really a surprise that then we see that reflected in the news and in journalism? As journalists often try to be unbiased, but we know that's just not the case. They're being socialized too.
Arij Mikati:
When we see, for example, that Muslim characters were depicted as either the victim of violence or the perpetrator of violence, is it really a surprise that when a Muslim person is a perpetrator of a crime, that Muslim happens to just be in the title of a news story? It's not a coincidence, because this fiction then becomes quote unquote fact to people, even if it's not. And that has real consequences of getting us to a place where not only did Donald Trump instate a Muslim ban, three Americans approved of it. And I think that's because these fictional stories just really are reinforced throughout the way that even journalists tell us about what's actually factually happening in the world.
Kashif Shaikh:
I've always said that you don't just wake up hating Muslims. These are really intentional messages that have been sort of put out into the world.
Yusuf Islam:
(singing)
Noor Tagouri:
When Cat Stevens became Yusuf Islam, he shocked the world. People were mad that he dared to change his name and evolve into a newly revealed version of himself. Then there was also the Islamophobia he experienced in turn because of his choice to be Muslim. Becoming Yusuf Islam was an incredibly difficult and trying test for him, and it required that he fully commit to himself and his personal journey.
Yusuf Islam:
When the press and the media started having fun at my expense, I was deadly serious about this is my life, this is my search, this is my journey, this is me. And they started making fun because they didn't know, they didn't understand. And they had no knowledge at all. So therefore it was a very difficult beginning, and it's difficult to go into right now, but you can tell that the moment the Iranian Revolution happened, it was like no go anymore. This was like, your religion is out. That's the judgment they made based on the Iranian Revolution, and the whole of the media bought into that. It was so tough.
Noor Tagouri:
Yusuf found himself intensely caught in the dynamics of the three Ps on both a personal level and as a public figure.
Yusuf Islam:
Well, I realized that in order to take hold of the narrative, you must continue making the art, but it's got to be real, it's got to be now. So becoming engaged is very important, and also being available to speak to. Because I was hiding for a lot of the time, because I wasn't quite sure apart from my music what to say. I could say very easily my music, but being stuck there in front of a journalist and having to sort of come up with interesting things to talk about, it was just a struggle for me. For a long time I couldn't do that. And for a long time, when I became a Muslim, I didn't even bother. I said, "You know what, I'm through with you." They said, "Well, I'm through with you." I said, "Fine. That's great."
Yusuf Islam:
But no, they kept on writing nasty things. I thought, ah, and I started a little bit of sparring. Wasn't good, wasn't good, because I never went to journalist school. So therefore I fell through a few traps. So all this stuff going on, you have to be active, you have to be present. You have to be taking charge of not just the narrative, but the screen. And that's where we've got to go. And that's what everybody is influenced by, apart from everything else, including trying to make a living.
Noor Tagouri:
It's about broadcasting the truth truth, amplifying those stories, like Arij focuses on at Pillars Fund.
Arij Mikati:
What we want to ensure is that we are really keying in on dignified portrayals of Muslims. We're not as interested necessarily in positive portrayals or an afterschool special, but we want dignified, nuanced portrayals that will then actually shift the culture. So the idea is if we tell the right stories and the right stories is just the truth, if we tell the truth about our communities, that will shift the current to one that allows our organizations to swim with it, rather than so hard against it.
Noor Tagouri:
Shifting culture, as Arij just mentioned, leads to shifting public opinion. And as Congresswoman Ilhan Omar told us earlier in Rep, pop culture and public opinion in turn influenced the work our politicians do on our behalf. And if that is how power shows up in our stories, then it works in our favor to live in our own truth truth. So that the stories we contribute to the culture are making changes based on who we are authentically. And it's within this space of truth that Minhal has found a new well of courage to tell even more expansive and soulful stories.
Minhal Baig:
Well, we didn't talk about this in a previous conversation, so perhaps this will be a revelation now, but I've over the course of many years felt certain things that I didn't even know how to put words to because I didn't quite understand them. And recently I've been thinking about storytelling as a way to explore and excavate those parts of myself. I'm interested in all parts of identity, there's sexuality for me that is actually really growing in interest as a subject, because I feel like it's something that I have for a very long time held at arm's length, because it felt like I'm already at too many intersections of identities. Being Muslim, being south Asian, being a woman, being the child of immigrants, that adding another intersection, it was as if I was making my life harder.
Minhal Baig:
So to be as frank as I can, I'm interested in exploring sexuality and specifically queerness because it's something that I feel like I've had at arms length for a long time. And it's always been there. It's been there for a very long time. But it's always the way that I've approached my life has been, I need to be practical. I need to survive. And in the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, exploring queerness was not one of those things, because it didn't seem to serve a purpose. It was like, what is the purpose of this? Why?
Minhal Baig:
And recently in the work that I'm doing, I'm realizing that I've had this part of my myself sort of secret, because again it's adding another intersection, and also it complicates my life in a way that the type A overachiever wasn't expecting. I think that I had a life plan for myself and it was this, this and this. And then this has come out of hibernation and I don't want to just continue to suppress it. I want to explore it in my work and I want to be honest. I want to be very personal about it. And I know that it's a very painful thing to do in artwork, because I've gone through it before. The relationship with storytelling has changed in the sense that I feel that I can explore different kinds of stories.
Noor Tagouri:
Thank you for sharing that with me.
Minhal Baig:
I didn't know that I was going to share it, but I felt like if we're talking about representation, this is something that I also don't see represented very much, you know?
Noor Tagouri:
One of the biggest challenges I continue to have in this reporting is facing the misrepresentation that happens right within the communities I grew up in. The truth is, because of the trauma American Muslims have experienced, many people have picked up the same tactics as the government who's surveilling us. Muslims surveil and try to control other Muslims too, whether it's on how someone chooses to dress, who they choose to love, how they choose to practice their faith. Even the most private personal choices can be up for debate and discussion. So I've struggled a lot with this. Do I keep looking for who is at fault, or do I just get really honest with myself about what I actually believe in, the stories that feel true to me, and how I want to continue my own relationship with what it means to rep. That is why I call this a spiritual journey. So I shared this with Yusuf, a fellow soul explorer and storyteller.
Yusuf Islam:
Everybody's got that opportunity within themselves, and the religion, as you said, can sometimes separate us from the essence of what that religion actually is. What it's supposed to be doing. When you've got the commandment, the first commandment, in the Bible, "Thou shalt take no other gods beside me." Wow, that's it. But then you get all sorts of other things happening in between.
Yusuf Islam:
So then the priest will tell you, "Well, I'm the one to tell you exactly how God wants you to be." And then you've got the Imams as well, doing the same thing. You've got Rabbis doing the same thing. You've got to make sure that you hold onto that voice, that clear voice of God that we all have within us and we just have hidden it or it's become cluttered through the noise of just being in this modern world and trying to listen to that. Why people now are going to mindfulness, they're trying to seek out that voice. So knowledge can really help us get through these things, whatever it is in your bodily challenges and spiritual challenges, just don't see anything other than knowledge as being the key to our solutions.
Noor Tagouri:
What advice do you have for people who want to commit to a path of knowledge and knowledge of self, but don't know where to begin?
Yusuf Islam:
Go listen to a Cat Stevens record. That's what I would say. I mean just a flippant remark, but actually there is a tread and a thread throughout those songs, Wild World, On The Road To Find Out, Peace Train, my goodness. I mean, everything is there. And there's always someone to connect to. So whatever you respond to and whoever wakes you up to that calling of knowing who you are and wanting to be that person, or to be in a better position now than you were before, then you should go there, go there.
Noor Tagouri:
For May, she discovered pieces of herself when she transformed into her own Marvel superhero, the character Layla in Moon Knight.
May Calamawy:
I started very intimidated, and as I moved along, I started to feel my power more as a woman. It goes back to listening to our intuition as well. That's been a lot of my work. It's just trusting myself more. And I felt like that's a lot of what the character was given. In a way, she was given this opportunity to really make a difference at a bigger scale. And it's about how she's going to trust herself to do it. I feel like I was left with that in a way. Felt like as I moved along, I found more confidence. I don't even know where it came from, but I just allowed that to move through me. I just took it as a gift. I was like, okay, God, thank you for this. And I feel like that ended up changing me as a person. And I really felt like by the end of it, I developed my own wings.
Noor Tagouri:
May developed wings the same way her character Layla did. Her superhero outfit is Egyptian inspired, designed in white and gold, and it boasts large layered golden wings. Layla's hair, like May, bounces her natural curls.
May Calamawy:
I didn't realize how many people could experience their lives changing through a story, like the number of women who send me photos of their curly hair or that they're accepting that in themselves. I was just like, wow. I didn't think the hair would offer a sense of freedom for you. I think at the end of the day, we get trapped by anything that we feel won't help us be accepted. It becomes something limiting or because we want to change it. But when you find that acceptance within you from something that you've seen in a story, I believe it frees you. For some people it's just a Marvel show, but for me, I was like, whoa, that changed my life.
Noor Tagouri:
There's a scene at the end of Moon Knight where a young Egyptian girl sees Layla in her big wings, and asks her "[foreign language 00:50:23]?" "Are you an Egyptian superhero?" And it hit me how far we've come. Even how far Disney has come. From an oppressed Princess Jasmine from the mystical land of Agrabah, to a Muslim Egyptian superhero. Or Ms. Marvel, a Muslim Pakistani American superhero. It is in the pursuit of our own dreams that we leave behind open doors for others to walk through. So wherever you are in that process, this is just a reminder to keep going.
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
When I was younger, the dream would be like, oh, I want to win a Grammy. You know? But like I said, after a few years, you learn that even if you don't have that, doesn't mean that you failed. I have 115 songs that I've released in the last 10 years or so. So I'm like, wow, okay, I don't need a Grammy to tell me that I've done a great job. This is the American dream that I wanted, I wanted to be able to make the music that I love. That's it. That's all. So whatever that happens after that, getting fans or being able to tour and perform and meeting amazing musicians, amazing producers, amazing artists, that's all like a bonus to me, you know?
Yunalis Mat Zara'ai:
(singing)
Noor Tagouri:
I regularly listen to the music Yuna made years ago, and it still connects me to myself, to her and to others. Music has a way of revisiting us as we are evolving. Lyrics or notes can hit you a little differently depending on where you are in your story, and how the art wants to connect with you. And sometimes that connection can be so transformative that it actually creates relationships. Like Cat and Yusuf's music did for me at my first TV job.
Noor Tagouri:
When I was in my first couple of years of journalism school, I had gotten this internship at our local CBS television station. And there was a woman, this producer who just wasn't the friendliest. And I don't remember exactly how we got into it, she brought you up, and then I ended up sharing with her story that my dad and my mom would always tell me growing up, which is that when I was a baby, my first concert was your concert, and they had taken me when I was a baby. And while you were performing, they handed me to you on the stage. So you carried me as a baby.
Yusuf Islam:
My goodness. Don't ask me to do that now.
Noor Tagouri:
And my dad insists, there's a photo of this somewhere, but I haven't seen it yet. But anyway, so the producer, I tell her the story and her entire demeanor just shifts because you were her favorite artist. And immediately after I shared that story, she switched from calling you Cat to Yusuf. Like there was this insider knowledge. And I realized that it was music, and in that moment specifically yours, that was our least common denominator. Because it didn't matter that you had become Muslim regardless of if she had any feelings towards Muslims in general. But to you, you were just her favorite artist and you had changed her life. And it reminded me of the humanity that we experience when you really know people. And what you may have in common with them. And so that moment of us connecting over your music and what you as a person meant to her and what you as a person meant to me, just completely changed our relationship for the better.
Yusuf Islam:
Well, that's an amazing story. And to be honest, that's the reason why I came back to pick up the guitar again, is to make that reconnection with the humanity we all share. Regardless of religion, et cetera, et cetera. I was struggling with my persona, because my persona was pretty elevated in the world. Yet at the same time, I always reserved a very special place within my life for my soul. I never sold my soul. At the same time I didn't know who I was. So now I find out who I was, who I am, sorry, I've written a song about it. It's Called On The Road To Find Out. In the end I'll know, on the way I wonder, and in the end I say, the answer lies within, so why not take a look? Kick out the devil's sin and pick up a good book. I mean, it's so simple, and in a way that's the story of how I dealt with it.
Noor Tagouri:
Yusuf decoded his story through creating music, same with Yuna. Minhal through film and May through television. And the expressions of their stories are not limited to those mediums. These just happen to be the ones that entered our realm of pop culture and have influenced and inspired.
Noor Tagouri:
I thought a lot about how to approach this chapter. I thought it would include more pointing out of stereotypes and tropes. But I was so inspired by the question Arij and Kashif presented earlier, is this a story of who I am or who I am not? And the stories each of our guides in this chapter shared with all of us is a story of who they are and how there are infinite tools and approaches to building relationships with our truths.
Noor Tagouri:
As powerful as harmful and misrepresentative stories have been, an even stronger power is stepping outside of the stories that have been projected onto you and stepping into a story authored by you. And while this sounds simple, it isn't easy, at least it hasn't been for me. To step into my story has demanded of me that I let go of controlling my own narrative and to fully trust in the process of meeting my own truth. And I've just opened up about this to Yusuf.
Noor Tagouri:
Part of that trust is letting go of control and trusting that it'll all work out anyway.
Yusuf Islam:
Yeah. It's a big one. It's a big one. And that's where you can see the examples, like for instance, going back to the story of Abraham, when Abraham submitted his will to God to sacrifice his son, I mean, can you believe? This is his son. And then he trusts. And just at that moment, when he's about to bring the knife down, then God reveals a ransom of a ram, a ram to take the place of his son. Oh my God. Oh my God. You know, that's trust. That's trust.
Noor Tagouri:
Trust is terrifying.
Yusuf Islam:
Yeah. But it's a life saving component of our lives.
Noor Tagouri:
Yeah. Are there any words that you would like to pass on to young people on the journey of self evolution, on the journey of creating art and on the journey of building trust?
Yusuf Islam:
Oh baby, baby, it's a wild world.
Yusuf Islam:
(singing)
Noor Tagouri:
Tune into Rep next time, I'm Noor Tagouri, as always, at your service. Rep is a production of At Your Service, School of Humans and iHeartPodcasts. This show is written and produced by me, Noor Tagouri, and Zaron Burnett. Editing, production, sound design and scoring by Josh Fisher. Theme song written and composed by Maimouna Youssef, AKA Mumu Fresh. Our senior producer is Amelia Brock, our associate producers are Tyler Donahue and Betsy Cardenas. Mix and master by [inaudible 00:59:19] Fraser. Audio assembly by Mary [inaudible 00:59:22], fact checking by Marissa Brown, research consulting by [inaudible 00:59:27] Hassan.
Noor Tagouri:
Our executive producers are Adam [inaudible 00:59:30], Zaron Burnett, Jason English, and me, Noor Tagouri. Special thanks to Virginia Prescott from School of Humans and Will Pearson from iHeartPodcasts. I'd also like to thank Cat Stevens and Yusuf Islam, Yuna, Minhal Baig and May Calamawy, Arij Mikati and Kashif Shaikh.
Noor Tagouri:
If this podcast resonated with you and you'd like to support our show, write a review, share it with someone you think may enjoy it. Tune into Rep next time, I'm Noor Tagouri, as always at your service.
Noor Tagouri:
Rep.