(ANALYSIS) It’s not a steady embrace, not the gentle laying on of hands, but “a punch in the face of godliness.” This is the language Yishai Romanoff, frontman of the Hasidic punk band “Moshiach Oi!” used to describe his music in the documentary “Punk Jews.”

Moshiach Oi! is not the only heavyweight in the religious punk music scene. Muslims, Christians and Hindus have all, at various times, utilized this music genre to deliver their own holy uppercuts. 

If punk is about being countercultural, then religious punk is, perhaps, the most punk of all. In an increasingly secular world, to deviate from secularism is to embrace the outcast mentality. The rebels of today, it seems, are those pitting themselves against a purely material reality.

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Punk music is not reverent. It is not in the habit of allowing for things to be sacred or of enabling the sort of gentle, forgiving attitudes which are promoted by many religions. The very word punk has is its oldest usage marked as being a synonym for a prostitute. Over time, the word began to mean a general sort of scoundrel or ruffian. The clash of the moral and the miscreants may have been unlikely or maybe inevitable.

Punk music has always been about rebellion. When punk bands started appearing in the 1960’s and ‘70s with names like “Sex Pistols” or “The Stranglers,” they not so subtly differentiated themselves from a more tame, more accepted version of rock and roll. They sought to be different. In the same way, practitioners of most religions believe themselves to be rebelling against the world. Both punks and the religious share an “us against the world” mindset. 

Punks sought to call out injustice. They typically had agendas such as the Sex Pistols’s song “Bodies,” which tells a story. sympathetically and yet harshly, of a girl who got an abortion and how everybody hated her for it. They were political and proud of it. The punk sound was coarse and loud, their lyrics often sarcastic and vulgar and they were typically eccentric with their fashion and appearance. Punks were strange and they wanted to be. The outcast mentality was a major facet of the punk identity. 

Hasidic Punks

The Jewish people are some of the oldest outcasts. From slavery in Egypt to the Holocaust to dealing with modern-day antisemitic sentiments, tragically, Jews seem to consistently find themselves in positions where they are unwanted by the world. But, even from a positive standpoint, Jews have been outcasts as much of what God commands of his chosen people is that they be set apart from the world. Therefore, the outcasts of music meet the outcasts of religion in Moshiach Oi!.

As Hasidic Jews, the members of  Moshiach Oi! Are uniquely able to embrace the feeling of being an outcast. They very carefully practice all commandments in the Torah, which they are capable of practicing, many of which defer from the cultural norms of the Western world. As if the religious fervor was not clear enough by use of traditional Hasidic dress, their lyrics are intensely worshipful and focused on their creator.

In the song “All Praise,” they screams the words “All praises to Hashem, Say it again and again, He spoke and the world came to be, The Holy One, blessed be He, Praised in the lower realms, Praised in the highest heights, Praised is His Holy Name, Filling the world with His light, Scream His name, scream it loud, All His praise I will shout”

Moshiach Oi! are Na Nach Jews. This sect of Judaism believes that they must spread the phrase “Na Nach Nachma Nachman Me’Uman.” They believe that spreading such a phrase across the whole world is the key to getting the Messiah to arrive. They do this by dancing, singing, graffiti, stickers and really any method that they can. Moshiach Oi! gets the message across through punk music.

In “Punk Jews,” Romanoff talks about how he can be accused of being sacrilegious, but he added, “Sometimes you have to express…in different ways that people in the world today can relate to. Not everyone can relate to going to a synagogue and sitting down.” This statement seems thoroughly Na Nach in spirit.

Taqwacore

The sacrilegious quality of religious punk seems to be almost embraced by the Muslim punk band The Kominas. While there are several Muslim punk groups (and even a fictional TV show about one), although most of Islamic punk – or “Taqwacore” – is defined by The Kominas.

Taqwacore began when a man named Michael Muhammed Knight wrote a book, “The Taqwacores,” which combined his two loves: Islam and punk music. When he found out the clash existed in the nonfictional world, he met The Kominas. Their trek around the U.S. singing Islamic punk is thoroughly recorded in the documentary “The Birth of Punk Islam: Taqwacore.” In this documentary, Knight lays out a critical belief that Taqwacore embraces: “You cannot hold punk or Islam in your hands, so what could they mean besides what you want them to.” 

While The Kominas certainly identify as Muslims (and are seen praying in the documentary), band member Shahjehan Khan makes clear that The Kominas “are not street preachers.” They don’t push an ideology on anyone and appear to view Islam as sort of fluid.

Unlike Moshiach Oi!, the Kominas’ music is less about worship and more about a pursuit of justice. The Kominas’ music is more focused on Islam as a political identity than a religious one. Their song “Sharia Law in the USA” starts with “I am an Islamist, I am the anti-Christ,” a line which parallels Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the UK” where John Lyndon sings, “I am an anarchist, I am the anti-Christ.”

Their song titles often sound like they were taken straight from the nightmares and news headlines of American nationalists. Songs like “Blow S—t up,” “No One Gonna Honor Kill My Baby (But Me),” and “Suicide Bomb the Gap” poke fun at the fear-mongering, anti-Muslim media. In an interview with The Guardian, frontman Basim Usmani said: “‘I am not a Muslim or anti-Muslim spokesperson … but then when people on the [extreme political right] Stormfront messageboard are discussing us and saying they are afraid of us – that does get me psyched.” 

“The Kominas” translates from Urdu to “The Rapscallions.” The band members  are aware that what they are doing is edgy. Punk has always been edgy and, according to Usmani, it was this ability to go against the status quo and embrace differences which attracted him to punk. 

He said in the documentary that while many kids at his school seemed suspicious of Muslims, punk kids seemed equally suspicious of the U.S. government. He said, “‘I felt like among punk kids the differences I had were sort of celebrated and I enjoyed that a lot.” 

The Kominas are also not afraid to be flippant about their religion. Many of their songs are highly profane, a quality which is looked down on in Islam, as well as explicit. One song even talks about wanting to sleep with someone during Ramadan, which is considered egregious.

To some, even the very existence of a Muslim band of any kind is not in alignment with Allah’s wishes. A significant number of Muslims, in fatc, believe that music and musical instruments are prohibited by the Quran. 

Christian Rock

Since punk music was rebelling against nearly all establishments, and since it started in the largely Christianized Western societies of England and the U.S., punk bands were directly rebelling against elements of society that, whether orthodox or not, were tied to Christianity. So, perhaps the most unlikely converts to punk were the Christians.

But convert to punk the Christians did. In the ‘90s and early aughts, bands started rocking for Jesus with an especial flippancy and roughness. For most Christian punk bands, faith was a facet of their music, not the whole point. They weren’t worship bands with punk sound, they were punk bands with worshipful songs. 

A worship band probably wouldn't have a song with the lyrics “Marilyn Manson ate my girlfriend” or a 12-second song in which they sing, “I just wasted ten seconds of your life,” but Relient K does. 

While their lyrics are often casual and unconcerned, they also have songs like “God,” which calls for the coming of Christ’s Kingdom or “Deathbed,” which chronicles the life of a man who is perpetually hurt and who fails, but comes to know God in the end. They even mix their carefree with their Christianity in songs like “K Car,” which is a comical song about a car that also continues to mention that God is taking care of them.

While Relient K had a sound that was easy on the ears and inconsistent in its theme, the band Dogwood vied for a more intense interpretation of Christian punk both musically and in message. Most Dogwood songs are glaringly evangelical in their efforts. Many songs are just praising God, many speak of struggling and returning to Christ. Their song “Jesus” essentially just lays out the Christian gospel. 

Like the secular punks, the band Dogwood poked fun at the government in their song “Patriotic Pride” which starts with lyrics from the American National Anthem but is really a song about patriotism for the eternal kingdom of Yahweh himself. Dogwood’s philosophy can be grasped in the lyrics from their song “Never Die,” in which they say “Live fast, die slow, stand back, let go, choose life, you’ll see, how awesome it is, when God sets you free.” This borderline youth pastor-esque line is, of course, yelled gutturally with guitars and banging drums.

Krishnacore

It was these straight-edge individuals who gave Hinduism its voice in punk. This genre of punk is known as krishnacore, named after the denomination of Hinduism that the musicians belonged to: Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna as a set of ideas was brought to New York in the 1960s by a man called Srila Prabhupada.

He taught a fairly standard message of Hinduism regarding karma and reincarnation. However, he also taught that one can more quickly stop the cycle of reincarnation and change one’s negative karma by chanting the names of  Krishna, a Hindu deity who he believed to be the supreme lord of everything. Apparently, there are also methods of highly complex yoga that can be performed to change karma as well, but most settle for the recitation. 

Adherents of Hare Krishna are vegetarians and abstain from alcohol, drugs and both extramarital and non-reproductive sex. One might call that pretty straight-edge. It is no wonder that punk kids found something they understood in Hare Krisha. 

While there are several Krishnacore bands such as Refuse to Fall, Cro-Mags or 108, perhaps no band is as essential and exemplary to the movement as Shelter. Shelter’s Ray Cappo was involved with several different bands, but Shelter has been his artistic focus. Shelter’s album covers are full of Hindu imagery and their lyrics are religious.

In their song “Civilized Man,” they criticize the beef industry saying, “The meat eater kills the cows, they just depersonalize to justify their own lust as the helpless die. And it’s ironic how we cry for world peace but the violence won’t decrease unless our murders cease, so understand in the slaughterhouse who’s the beast and I demand that the innocent be released.” Like classic punks, they are calling for justice in crude, but careful messaging.

The reality of Hinduism’s ability to garner the devotion of so many punk-rockers becomes much easier to understand when listening to “Sermon,” a 16-minute track which ends Shelter’s first album.

The song is a compilation of several Hare Krishna speeches. They are all intensely observational and philosophical, while including a plethora of sarcastic remarks and modern-day terminology. This flippant treatment of the fundamental ideas of the universe is exactly what punk has been doing the whole time.

Matthew Peterson is currently the John McCandlish Phillips intern at Religion Unplugged. He is a student at Baruch College in New York City.