A mosque forgot its heritage when it tackled a Muslim rapper for exalting the name of Allah. We forget our heritage when we fail to celebrate the greatness among us like Youngsta CPT or our very own football TV supremo Julia Stuart.
They are breaking down doors for others to follow and create a new heritage, writes Gasant Abarder in a new #SliceofGasant column.
Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here.
I must have missed Athlone’s Habibia Soofi mosque’s statement in support of the Muir Street mosque in District Six when it was fighting a spurious noise and then a nuisance complaint investigated by the City of Cape Town about the call to prayer at one of the oldest mosques in Cape Town.
I must have missed the complaint by the Habibia Soofi mosque when Sean ‘Puff Daddy’ Combs culturally appropriated the Athaan, the Islamic call to prayer, in the intro of his rap album No Way Out more than two decades ago.
Or maybe they didn’t bother because these days, in my Muslim community, it is often every soul for himself. They did bother to rap local artist Youngsta CPT over the knuckles for shooting a music video outside the mosque for his track entitled Alhamdulilaah, which means Praise be to Allah.
Had they bothered to engage Youngsta, whose real name is Riyadh Roberts, they would have discovered that he is a devout Muslim and often refers to his unflinching faith in his music. Had they bothered to ask, they would have known that he wasn’t appropriating from the Muslim faith because it is his way of life.
Had they bothered to ask, they wouldn’t be threatening him with legal action because he is in fact an advocate of Islam.
Instead, according to Radio 786, they check-mated a man who is a generational God-given talent by taking on his faith. If he lived anywhere else where music is appreciated, he would be a highly celebrated, platinum-selling artist. Books would be written, Netflix documentaries would be made and radio stations would be queuing up to play his music. He is a once-in-a-lifetime talent and his star is growing.
Instead, people in his own community steal his music via illegal streams instead of buying it.
Had the mosque elders seen the opportunity to draw in their brother Riyadh, they may have attracted young people to the mosque. He did them a favour by featuring the beautiful mosque in the music video. Heck, I’m curious to go pray there.
They also claim he posed as an imam and distorted the praise of Allah. Erm, it’s called art. Is rap not an art form? Youngsta didn’t make a single disparaging or blasphemous statement about Allah or his faith in that track or his dozens of other tracks. In fact, his messages are more relevant than most of the fire and brimstone sermons by Cape Town imams.
The whole unnecessary affair made me think about my friend Julia Stuart and her arduous journey to her rightful place at the top of the table as a football journalist. Julia recently left SuperSport to join the English Premier League’s preview shows on British TV. The ‘soccer meisie with balls’, as she called herself in her Daily Voice columns, from Mitchells Plain, is the finest football brain I have ever met.
I met Julia when she was a UCT student who joined the Daily Voice as an intern. I was the news editor and I wasn’t convinced initially. It wasn’t weeks later that she was tearing up pages as a designer and she was soon the sports editor. She later became like my baby sister and it gave me great pleasure to watch her effortlessly move to television.
But in these spaces, she was othered in a man’s world. Her superior knowledge of the game thankfully shone through. Julia can tell you all there is to know about the game, the players, their stats, the stadiums. Few can do proper analysis – often on the spot and pitch-side – the way she does. SuperSport missed a trick when they didn’t make her the lead presenter of last year’s World Cup and they’ve lost her to a bigger network that appreciates her talent.
It is a pity we don’t celebrate our own and wait for others to recognise the talent right under our noses. We should be celebrating Youngsta and Julia for advancing our country’s heritage. Alhamdulilaah for their talents!
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