Eyad Zahra was never what you’d call a punk-rocker growing up. In fact, he describes his high school self as a “goofy nerd,” who would shoot for class clown, but end up as the butt of every joke. So why would a goofy nerd from Cleveland, Ohio produce and direct a film about Muslim-American punk-rockers?

Well, for the same reason Michael Muhammad Knight wrote the original book that The Taqwacores screenplay was based off of, who said: “you cannot hold punk or Islam in your hands, so what would they mean, other than what you want them to?”

“The Taqwacores” centers around a first-generation Pakistani engineering student in Buffalo, N.Y. After moving off-campus with a group of Muslim punks, he is introduced to a new Muslim-American punk subculture called Taqwacore – Taqwa, which can be translated as “piety,” joined with the hardcore genre.

Grand Valley State University featured a screening of the film in Pew Campus’ Loosemore Auditorium last night, followed by a question and answer session with Zahra. It’s part of Michigan State University’s Migrations of Islam project, funded by a grant which GVSU journalism professor Brian Bowe co-authored with colleagues from Michigan State. Other events included the Oct. 20 performance of “The Hijabi Monologues” and a national traveling concert called Poetic Visions Tour on Nov. 11.

The film was featured in the Sundance Film Festival, and much like Muhammad Knight’s book, received mixed reviews for its controversial topic and style. Zahra said The Taqwacores style is, “very raw and sort of rough around the edges – I like to say it’s made with spit and duct tape.”

Bowe said the film serves two purposes.

“The first, for non-Muslims audiences, it really, I think, kind of explodes the stereotyped views that a lot of people have about what it means to be Muslim,” Bowe said. “For the Muslim communities, it might do the same, actually.”

This sense that even for the Muslim community, Muslim-American youth are not so easily put in a box. But certainly, whenever you’re engaging these really kind of, tricky questions about faith and identity, you run the risk of ruffling some feathers.”

Zahra, who started work on “The Taqwacores” when he was 25, is 29 now, but found it easy to identify with the characters in the film and immerse himself in the often-controversial Taqwacore movement. Zahra’s parents were first-generation Syrian immigrants who moved to the U.S. two years before he was born. Though his mother raised him as traditionally as she could manage — Fridays at the Islamic center for prayer, a separate tutor for Islam — when he reached high school, things started to change.

“Juxtaposing that with my surroundings, and going to high school and a lot of things didn’t necessarily go hand in hand like dating and strict social morals,” Zahra said. “My graduation class was, like, 40 kids at a private school in Cleveland, so I was really protected and sheltered and then when I graduated high school is when I started seeing things in a bigger way.”

He went to college in Florida to study film, put his religion on a shelf and focused on finding his own identity. After college, he said his religious upbringing started to creep back up – right in time for “The Taqwacores” to come in and offer him some clarity. Now, his religion means something different to him than it did when he was younger.

“Now, it’s defined itself more as a cultural element to me and that can always upset people, because I’m redefining religion for myself,” Zahra said. “But for the first time in my life I’m very comfortable with what it is to me.”

Mohammed Ghannahm, sophomore and secretary for the Muslim Student Association, said that GVSU’s own MSA continually seeks to improve and promote the understanding of the diverse cultures that make up not the MSA, but the GVSU community. Though Ghannahm said the Taqwacore perspective is largely unheard of in the U.S., and more specifically rooted in the Middle East, he thinks that Islam — as a religion that promotes peace, tolerance and understanding — welcomes the new perspectives.

Though Ghannahm said he does not identify with the punk rock lifestyle, nor the genre of music, he has no qualms with The Taqwacores.

“Knowing that I ascribe to a religion that can be suitable for me, someone who is the polar opposite of the Taqwacores, and at the same time be suitable for the punk rockers of the Taqwacore movement, makes me as a Muslim — but more importantly, as a human — happy,” he said.

And with the younger generation’s openness to the unknown, “The Taqwacores” could leave a very permanent mark on Arab-American culture.

“In general, I’ve come to find this — that, if I would have shown this film 20 years ago, it would have been a different story,” Zahra said. “But now, you show it on campuses or whatever, and people are way more open to it, because things are really changing.”

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