According to Global Voices, Iranian-born musician Shahin Najafi is receiving death threats for his song “Naqi.” The story is being represented as a religious issue, with an Ithna’ashari (the largest group of Shi’ah) scholar quoted as issuing a legal opinion that Najafi should be killed.
But as The Daily Beast reports, the legal opinion, or fatwa, predates the release of the song and as Najafi himself suggests, has been appropriated by Islamists to “create fear, intimidation, and terror among people and for me, so that I don’t continue with my work.”
The song itself is almost prayerful, calling Naqi — the tenth Ithna’ashari Imami, or religious leader — to come back and witness the tribulations of the Iranian people. In the process, the hypocrisies of the religious state are pointed out. In addition, there is a strong subtext of the religious authorities being the cause of much of what is wrong with Iran—the return of Naqi would show the people what real religion is about.
This sort of poetry, of appealing to a “higher authority” for the problems of Muslims is not new within Islamicate literatures. Most notable is the author Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938), who wrote in both Urdu and Persian. His poem “Shikwa” (Complaint) is about a Muslim crying out to God for relief from colonialism and hypocritical religious authorities. When he wrote the second part of the poem “Jawab-e Shikwa” (Answer to the Complaint), he too was accused of blasphemy for writing in the voice of God. But what seemed to make people most uncomfortable was the fact that Iqbal forced them face their own failings, and he was not subtle in his attacks on authoritarian figures.
Najafi is in a similar mold. While there is a facile comparison to be made with Salman Rushdie, the fact of the matter is that the comparison is not useful.
There is no state-sponsored death threat against Najafi. Najafi is also part of a history in Islamicate literature, especially in Persian, of using poetry—including song lyrics—to criticize authority. He also has a long track record of these sorts of critical songs, along with the band Tapesh 2012.
The things that make Najafi dangerous to the regime—his use of language, being part of a long tradition, and accessibility—are also the things that give him the greatest protection. People recite poetry centuries after an author dies, and Najafi’s lyrics are now part of popular Iranian culture. It’s the work of art doing what it’s supposed to do: make people think.
