TPM Muckraker reports that the “Goth” style (or “emo” as it apparently is also now called) is making a comeback among US children and teens, if sales receipts are any indication. Some commenters at Sunnipath say that Muslims who participate are “imitating the kuffar,” though it is a nonreligious cultural identity. Some claim that there are quite a few Muslim goths and there are a few on line here and here (The latter link will take you to a three-year-running open thread about the choice of a young Indonesian hijabi to self-identify as goth. The thread has been straffed by some very unsavory characters.) Elsewhere on line, a Muslimah convert sees in the Goths a kind of – ahklaaq – in their fierce commitment to in-your-face identity, and the defense of it. She concludes that Goths with names like “Death” and “Mud” put Muslim women to shame who won’t wear the hijaab.
Finally, there is Hal786 who is trying to do dawah to goths in this long blog post that runs together talk about converting to Islam, Islamic prohibitions on suicide, anti-suicide artwork, lol cats, advice on dressing goth while “keeping it halal,” and lots and lots of pictures of goth boys – and boys only (one photo however is captioned, “telling the difference between the male and female sex has never been so difficult”). I thought maybe s/he was strictly observant of prescriptions to keep women covered, but there’s a picture of Jade Goody farther down so it’s not that. I haven’t read much of the text because it’s salted with text-messaging abbreviations.
