LibForAll Foundation and
Dawn Elder Management have joined
forces with a global team of Muslim and
non-Muslim musical celebrities, to promote the traditionally
pluralistic and tolerant values of Islam. This musical campaign has
been endorsed by key Muslim theologians, who are joining with pop
culture celebrities and other like-minded leaders in the fields of
religion, education, entertainment, government, business and media
to encourage people of good will of every faith and nation to unite
as “warriors of love,” and to reject all forms of religious hatred
and violence.
This
project was jointly conceived by legendary Indonesian rock star and
LibForAll Foundation board member
Ahmad Dhani, and LibForAll
co-founder and CEO,
C. Holland Taylor. Dhani’s best-selling single
and album Laskar Cinta (“Warriors of Love”) promote the
values of spiritual love, freedom and tolerance, using lyricsinspired by verses from the Qur’an and sayings of the Prophet
Muhammad. Warriors of Love became the #1 song in Indonesia
upon its release in December of 2005, while its music video soared
to #1 on MTV Asia’s hit program Ampuh in March of 2006.
We anticipate that
Dawn Elder will lead a team of acclaimed,
multi-Grammy-Award-winning producers with extensive cross-cultural
experience, to expand the scope and impact of this LibForAll project
to reach a truly global audience.
Major
activities include
working with top international artists from many
regions of the world, to record Warriors of Love in the
languages of every significant cultural/linguistic/commercial music
market in the Islamic world, including Arabic, Farsi, Turkish,
Hindi/Urdu, Bengali, Swahili, Mandingue, Hausa, French, Spanish,
Russian, and English; producing and broadcasting music videos of the
same; and orchestrating a Live Aid/We Are the World-style musical
celebration of Islam as a religion of divine love and tolerance, in
which top European, American and Latin entertainment celebrities
will join the international artists described above to record
Warriors of Love in English, and perform live in concert.
Ahmad Dhani/Dewa performing the song Warriors of Love
at SCTV studio (left) in Jakarta, Indonesia. This one-hour
television special was broadcast throughout the nation with
the world's largest Muslim population and democracy on
Eid al-Fitr (October 23, 2006), the day on which the
fasting month of Ramadan ended.
Dewa typically perform 3-4
times a month on nationwide television concert broadcasts.
Radical Islamist groups viciously attacked rock superstar Ahmad Dhani
and his band Dewa for their best-selling album
Laskar Cinta ("Warriors of
Love"). It infuriated the radicals to see their
indoctrination of young Muslims into the culture of jihad threatened
by Dhani’s work. Tens of millions of Indonesians watch Dewa’s
concerts on TV, and eagerly listen to their music throughout the
vast archipelago. Dewa's best-selling album Laskar Cinta presented Indonesia's youth with a stark choice, and
one easy for the vast majority to answer: Do they want to join the
army of jihad, or the army of love?
In response, the radicals accused Dhani
-- who is a devout Sufi, or mystically inclined Muslim -- of being
an infidel, an apostate (code words inciting violence) and a Zionist
agent. They hauled him into court on charges of defaming Islam and
sought to ban his use of rock music to promote a spiritual and
progressive interpretation of Islam that threatens the appeal of
their own Wahhabi-inspired extremism. Fortunately, with the
help of LibForAll board members Kyai Haji Abdurrahman Wahid and
Abdul Munir Mulkhan, the radicals' attempt to portray Dhani as a
heretic
backfired in the eyes of the
Indonesian public.
Recording giant EMI Records released Dewa's eighth album, Republik Cinta ("Republic of Love") to blanket media coverage
in Indonesia in January of 2006. Laskar Cinta ("Warriors of
Love") is the album's lead song.
As implied by
its title, Republic of Love promotes the development of
civil liberty and democracy, both through the album's popular
music and the accompanying media campaign/artist interviews,
which promote a peaceful alternative to the ideologies of hatred
that underlie and animate terrorism.
The album's launch was accompanied by well over
100 separate print and television interviews. Here the group
performs in a live nationwide concert broadcast during prime
time on RCTI television network, Friday evening, January 6,
2006. The "musical fatwa" was broadcast on five separate
TV concerts in January alone, and has been heard by a majority
of Indonesia's 220 million inhabitants.
Disciples of Shaykh Hisham Muhammad Kabbani of the Naqshbandi
Sufi order with Ahmad Dhani (left) at Dewa's studio in
Jakarta. These and other Sufis attended the RCTI concert (above
and below)
to express their support for Dewa's "musical fatwa" against
religious hatred and terrorism, and to perform the Mevlevi Sufi
order's "whirling" dance on national TV, during the "musical
fatwa's" launch.
Prior to becoming Shaykh Kabbani's disciples, they belonged
to the fundamentalist Jamaah Tabligh organization.
Islamic
fundamentalism is a well-financed, multifaceted global movement
that operates like a juggernaut in much of the developing world,
and even among immigrant Muslim communities in the West –
promoting a harsh, intolerant and "uniform" interpretation of
Islam.
Dewa works to
neutralize this virulent ideology by promoting a pluralistic and
tolerant understanding of Islam that embraces other cultures.
The live television launch of Dewa's "musical fatwa" offered
Indonesian viewers their first glimpse of a Sufi "whirling
dervish" (red cap, center), whose mystical traditions originate
in Persia and Turkey.
In December of 2006,
the album won two AMI (Anugerah Musik Indonesia) awards –
Indonesia's equivalent
to the Grammy –
for best rock album and
best rock song. Dewa's lead singer, Once (right, with
LibForAll CEO Holland Taylor), won additional AMI awards for
best male vocalist and best song.
Holland Taylor (left), with
Dewa vocalists Once (center) and Ahmad Dhani (right), setting
English lyrics to the music of Laskar Cinta ("Warriors of
Love"). Once is a devout Christian and Dhani a Sufi
Muslim. Both are comfortable performing music
derived from their own or others' religious traditions.
Ahmad Dhani in his studio recording the lyrics to Dewa's new
song, "Warriors of Love," for an English-language album
to be released and distributed internationally by EMI
Records.
LibForAll CEO Holland Taylor with Kyai Haji
Muhammad Yusuf Chudlori ("Gus Yusuf"), who heads the renowned
Islamic boarding school Pondok Pesantren Asrama
Perguruan Islam in Tegalrejo, Central Java. Scion of a
leading family of Nahdlatul Ulama religious scholars, Gus Yusuf
is a widely-respected "Great Kyai," or Islamic leader, in his
own right.
Taylor and Gus Yusuf are discussing plans to
spotlight and counter radical Islamist (Wahhabi) inroads into
Indonesia, in conjunction with LibForAll's, Abdurrahman Wahid's
and Ahmad Dhani's efforts in this regard. A concerted media
campaign will involve elements of popular culture, Islamic
scholarship and the mobilization of Javanese villagers (Muslim
and non-Muslim alike) to convey a message of religious tolerance
and harmony to urban inhabitants, who are more vulnerable to
extremist propaganda.
The support of religious figures such as
Abdurrahman Wahid,
Luqman Hakim and Yusuf Chudlori
is critical to defend Ahmad Dhani in his efforts to marginalize
religious extremism and discredit the use of terrorism as
anti-Islamic and, indeed, "inspired by Satan."
In the words of Gus Yusuf, "ambitious men who are betting on
the triumph of radical Islam to assure their success have
misread Indonesian Islam."
