“So what are you? I am only a Muslim and a human.” This line was said in the final seconds of the music video for‘Name of God by Mustafa the Poet, a Sudanese-Canadian artist and songwriter, who recently released his latest album, Dunya, last month. Being both Muslim and human can appear as the simplest, most basic way to describe oneself. Yet for Mustafa, and many others, it can be the most challenging aspect of their existence. In an age that is increasingly shadowed by Islamophobia, where expressing one’s faith publicly and freely can be a source of discomfort for others, Mustafa’s decision to integrate his religion into his artistic expression has become a rarity, if not a form of defiance. As he once shared in an interview, “I tried to separate my religion and career at a point in time, as some were increasingly uncomfortable with the conflation of my artistic expression and faith[…]but so much of my life is connected to Islam. Just like these songs are never complete, neither is the process of worship.” In his album, worshipping God is both a journey and a question, a…
