As an anti-war song with a funky baseline and classic delivery of poignant lyrics, Everlast’s latest drop stands on its own. But there’s so much more going on in the subtext of this video:
- At 2:26, when Everlast raises his arms in a classic Christian pose while singing…
Pray for me, pray for my soul, ma
…the video transitions to classic Christian imagery with similar poses in the graveyard before cutting back to Everlast singing…
Pray for me and all my sins
…he’s now in a classic Muslim prayer pose, with palms exposed to the sky.
Everlast first took Shahada back in the mid-90’s and has been an evolving, practicing Muslim ever since. I dug up this interview from the late-nineties where he describes the second time he took Shahada, but for the first time in earnest:
[...] So finally I’m sittin’ there taking Shahada again. From that point on I’ve made a commitment where I’m going to try my best. I’m gonna do my best to make my prayers, let’s start there. Let’s not beat ourselves up because we went out last night and had a drink. Let’s make our prayers and pray for the strength to stop doing one thing at a time. That’s what I’m still dealing with.
You know, once you get over the big things, it becomes very subtle. It can be as subtle as looking [at] a man, and not even speaking bad about him, but back-biting him in your mind. The easy ones to beat — well I shouldn’t say easy — the big ones are easy to notice. It’s the subtle psychological stuff that helps you get into who really you are. You gotta be able to face the truth of who you are. If you are not able to face that truth of who you are, you’re gonna crumble, man. [...]
Too often we think of the “sides” of both war and life in such simplistic, digestible, juxtapositions — Muslims vs. Christians or Good vs. Evil — that we miss out on understanding what leads up to humans behaving as we do. I mean, can you even begin to imagine what it must feel like for a once Christian, Irish-American white male who has professed Shahada to stare long and hard at the drivers of us going to war in the middle-east?
(via Navaho Gunleg)