Junoon’s Ahmed rocks MSA’s Islam Awareness Week

“Anyone got a 12-string guitar?”

Salman Ahmed—musician, doctor, United Nations Goodwill Ambassador, and now author—strolled to the stage at the Columbia Journalism School on Wednesday as part of the Muslim Students Association’s Islam Awareness Week. Ahmed is the founder, lead singer, and guitar player of Pakistani rock band Junoon, called by many “the U2 of Asia” with fans worldwide including Bono himself.

Embodying the oft-mentioned “new Muslim cool”: sneakers, slacks, and a t-shirt reading “Coexist” under a khaki jacket and furry hat turned backwards, Ahmed captured his audience with a powerful song on acoustic guitar (lyrics courtesy of 13th century poet Amir Khosrow).

Afterwards, he sat down with news anchor Daljit Dhaliwal for an informal interview that traced his path from Pakistan to New York and back again. His anecdotes were endearing, his memories familiar, and every tangent captivating and true to the identity he presented. He reminisced about being introduced to rock by classmate Danny Spitz (years later the lead guitarist of the band Anthrax), who gave him a ticket to his first concert: Led Zeppelin. He described his family’s pressure against pursuing music as a career, talked about “jamming” with famous Sufi qawwali singers, all while quoting the prophet Muhammad on the value of education and discussing his dreams for a more peaceful world.

Before he retired to shake hands, sign books, and take pictures with his supporters, he finished the two-hour session with three more songs, inviting the audience to sing along. Mr. Ahmed sings from a heart trained better than his voice, bending in and out of notes, hitting each one with the impressive spiritual force that has moved crowds for fifteen years from Lahore to Los Angeles. His fingers move effortlessly between mystical ragas and notes from the blues, adding the rhythm of the heartbeat to poetry spun from the souls of Sufi masters.

“Never did I think I was playing a Western instrument,” Ahmed explained. “I was just jamming.”

Mr. Ahmed’s career has been full of what many may perceive as an ironic juxtaposition of identity, but he uses his position for such humanitarian and social good that one could not imagine a better example of the unity of humanity, a better reminder that East vs. West is merely a “false dichotomy created for marketing purposes.”

“We live in a time of crisis,” he said, while discussing the problems facing Muslims in the West. “But you know the Chinese word for crisis, don’t you?”

The answer came from the front row: “opportunity.”