Martin A. M. Gansinger The Influence of Islam on Black musical expression and its re-contextualization as hybrid Gnosticism in Hip Hop culture Radios on card tables, Benetton, the Gods buildin' Ask for today's mathematics, we Allah's children And this was goin' on in every New York ghetto Kids listened, Five Percenters said it's pork in Jell-o 1 Introduction This chapter aims at pointing out the consistency of Islam as a source for empowerment strategies of the Black population in the United States and the religion’s effective reinterpretation as a sort of contemporary gnostic self-realization in Hip Hop culture. Moreover, the link between hybrid identity constructions of Hip Hop artists that borrow from religious and cultural sources of Islam and corresponding traditions of spiritual realization in mystical Islam and Sufism is demonstrated in the course of the discussion. For this purpose, Bhabha’s 2 conceptual vocabulary of de-essentialization, cultural difference, hybridity and Third Space 3 will be applied. While originally referring to the influence of colonialism on the construction of identity and culture, the attempt of spiritual liberation and transcendence as demonstrated by artists who embody this hybrid identities is tied to socio-political strategies to counter aspects of racism and discrimination as well. The Moorish Science Temple (founded in Chicago by Timothy Drew, also referred to as “Noble Drew Ali” in 1926) originated an approach that used and adapted elements of Islam to deconstruct the Christian belief associated with oppressive forces from the Western world. 1 Nas, “No Idea’s Original,” The Lost Tapes LP (New York: Columbia, 2002). 2 Homi K. Bhabha, “Frontlines/Borderposts,” in displacements. Cultural Identities in Question, ed. Angelika Bammer (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), 269–272; Homi K. Bhabha, “Culture’s In-Between,” in Questions of Cultural Identity, ed. Stuart Hall and Paul Du Gay (London: Sage, 1996), 53–60. 3 Homi K. Bhabha and Johnathan Rutherford, “Third Space,” Multitudes 3 (2006): 95–107.