Witnesses who will say the word “Gaza” when every PR manual screams not to.
Witnesses who understand that silence is not safety. Silence is complicity. Silence is betrayal.
Because silence, too, is a choice. And history records it.
The orphan in Rafah is not waiting for your aesthetic.
The mother in Khan Younis is not waiting for your branding.
The Ummah is waiting for meaning.
The Ummah is waiting for you to be true.
This is amanah.
And it will be asked about in the Akhirah.
On a day when no audience can help you.
On a day when only sincerity will speak.
On a day when every voice will testify.
Music is meant to hurt sometimes. To heal. To convict. To cry out in places where language fails. But when it becomes just another line item in a corporation’s earnings report, we’ve betrayed the very essence of it. The artist is no longer a mirror of the times, but a puppet of the system.
And so, we live in the age of silence masquerading as sound. Loud charts. Empty lyrics. Mega tours. Micro truths.
But there is a way back.
It begins with remembrance. With reclaiming the purpose of sound as a sacred trust. It begins when Muslim artists stop asking, “What will get me signed?” and start asking, “What needs to be said?” It begins when music once again breaks things-shackles, illusions, veils. When it returns to the role Allah ﷻ gave it: to reflect His beauty, warn against injustice, and uplift the forgotten.
If it cannot challenge power and oppression, comfort the broken, or testify to truth-
Then it is not art.
It is noise.
Polished noise.
Award-winning noise.
Profitable noise.
But noise.
There is a way back.
But it demands courage.
It demands sacrifice.
It demands choosing meaning over metrics, ummah over ego, akhirah over applause.
Until then, the music will echo through speakers, sold as liberation.
But the soul, betrayed too many times, no longer rises to meet it.
To contact the author: naman.roe@gmail.com
