Sufi Rock Star Sings for Peace.

• Author: Pal, Amitabh
• Position: Meer Salman Ahmad - Interview

It seems like any other college class. A professor starts off by handing back homework assignments. He invites a couple of his students to read their essays. He then lectures on music and culture, breaking up his talk by showing some music videos. But there is something slightly different about this particular instructor. He breaks out into a song impromptu, carrying a tune amazingly well. There's a reason for that: He's a famous singer in South Asia.

Meer Salman Ahmad of Junoon, a band that has sold tens of millions of albums and driven countless fans mad with frenzy, all the while propagating a message of peace and love. Ahmad has been called the "Bono of South Asia" and has been compared to Bob Marley and John Lennon for his social conscience. Over the years, Ahmad has performed with everyone from Annie Lennox and Peter Gabriel to Melissa Etheridge and Sarah McLachlan.

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And, yet, he's little known in the United States. Even the receptionists at Queens College in New York, where he teaches, didn't seem to know who he was. But at least his students do.

"The moment I came here (this was 2007), I fell in love with the vibrant exchange that takes place with students," Ahmad says. "In a sense, through my work, my music, I've always been communicating cultures. Here you do it in a more focused three-hour session."

Ahmad released his autobiography early last year. The title of the book, Rock & Roll Jihad , didn't receive a universally warm reception. The city of New York canceled an invitation to Ahmad to perform at an Earth Day function, but then relented.

"There are two reasons I used 'jihad' in the title," Ahmad explains to me. "It's a misused, abused word, and it's been hijacked by terrorists who masquerade as holy men. When I was growing up in a Muslim culture, it was a word that meant positive struggle. For me, Mahatma Gandhi's struggle for independence was a jihad; Martin Luther King's struggle for civil rights was a jihad. I insisted on the word being on the cover of the book because it's time that the Muslim community wrests back this word from the extremists."

B orn in Pakistan, Ahmad was raised as a teen in the New York area when his father, an airline executive, moved to the United States. As an immigrant kid, he had to endure racism. "I put up with nicknames like 'eight ball' (for my dark skin) and 'wacky packy,'" he writes in his book. He became mesmerized by rock-and-roll and formed a band while in high...