This paper takes up the decolonial and spiritual potential in the music of the iconic Umm Kulthum (d. 1975), the most popular Arab singer of the 20th century and a fixture of my upbringing. I consider how a reorientation toward Umm Kalthum’s music, when put in creative dialogue with Sufi discourses on the torment of love, can offer fresh horizons of understanding regarding the painful struggles of faith and seeking God. This layered reflection models a discourse on spiritual devotion that realistically reflects the complexities and exigencies of lived experience while sustaining Islam as a counter-hegemonic form of life.
The first half of the paper begins by framing the relevance of Umm Kalthum to Islamic political theology and spirituality. Growing up surrounded by Umm Kalthum’s music (both when visiting Syria and in Arab American diasporic life), I increasingly noticed a contrast between the ubiquitous adoration of her music in the Arab world and the disapproving perceptions of her music among many Arabs involved in the Islamic revival. As I would later come to understand, in the context of the Arab Cold War these revivalist critics viewed her idolization as a product of a “Westoxicated” secularism, contributing to political passivity and domination by colonial and postcolonial forces. Yet on the other hand, a more complex picture emerges when we examine her role in pan-Arab, pan-Islamic, and anticolonial struggles.
Moving beyond her immediate historical context, I argue that the legacy of Umm Kalthum (and tarab more broadly – the classical Arabic music that she epitomizes) can take on a unique significance when considered from the vantage point of diasporic exile in the 21st century. At one level is the importance of preserving non-Western musical traditions in the production of counter-hegemonic aesthetic sensibilities and identity. Yet beyond this, there is also religious and spiritual potential hidden beneath the surface, which becomes apparent if we question the religion-culture divide that is so often assumed in revivalist modes of piety.
To illustrate this potential, the remainder of the paper draws out the connections between Umm Kalthum’s love songs and the tradition of Sufi love poetry. To begin, it is already widely recognized that the art of Quranic recitation played an important role in her musical training and style, and on numerous occasions she also sang songs that were more explicitly religious, such as old devotional qasa’id in praise of the Prophet (like Nahj al-Burdah), as well as newer songs about loving God (such as al-Qalb Ya`shaq Kulli Jamil). Beyond this level of direct engagement with such devotional themes, however, there is a deeper ambiguity and potential that pervades her music. I build upon the recognition that Arabic love poetry is often deeply intertwined with Sufi poetry about the love of God, which utilizes the tropes, images, and experiences of romantic interpersonal love and desire as reflecting spiritual love of the divine.
With this, we can speculate on the implications of treating Umm Kalthum’s love songs as part of this tradition and thus ambiguous in intent, doubling as romantic love between humans as well as love of God. The defining motif of almost all Umm Kalthum’s love songs is the pain and torment of love. Love is not described as an easy or happy state of affairs, but rather full of painful yearning and heartbreak. I demonstrate this through some translated selections from her famous songs, Sirat al-Hubb, Ba’id Annak, and al-Hubbi Keda. We hear in such sentiments deep resonance with Sufi discourses on love of God, which dwell extensively on the anguish, longing, perplexity, and bewilderment of the lover, who simultaneously experiences both intimate union with their beloved as well as separation.
When considered in this light, one’s interaction with Umm Kalthum’s songs can open the door to conceiving of their relationship with God in this way, with all the fraught emotions of human relationships. Beyond invoking the above-described mystical expression of love for the divine with its pangs of separation, the way the torment of love is felt in Umm Kalthum’s songs also suggests the possibility of understanding this relationship with God through the prism of modern doubt. There are many contemporary encounters and experiences of devotional life in this vein, captured by popular literature and ethnographic work that reflects on doubt and disillusionment in religious life: feeling God’s absence, feeling abandoned by God, not seeing God’s love in one’s life, experiencing devotional failure, feeling hurt and betrayed by God’s words, and so on. Yet within the world of Umm Kalthum’s songs, such experiences do not detract from the power of love, which is still to be cherished:
“There's nothing in the world more lovely than love, nothing at all.
We complain of how it burdens and exhausts us, yet we go on loving.”
Finally, I conclude by returning to the connection to political theology within a diasporic context. On the one hand, it has been extensively noted how this mode of love-drunk Sufism actually fits well with the passive political subjectivity demanded of “good Muslims” within neoliberal regimes. Yet I also ask whether there is potential for cultivating counter-hegemonic spiritual subjectivities through this seemingly secular music. I suggest that this reorientation to tarab can contribute to the cultivation of a spiritual disposition of devotion, commitment, and loyalty that is capable of accommodating unsettling ambivalence, a capacity that I assert is necessary in our world of fragmentation and normalized domination. I also point out that this relationship with tarab models an engagement with “Islamic tradition” that defies both the secular-religion binary as well as notions of purity and authenticity.
Bibliography:
Adhami, The American Muslim Crisis of Faith (2025).
Ahmed, What is Islam? (2015)
Chittick, “Divine and Human Love in Islam” (2010)
Danielson, The voice of Egypt: Umm Kulthum, Arabic song, and Egyptian society (1997).
Jackson, The Islamic Secular (2024)
Lewisohn, “Sufism’s Religion of Love, from Rābi‘a to Ibn ‘Arabī” (2014)
Lipton, “Secular Sufism” (2011)
Mian, "Surviving Desire: Reading Ḥāfiz̤ in Colonial India” (2021)
Moosa, “Decolonizing the Politics of Love” (2024)
Racy, Making Music in the Arab World: The Culture and Artistry of Tarab (2003)
Safi, Radical Love (2018)
Shaikh, “Friendships, Fidelities and Sufi Imaginaries” (2023)
This paper takes up the decolonial and spiritual potential in the music of the iconic Umm Kulthum (d. 1975), the most popular Arab singer of the 20th century. I consider how a reorientation toward Umm Kalthum’s music, when put in creative dialogue with Sufi discourses on the torment of love, can offer fresh horizons of understanding regarding the painful struggles of faith and seeking God. The first half of the paper begins by framing the relevance of Umm Kalthum to Islamic political theology and spirituality, particularly in a context of diasporic exile in the 21st century. To illustrate this potential, the remainder of the paper draws out the connections between Umm Kalthum’s love songs and the tradition of Sufi love poetry, with their extensive focus on the torment and perplexity of the lover. I consider the relevance of this to the modern experience of religious doubt and disillusionment.