Norway / United Kingdom:
Muslim pop singer faces threats

During 10 years, threats from angry conservative Muslims silenced the Norwegian and Muslim pop singer Deeyah. In her new album and music video, she breaks her silence finally speaking out about her struggles and re-claims her Western given right of living as a modern and independent Muslim woman.

Proud and empowered by her femininity, Deeyah finally pushes for her right to freedom of expression and is now standing up against female oppression. The 27-year-old singer was born and raised in Oslo by parents who were amongst the first generation of Muslim Asians to immigrate to Norway. Her mother’s heritage is Persian/Afghani and her father’s is Pakistani/Indian.
While still in her teens, she released two very successful albums in Scandinavia under her birth name, Deepika. Her first album, released by an independent label when she was 15, was a blend of Indian classical, jazz and folk received high critical acclaim. Deeyah’s musical success and high visibility led to a prestigious government cultural award and she quickly became a true public figure and was adopted as the unofficial ”poster child” for the integration of Asian immigrants into Norwegian society.
At the age of 16, Deeyah signed with BMG and released her second album the following year, a more pop-oriented offering of songs recorded in multiple languages - Deeyah speaks five. The album went Top 10 and yielded two Top 10 singles and music videos.
The award-winning music video for the second single from that album made Deeyah the target of conservative Muslims who were outraged that her uncovered back could be seen in the video. This led to harassment, threats against Deeyah and her family, physical assaults, and an attempted abduction at her school.
"I would get very abusive phone calls," she explains. "I would get abused as I walked down the street. I would have people spit at me."
At a concert in Norway, she was attacked on stage by angry Muslim men who thought she was degrading their culture.
By mid-1996, at just 18 years old, Deeyah was disillusioned and fearful and decided to leave the music business and move to London to escape the tension and dangers she faced in Norway and start a new life.

New video - new threats
In 1998, Deeyah’s need to make music had become too strong to ignore. Towards the end of 1999, she signed a deal with Warner Records and went back into the studio in early 2000 - wanting to break her silence and speak out about her struggle against it. But then her producer suddenly died of cancer, and it took another five years before her next album was completed and published.
The music video for the first single from the album reached #1 on The Box, the leading request music video channel in the UK. As was the case when Deeyah’s last album came out, her video led to new threats from conservative Muslims who are angry that Deeyah appears in sexy clothes and dances with a black man. The video has been frequently shown on Indian tv channels.
She has received intimidating phone calls, aggressive emails and verbal threats from Asian youths warning her to "tone down and cover up".
The resulting press coverage since the release of the video has been overwhelming to the point of overshadowing Deeyah’s music. For her safety, and in hopes of shifting the focus off of the news story and back on the music, Brainwash Records has brought Deeyah and her album to the US. 
Deeyah has vowed to defy the threats in her attempts to carve out a pop career.
She says: "It is not going to make me go away. This is such a liberal, multicultural country and I never thought my background could become such an issue to some people. It does scare me but it also angers me and encourages me not to give up, and my parents encourage me. I do not flaunt my religious background, I never sing about it and compared to other pop stars I am not particularly risqué."

Musical background
Immersed in music from the age of seven, Deeyah - or Deepika Thathaal - trained in the rigorous Indian classical vocal tradition for nearly fourteen years. She gave her first televised vocal performance when she was only eight years old. Deeyah has had the rare privilege of being the only female ever taken on as a vocal disciple by Ustad Fateh Ali Khan, who she studied under for six years, and one of the few to be trained by Ustad Sultan Khan, who remains her vocal mentor to this day.

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