The Kominas are four American Muslims with South Asian roots. Their first album 'Wild Nights in Guantanemo Bay' launched them into prominence – and controversy – in 2008 with songs like 'Sharia Law in the USA' and 'Blow Shit Up'.

The Kominas, which means 'scumbag' in Punjabi, are part of a musical movement called 'Taqwacore' – the hip end of the young Islamic rebellion, heavily influenced by punk but with heavy doses of Bollywood, Sufi and Punjabi folk.

"We see ourselves as a sort of vigilante task force," said bassist Basim. "Pop culture's one big amorphous blob, even punk is almost uniformly white. There wasn't anyone making music from our perspective."

Guitarist Shahjehan said: "We didn't fit into whatever our parent's immigrant communities were, or fit in completely in American society. The best compliment we get is from people saying 'I'm glad a band like you exists, you've shown us there's a place for us to fit into'."

Basim and Shahjehan met at the local Madrassa in Boston, but the light bulb moment for both of them came when they came across the book 'The Taqwacores' by the American author Michael Muhammad Knight. The book is about a fictional band, playing music that spans the seemingly unbridgeable gap between Islamic faith (Taqwa) had hardcore punk. "I immediately fell in love with the Taqwacores. We related to the immigrant experience in the book – that a white convert in the US was able to capture the experience of being a South Asian Muslim immigrant was amazing," explained Shahjehan.

Along with other real life bands that sprang from the inspiration of the fictional Taqwacores, like 'Vote Hezbollah' and 'Fedayeen', whose most popular song was the controversial 'I Love Osama bin Laden', the Kominas began playing music that they felt for the first time really reflected their own experiences. "We started to write just for ourselves and for our close friends, then people started to respond to it; we didn't start by trying to represent 'a community," said Shahjehan.

But very quickly Taqwacore music began to gather a community around itself. Shahjehan said: "Four or five years ago it was just a bunch of kids on MySpace. It's feeling like a movement now. It goes beyond punk, it goes beyond music." And Basim continued on the theme: "People have such a visceral relationship with us at our shows, they tend to forget we're a band."

Although the label of 'Islamic Punk' seems to have stuck, the only label the Kominas are really happy with is Taqwacore. Part of their controversy in the US has come from people taking their ironic use of jihadi imagery and provocative lyrics at face value:

"I am an Islamist / I am the Antichrist…Cops chased me out of my mother's womb / My crib was in state pen before age two / The cops had bugged my red toy phone / So I devised a plan for heads to roll" (from the song 'Sharia Law in the USA').

Shahjehan said: "We're not like a Christian rock group. Islam remains a strong part of our identity but we don't have one message, we're certainly not proselytising Islam!"

Although their provocative lyrics have brought them attention, the band emphasise their goal is to build an ongoing debate about cultural mixing, not to be written off as a simple reaction against the war on terror. "People assume it's a reaction to 9/11, but our lives began before 2001," explained Shahjehan.

The Kominas have had to battle incomprehension from fellow Muslims too, never more so than on their tour to Pakistan in 2008. "We wanted to do this experiment to see if we could play punk rock in Pakistan," said Shahjehan. "We had this naïve idea that we'd go and revolutionise the music scene, but it's hard to find a venue without bribing an official, and the power's going every couple of hours. Security's an issue too, our singer was on stage when a bomb went off just outside." In Pakistan the band came up against arguments that the use of musical instruments is forbidden under Islamic law.

Shahjehan continued: "We were told that in Pakistan music with guitars is seen as this elitist Western thing. But punk music is all about breaking down barriers, and when we did this one free punk rock show we had people from the street mixing with these posh people – we proved everybody wrong."

The Kominas hope their two-date appearance in London will work the same sort of magic. Basim said: "The Asian Network's about to close down in the UK. I feel that this is the calm before the storm. I think young South Asians in the UK are more politically engaged than those in the US anyway, we want to connect with people in the UK, there are bands here too that are reacting to this racist idea that the Asian man is really docile."

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