I Was Stabbed By Satan - K'Naan HQ Sound Widescreen

In thinking of spiritual warfare and Satan's protagonist identity, although K'naan is Muslim, the lyrics really echo Cowan's sentiments of the racialization violence of heroes, monsters and demons and how sin comes into play. The Abrahamic traditions are tied together through the early parts of the Old Testament up until where the division occurs about the sacrifice of Abraham's son. Chritianity and Islam both agree that Ismael was a son of Abraham, and that Abraham sent Hagar and Ismael  into the desert, however, both Judaism and Christianity depict Isaac on the sacrificial altar of Abraham, and then a "angel of the Lord", came to stop Abraham just in time as Abraham passes God's test of his faithfulness (Biblegateway.com. Genesis 21:14-21, NKJV). Conversely, in Islam, it is Ismael going through the same scenario, hence the initial crack in the Abrahamic traditions.

So when we look at K'naan as he flips the script in this song, I Was Stabbed by Satan, he associates Satan with the Caucasian colonializer and violence experienced as a Black African man, through the window of this song. K'naan also has transcended into the popular culture forum with the song he wrote that is now famous song, Waving Flag- Young Artists for Haiti, which has had over 15,000,000 hits on Youtube. This song has gone viral and became the flag ship song for donations after the Haitian Earthquake in 2010, in wake of the great devastation. However, one song presents K'naan as a "unlikely" symbol of heroism in writing Waving Flag, but conversely paints him in very different light with his lyrics in, I Was Stabbed By Satan.


Having noted this story of Abraham as an example, it further underscores the dynamics of how spiritual warfare and controversy has divided the people in the fertile crescent (or Cradle of Civilization as it is more commonly described in the Middle East) and this video's appropriation of this religious narrative, to once again commodify spirituality in the contemporary marketplace, but impacts all three faith identities; Judaism, Christianity and Islam's. Colonization no longer needs to have wars for its effects to be experienced, as now it is done by economics. Gender, class, and caste systems contribute to the lingering effects of how global communities are targeted by popular culture, evangelization (i.e. global south, continental Africa and Latin America) by both Christians and Muslims. In looking through the popular culture lens, "the western communities", who continue in their commodifying of these communities through such avenues as mass marketing, product branding and control of music distribution in these respective industries, solidify their position just as much through religious distribution. Yet, ironically enough through global migration and immigration, in and from Canada, society in North America needs flip the script and marginalize the same people that they manipulate into believing that there is a level playing field in places like the music industry. Religion operates very much in the same fashion in that Christians want to infer their values, beliefs and lifestyles on developing nations, but marginalize them at the door step of western countries with racist labelling them as "other" when they emulate all the evangelized Christian indoctrination that considered "right" for them on the outside looking in. 


Popular cultural seems just to be a metaphor that compartmentalizes groups of people according to their culturally defined spaces and fails to meet the expectations of what Christian concepts are idealized to be.
Walt Disney, abortion, and gender stereotypes, help to divide and compartmentalize society. I believe that when a "Christian" community fails to link the core religious issues that popular culture is substituting with these commodified alternative contemporary substitutions, they illustrate that some people need something to cling to when they depart from a strong religious denominational ethos like Christianity.


However, to counteract all of the negative criticisms associated with ethnic marginalization of and in the Christian messages, I want to present a different perspective of a positive Christian media message that ties popular culture environments, theology and contemporary meaning for Christian followers. Not all Christianity is bad, and popular cultures may not always be right in steering the "me" complex to their wider general audiences.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K48-Li7lIfA





Sources: Biblegateway.com. Genesis 21:14-21. New King James Version. 2012. March 25, 2012.http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+21%3A14-21&version=NKJV.