"[3] In 2006, Aki Nawaz of the group Fun-Da-Mental released an album with lyrics comparing Osama bin Laden to Che Guevara and depicting the Statue of Liberty as an Abu Ghraib prisoner.
Anthropologist Scott Atran argues that the phenomenon results from a search for "sacred values" and what Edmund Burke called "the sublime"; a "quest for greatness, glory, eternal meaning in an inherently chaotic world".
[6] Amil Khan has cited Douglas McCain as yet another example of this phenomenon, and said that both Islamism and gangsta rap foster a "sense of grievance towards wider society" and "focus on vengeance and fetishize violence as a way of redressing the balance".
Khan argues that what sets ISIL apart from other jihadist groups, and makes it far more dangerous as a result, is its ability to harness hip-hop to "bestow on its struggle a counter-culture sense of subversive 'cool' that mainstream political parties and even commercial brands might envy."
[7] Hisham Aidi has written a book, Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture describing the phenomenon of Islamist hip-hop.