Hey, remember that one time when Madonna slapped on some henna and filmed the music video for “Frozen” in 1998? (She also recorded a song in Sanskrit.)
Then remember how in 2004, she decided that she had been inspired by Kaballah and would now like to be renamed Esther? Well Madonna’s Lazy Susan of faith has landed on a new religion: Islam.
The Queen of Pop has been studying Islam. She writes in Harper’s Bazaar:
I am building schools for girls in Islamic countries and studying the Qur’an. I think it is important to study all the holy books. As my friend Yaman always tells me, a good Muslim is a good Jew, and a good Jew is a good Christian, and so forth. I couldn’t agree more. To some people this is a very daring thought.
If this is working for her, then great! But building schools for kids in far-away places hasn’t worked out well for Madonna in the past.
We could make an overwrought aside about how ironic it is that Madonna actually seems to be running away from herself by hiding in other religions rather than embarking on a journey of self-discovery, but, like, why bother?
Moreover, Madonna’s bid at spiritual enlightenment would probably be more persuasive if she was content to conducting such goodwill quietly, rather than leveraging a Harper‘s cover story out of it — to draw attention to her other projects. Like this Secret Project Revolution thing:
But, hey! Maybe when she heard Lady Gaga’s “Burqa”, she panicked. After all, if anyone out there should be appropriating other cultures, it should exclusively be Madonna.
This also seems like a good time to remind all of you that Bollywood playback singer/self-proclaimed Queen of Indian Pop Alisha Chinai’s 1989 album of vintage Madonna covers is available to buy in its entirety off iTunes for less than $8.
Rohin Guha is a contributing editor at The Aerogram. Follow him on Twitter @ohrohin. Find The Aerogram on Twitter @theaerogram.
