Long-time readers will remember that in an earlier post, I noted that when Freddy Mercury sings “Bismillah” in the Queen anthem Bohemian Rhapsody, he is singing a phrase from the Quran—“In the name of Allah.” This phrase is ubiquitous in Islamic jewelry, art and, of course, religious rhetoric.
As this article recounts, Queen bootlegs were popular for years in Iran, and the government eventually relented and allowed a cassette of Queen’s Greatest Hits to go legit. And how could religious leaders justify this? By providing an explicitly Islamic message to Bohemian Rhapsody. The Iranian cassette includes a pamphlet with liner notes that
tells Queen fans that Bohemian Rhapsody is about a young man who has accidentally killed someone and, like Faust, sold his soul to the devil.On the night before his execution he calls God in Arabic, “Bismillah”, and so regains his soul from Satan.
So you see, it’s a hymn!