MUTAH Beale may not be familiar in mainstream circles, but to the Muslim gangs of western Sydney he is a music star. Better known as Napoleon, the offsider of slain gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur, Beale, 29, is coming to Sydney later this month on a mission to convince notoriously violent gang members to give up their guns.
He is seen as a modern-day Cat Stevens.

Until last year, Napoleon was singing about carrying his Glock pistol and praying to Allah while holding his "loaded 45"; but, like Stevens, he has recently given up music in deference to his Islamic faith and hopes by example to turn others from a life of crime.

"I come from the lifestyle where we was preaching gangsta music and also we was really doing most of that stuff," he tells Inquirer.
"The kids on the street they want to go do it, they end up in jail, or killing someone, or on drugs, something like that."
His visit is part of an effort by a Muslim youth group in Sydney's west to do something about gang violence that earlier this year led to three deaths in a spate of drive-by shootings.

The murders of two men, Bassam Chami and Ibrahim Assad, on a Granville street on March 29 led to the creation of a permanent police squad targeting Middle Eastern crime and a policy of zero tolerance.
"In the community the influence of artists such as Tupac is well known.

"This is all because of listening to Tupac," a middle-aged father said at the scene of another western Sydney murder in April, that of 22-year-old Iraqi Ashor Audisho.
University of Sydney academic Ian Maxwell, who has studied the influence of hip-hop music in Australia, says gangsta rap gives alienated young men an identity and a philosophy that fits neatly with their situation and beliefs.
Maxwell says gangsta rap has links with the American Nation of Islam movement and glorifies a violent life, and deaths such as Tupac's.

"It's a redemption through living violently, this idea that there's a kind of authenticity and truthfulness in living in a violent way," he says.
But former NSW detective and University of Western Sydney academic Michael Kennedy says gangsta rap is a "grossly inadequate explanation" for violence.

" (Violence) is about jobs, it's about housing, it's about public health," he says.
Unemployment among first-generation Lebanese in Sydney is high: 39 per cent of men between 25 and 44 are jobless, a Monash University study found recently.

"When the opportunities to get out of the mess are limited, they turn to crime," Kennedy says. And crime means guns.
"It's just part and parcel of being a good crook. They carry them because other people carry them. They fire them because they're worried other people will fire first or to retaliate," he says.

That is the rationale behind McKay's strategy and why members of his 108-strong squad are out on Saturday nights searching hotted-up cars up and down strips popular with young Middle Eastern men, looking for guns and drugs. And it is likely the men being searched will be wearing chunky gold jewellery and baseball caps, and listening to their American idols, gangsta rappers such as Tupac and Napoleon.

Source: The Australian News

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