Rock The Casbah - Cultural Impact

Cultural Impact

In 2006, the conservative National Review released their list of the top 50 "Conservative Rock Songs," with "Rock the Casbah" at No. 20, noting its frequent requests during the Iraq War.

In one of the campfire scenes late in the 2007 documentary Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, a Granada friend states that Strummer wept when he heard that the phrase "Rock the Casbah" was written on an American bomb that was to be detonated on Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. Cultural reviewer and political analyst Charlie Pierce commented that "the notion of the Clash as spokesfolk for adventurism in the Middle East might have been enough to bring Joe Strummer back from the dead."

Following the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the song was placed on the list of post-9/11 inappropriate titles distributed by Clear Channel.

In The Simpsons episode "Natural Born Kissers", Bart asks Homer "Did you Rock the Casbah?" in reference to sex. The track also plays over the ending credits of the episode. Earlier in the same episode, while and Homer and Marge are debating whether or not to have sex, Marge says "I suppose we should rock the casbah". In an episode of King of The Hill, Kahn, bored by Hank's speech in a focus group, starts singing the chorus and spinning around in his chair before falling over. The song was also played on the 07/12/2011 during an episode of Come Dine With Me to correlate with the Arabic theme of the evening. In 2011, a book on the Arab Spring was named after this song.