To The Muslim Diaspora - What Do You Have to Gain?
Being more Western than the Westerners will not reward you, it’s a betrayal of what you already had.
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Abandoning Your History & the Sunnah Will NOT Reward You:
This is a long necessary criticism on Western Muslims and the communities they’ve created because what Muslims once had following the lifestyle and traits of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) and the early Caliphates has been largely abandoned in many respects in the Western Muslim communities. Especially and specifically with our mercy to our own, anti-racism, ending oppression, etc.
Muslim diaspora have been so greatly Westernized that many Muslims in the West, reverts, converts and especially born Muslims, feel a bit of angst when told their behavior is unIslamic - however, that’s exactly what it is. Now, this doesn’t apply to all Muslim diaspora, nor all behavior, obviously, but it has become such a massive problem due to how common it is, that it’s tainting how Muslims are suppose to act and weighing down on our own. What’s even more is that it’s specifically more common with Muslim diaspora than it is with converts & reverts. A big criticism in Muslim communities is born Muslims want to be more Western while Western reverts/converts want to be more Islamic. It feels like the born Muslims have this false sense of “FOMO” (fear of missing out) while converts/reverts have tasted the results of Westernization and, mostly, no longer want anything to do with it.
What’s the point of calling yourself a Muslim if you don’t even embody the traits, values or traditions of being one?
How am I, an American Revert, more aware of this than Muslim diaspora who was born Muslim? It is true what we say of “learn your religion, don’t just inherit it.” What we should also say is “Don’t just learn, embody what is the faith.” The damage of Westernization on Muslim communities has left our community confused, misguided, fighting & oppressing our own. I’m not arguing for, nor would any Muslim dare expect, for perfection in practice of Islamic values - but as heavy as belief, prayer, charity, and fasting is - NOTHING is heavier than character.
“Abu Darda reported: The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Nothing is heavier upon the scale of a believer on the Day of Resurrection than his good character. Verily, Allah hates the vulgar and obscene.”
-Source: Sunan al-Tirmidhī 2002
The importance of high ethics and good character in Islam can elevate a person's standing on the Day of Judgment. Belief, prayer, and the other religious obligations are part of that character - but your lack of ethics will not win you favor. Where is my Western Muslims whose hearts bleed at the sight of oppression? Where is my Western Muslims who love humanity and fight to help all in need? Where is my Western Muslims who can’t stand seeing the sick and elderly without aid? Where is my Western Muslims who see the convert/revert on par with their Middle Eastern brothers & sisters because that’s our faith’s understanding of difference? Where is the Western Muslims with the big heart, the desire to understand those of different communities or their struggles, who feel like they must help rather than care for themselves alone? I feel like I found my home in Islam, like I finally found the faith that understands me, but the many Western Muslims I meet, many of them have abandoned their values. Not all, of course, I’ve met many who still uphold to those values, even if imperfect in practice of them, but many Western Muslims act like they want to be Muslim in name or aesthetics only, and abandon the character they was warned against abandoning. No amount of Arabic, halal food, Muslim family or Islamic clothing will protect you from the sins and bad behavior you commit.
This is why I warn against Westernization, because it is a poison that kills humanity, that turns humans into animals. Capitalism will make you sacrifice your heart and humanity for rugged individualism and greed. Individualism will make you sacrifice your community for self-indulgence and ego. Racism will make you nationalistic and war against each other over supremacy. Sexism will make you abuse and use your sisters like she is under you when she is your equal of different abilities. Westernization and the elements of it - capitalism, individualism, liberalism, racism, sexism, etc. - is the single worse contributing factor against the Islamic community both in and outside the West. It is the main grip on the throats of the world, especially the Muslims.
There was no, nor is there still, nor will there ever be, a gain in the Muslims listening to the West or adopting their societal ways. We have the best way to live following our faith, Islamic mercy, Islamic historical examples - we don’t need theirs.
Sadly this poison, this framework of philosophical colonialism, is not contained to just within the West. Like with Western economics and imperial interests, it spread like a cancer to infect other nations and their communities - because it’s not enough to steal a country militarily or economically, you must dominate their behaviors and beliefs. Adopting the old methods of slavery and colonialism, you must re-educate the new society or people under your domination with your interests, your values, your interpretation of their history, and especially their submission to your ways of operating.
-To the Muslim Business Owners:
Many of you are the worse offenders by far - you have adopted the same traits of Western capitalists - being individualistic, unmerciful to the elderly, unmerciful to the homeless and needy, penny pinching and stealing wages, dabbling with riba (credit/interest), selling haram products despite the curse upon you for doing so, oppressing your own and ignoring their concerns. Many of you don’t even pray your 5 daily prayers, fast, give Zakat (charity) or refrain from pork. Where is your iman (faith)? Did you sell it along with your soul? If you think the money will buy you time to be faithful in your old age, you’ve arrogantly ignored your own religion’s warnings.
“An older man came to talk to the Prophet, and the people were hesitant to make room for him. The Prophet said: He is not one of us who does not have mercy on our young and does not respect our elders.”
-Source: Jami-at Tirmidhi, 1919
The Prophet (PBUH) said, "Seven people will be shaded by Allah under His shade on the day when there will be no shade except His. They are: (1) a just ruler; (2) a young man who has been brought up in the worship of Allah, (i.e. worship Allah (Alone) sincerely from his childhood), (3) a man whose heart is attached to the mosque (who offers the five compulsory congregational prayers in the mosque); (4) two persons who love each other only for Allah's sake and they meet and part in Allah's cause only; (5) a man who refuses the call of a charming woman of noble birth for an illegal sexual intercourse with her and says: I am afraid of Allah; (6) a person who practices charity so secretly that his left hand does not know what his right hand has given (i.e. nobody knows how much he has given in charity). (7) a person who remembers Allah in seclusion and his eyes get flooded with tears."
-Source: Sahih al-Bukhari, 1423
“Ibn Rajab al Hambali (may Allah have mercy on him) said: Whoever is mindful of Allah when he is young and strong, Allah will take care of him when he is old and has become weak, and will bless him with good hearing, eyesight, strength and intellect. One of the scholars who lived beyond the age of one hundred years and enjoyed good strength and reasoning jumped up in a lively manner one day, and was asked about that. He said: ‘I kept these physical faculties from sin when i was young, and Allah has preserved them for me now that I am old.’ The opposite also applies. One of the Salaf saw an old man begging from people and said: ‘ This is a weak man who ignored Allah when he was young. So, Allah is ignoring him now that he has grown old.'”
-Source: Jami’ al-ulum wal Hikam
If you have everything you ever wanted, and call yourself Muslim while acting in direct contradiction with the character expected of a Muslim, don’t ignore the Islamic warning, that you was given everything in this life because it’s all you will have.
-To the Muslims Scholars & Imams:
I first want to mention - this does not apply to all, probably not even half, of scholars and imams.
However, there is many who, living in the West, has allowed elements of Westernization into their minds and domains. There is Muslim leaders arguing in favor of Westernization, scared of outright denouncing it. This has manifested in two forms - the (redpill) Muslim who regards himself as true while being as discriminatory, arrogant and ignorant as the European, and the liberal Muslim who favors the West more than traditional Islamic practice. This cowardice and assimilation, which assimilation itself is nothing short of cultural colonialism, is a blatant betrayal stemmed from abandoning old Islamic practices in a post-9/11 world. After 9/11 Muslims across the West acted to “pacify” who they are, to distinguish themselves as different from the extremist and alien ideology of Wahhabism which caused the 9/11 attacks to begin with - and for what? What has our pacification of our beliefs and abandoning of values for Westernization gained us? Besides increased hate and brutality of our own, misguiding our own, abusing our own, etc. We may have got many Westerners to become Muslim, but just as many became Muslim, as many leave Islam because they get attacked within Islamic communities poisoned with Western values and behaviors.
Regular Islam doesn’t lead to attacks like we saw on 9/11, but it also doesn’t act like pacifists and liberals when faced with oppression. 9/11 was a byproduct of Westerners propping up an extremist group in Saudi Arabia and for decades imperializing and colonizing Muslim majority states. 9/11 was a byproduct of extremism that the West itself created, not Islam.
Islam is peace, but it is also justice and self-defense. That is the truth. We stand firm in our values, in our traditions, our mercy, in our practice - and when oppression finds us, we protect ourselves without making excuses for pacification or appeasing oppressors. As much as we should be merciful and forgiving even in times of serious injustice, we should also be firm and stand against oppression when it is clearly unyielding.
This isn’t even touching on the blatant discrimination converts/reverts experience be it over them being converts/reverts, their past or their race. Let alone the actual sexism we see by Muslim leaders who leave Muslim women’s sections of the mosques in disrepair, or the way they talk down about our sisters with the same tone European “traditionalists” do/did. Have you learned nothing of the Prophet’s (PBUH) farewell sermon, or the way he treated his wives? Have you learned nothing of the Sahaba and how they treated their mothers, sisters and wives? You may ignore reality, but the warnings was made clear in Islam to fear the prayers of those you oppress. The tears they shed, they pain you caused them, it will weigh against you on the day of judgement.
“Anas ibn Malik reported: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said, “Beware of the supplication of the oppressed, even if he is an unbeliever, for there is nothing to block it.”
-Source: Musnad Aḥmad 12549
-We Need De-Westernization:
Just like after the fall of Nazi Germany there was De-Nazification, we need De-Westernization. A collective purge of (most) the philosophical, economic and cultural colonialism and enslavement that is Western values, capitalism, traditions, and so on. So long as this methodology that had created the West that we all know today continues to exist, the world can not heal and tap back into its original, ancestral roots of civil, spiritual, philosophical and economic order.
“The West didn’t raise you right, because you don’t matter to the West. They don’t care if you have knowledge, they don’t care if you have an education. They’ll pass you on up to the next grade weather or not you can read or write, because you don’t matter. Every day of your life, your civilization, all around you, is shouting at you in a million different voices that you don’t matter. You’re just a replaceable cog in the machine. Everyone in the West is regarded as disposable by the West - and still you defend it as the pinnacle of human refinement. You need to break that spell because you’re living in a trance. A trance of propaganda that’s all designed to keep you oblivious to your own humiliation.”
-Shahid King Bolsen.
Capitalism Hates Religion:
I’ve mentioned this before and it seems to be continuously proven time and time again. Capitalism, and by extension Westernization as a whole, hate religion unless it capitulates to it. Both the religious communities and Marxists have seen and commented on this fundamental reality. The original laws and values of (especially) the three major religions go directly opposed to the values and greed of capitalism and Westernization. It has only been the extremists, the revisionists of texts, and sell outs of religious communities who dare utter the falsehood of “capitalism can work fine with our religious values.” Look to the West, who do you see who repeats these lies except the, mostly, Evangelicals of the Christians, the Zionists of Judaism, and the Wahhabists & Salafists of the Islamic community. All three major religions argue against individualism, against riba, against intoxicants, against greed, against gambling, against oppression, against imperialism, against all the things that make up the West.
Muslims’ adoption of Westernization and positive appeal to capitalism must end if we wish to see a return to dignity and justice in the Muslim community.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License