There are scholars who interpret the world, scholars who flatter it, and scholars who quietly make it less cruel. John L. Esposito belonged emphatically to the third category. His passing deprives us not merely of a distinguished academic, but of something now far rarer: a genuine public intellectual — one who understood that scholarship is not an ornamental profession but a moral vocation.

Esposito may well have been the last great public intellectual in the field now called Islamophobia studies, although he used the term less frequently than many who later made an industry of it. Long before Islamophobia became a conference theme, a specialized vocabulary, or an academic career track, he was confronting its most consequential forms: the intellectual caricatures that shaped journalism, diplomacy, public opinion, and American foreign policy.

He did not simply describe prejudice against Muslims. He disrupted the machinery that produced it.

His method was deceptively radical: he studied Muslims in order to understand them.

That proposition sounds almost embarrassingly obvious. Yet Esposito entered a field in which influential Western scholars routinely approached Islamic movements as pathologies to be diagnosed, security threats to be contained, or civilizational irritants to be explained away. He refused this intellectual laziness. He treated Islamic revivalism not as a fever passing through irrational societies, but as a complex response to colonialism, authoritarianism, secularization, social dislocation, and the enduring human search for moral order.

An Italian-American Catholic Embraced By Muslims

He engaged figures such as Hasan al-Turabi, Rachid Ghannouchi, Hasan Hanafi, and Khurshid Ahmad when much of the West preferred to demonize them. He did not agree uncritically with everything they believed; serious scholars do not confuse understanding with endorsement. But he recognized that scholar-activists could not be comprehended through intelligence briefings, hostile newspaper profiles, or inherited Orientalist categories. They had to be read, questioned, challenged, and encountered as thinking human beings.

Through books such as Voices of Resurgent Islam and Makers of Contemporary Islam, Esposito introduced Western audiences to a vast intellectual world they had scarcely been told existed. He developed friendships across the Muslim world because he went there not as an anthropologist examining exotic specimens, but as an interlocutor. In societies accustomed to Western experts arriving with prefabricated conclusions, his seriousness felt revolutionary.

His mentor, Ismail al-Faruqi, helped shape this disposition, but Esposito made it unmistakably his own. He became perhaps the first Western scholar of contemporary Islam to be welcomed across Muslim societies with something approaching popular affection. He was not merely respected. In Pakistan, Malaysia, Turkey, and elsewhere, he was embraced.

When he visited Pakistan in 2017 to deliver the inaugural memorial lectures for my father, Dr. Mumtaz Ahmad, the reception was extraordinary. The lectures, co-organized by the US-Pakistan Intercultural Coalition, took him to the Lahore University of Management Sciences, the University of Management and Technology, the National Defence University, and the Institute of Policy Studies. The halls were packed. Audiences stood wherever they could find space. John Esposito, an Italian-American Catholic scholar from Brooklyn, arrived in Pakistan and was received like a rock star.

But the enthusiasm was not celebrity worship. Pakistanis understood what he had done. Here was a Western scholar who had spent decades explaining Islam without condescension, Islamic politics without hysteria, and Muslim grievances without treating Muslims themselves as guilty until proven moderate. They regarded him, quite simply, as the greatest living Western scholar of Islam.

“Uncle John”

For our family, however, he was also Uncle John — or at least the sort of figure who occupies that emotional territory.

Before my father and one of his closest friends, Dr. Mumtaz Ahmad, passed away in 2016, I knew Prof. Esposito primarily through telephone calls. He was hilarious. He would announce, with theatrical exasperation, that he was still waiting for my father’s hopelessly overdue essay for yet another edited volume. This happened repeatedly over the years. My father’s deadlines were elastic; John’s irritation was affectionate; and both men seemed to understand that the ritual would recur indefinitely.

His humor extended to his own career. He liked to say that before 1979 he barely had one and could hardly imagine writing a book. Then came Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution, producing what John jokingly called his first Lexus. Osama bin Laden and September 11, he would add, were responsible for the Mercedes. Behind the joke was a devastating observation: Western interest in Islam expanded most dramatically when Muslims could be represented as a crisis.

Esposito understood this danger earlier than almost anyone. In The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality?, he anticipated the geopolitical temptation that followed the collapse of communism. Great powers, deprived of a grand enemy, rarely accept the inconvenience of peace. Islam was soon drafted into the vacant role. After September 11, Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam challenged both the appropriation of religion by terrorists and the exploitation of terrorism by those eager to indict an entire civilization.

Courageous Scholarship

His scholarship was courageous because it was published when misunderstanding Muslims was professionally safer than understanding them. The American media frequently preferred experts whose authority seemed proportional to their hostility. Esposito, arguably the leading Western authority on Islam, was often less visible in mainstream American discourse than ideologues who possessed neither his fieldwork nor his intellectual range. Apparently, the qualification for explaining Muslims on television was not knowing them too well.

Internationally, matters were different. He advised governments, addressed universities, consulted policymakers, edited encyclopedias, and wrote more than fifty books translated into dozens of languages. Yet the scale of his bibliography can obscure his larger achievement. He built an intellectual infrastructure for seeing Muslims as historical actors rather than permanent suspects.

After my father’s death, my own relationship with Prof. Esposito deepened. His emails were an improbable combination of erudition, outrage, gossip, warmth, and comedy. He was generous with his time and prodigal with his friendship. Together with Professor Tamara Sonn and Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid, he formed part of the intimate circle of intellectual powerhouses I had heard about since childhood — my father’s confidantes, critics, collaborators, and beloved interlocutors.

It was therefore only fitting that Esposito delivered the first Dr. Mumtaz Ahmad Memorial Lectures, and that Tamara Sonn delivered the following year’s lectures. They were not ceremonial selections. They were family.

Activism Beyond Academia

One of my final and most revealing exchanges with Prof. Esposito concerned an international appeal demanding medical transparency and humane treatment for former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan. He was deeply disturbed by the situation. Still, I told him I would understand if he preferred not to sign. Pakistan had awarded him one of its highest civil honors, and he was habitually received there as a state guest. Public dissent could jeopardize relationships cultivated over decades.

He did not deliberate for two seconds.

“Add my name,” he said.

Soon afterward, representatives connected to the Pakistani Embassy approached him with exquisite politeness. They praised him, honored him, and then delicately suggested that he had misunderstood Pakistan and been misinformed. Esposito replied that he understood the situation perfectly well. When he recounted the conversation to me, we laughed.

Tamara Sonn signed as well. Both knew that their standing with Pakistan’s establishment might never be quite the same. They chose principle over prestige — an elementary moral decision that remarkably few intellectuals, Muslim or otherwise, seem capable of making when honorary treatment, official access, and personal convenience are at stake.

This was not an isolated act. Esposito stood by Dr. Sami Al-Arian through years of persecution and confinement, visiting him under house arrest when many respectable people found distance more comfortable. He advocated for him when solidarity carried consequences. Esposito’s bridge-building was never the bloodless dialogue of hotel conferences and polished communiqués. He built bridges toward people whom power had isolated.

That distinction matters. Plenty of people celebrate pluralism when pluralism is fashionable. Esposito defended human dignity when doing so was awkward.

He spoke of dialogue between “Islam and the West” before the phrase became institutional furniture. But he also knew that civilizations do not converse; people do. His genius was to create relationships where abstractions had produced antagonisms. The founding of Georgetown’s Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding was therefore not merely an academic accomplishment. It embodied his central conviction: that knowledge must become encounter, and encounter must become ethical responsibility.

John Esposito perhaps did more to combat Islamophobia than much of the contemporary Islamophobia studies industry because he worked upstream. He challenged the categories, assumptions, and foreign-policy fantasies from which anti-Muslim prejudice drew its authority. He did not merely denounce the fire; he examined the intellectual wiring that kept setting the building ablaze.

His critics occasionally accused him of being too sympathetic to Muslims. It was an inadvertently revealing charge. Sympathy, in their vocabulary, meant refusing to begin with contempt.

Esposito began with curiosity. He proceeded with rigor. He ended, more often than not, with friendship.

That is why the Muslim world mourns him not as a foreign specialist who wrote about Islam, but as a friend who stood with Muslims without romanticizing them, spoke for justice without seeking applause, and crossed boundaries that lesser minds treated as walls.

My father was blessed to call him a beloved friend. I was blessed, after my father’s passing, to discover that friendship for myself. His last lesson to me was also the lesson of his life: honors are pleasant, access is useful, and prestige can open doors — but none of them is worth the price of silence.

John Esposito built bridges in an age that rewarded walls. The finest tribute we can offer him is not simply to praise those bridges, but to possess the courage to cross them.

 

Related:

– Thinking Long-Term: The Legacy of Yahiya Emerick

– Khurshid Ahmad, Pakistani Jamaat Leader And Scholar, Dies Aged 93

The post The Legacy Of Professor John Esposito: The Scholar Who Refused To Turn Islam Into An Enemy appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Discover the beauty and power of tahajjud, the voluntary night prayer. Learn its virtues, rewards, and practical steps to make this intimate act of worship part of your life.

A Special Invitation

What if I were to tell you that there is a special invitation that comes to you every night? It peaks around the corner after twilight, and drops into your lap before the morning sun beams’ brilliance appears. When all others are asleep, it almost unnoticeably slips into the pockets of your soul. As the distractions of the day let you be with the nocturnal darkness, it invites you to find yourself in uninterrupted seclusion with the Highest of High. It welcomes your heart to enjoy a private conversation with your Creator. It is tahajjud, and it tells you to come, come, be with your Lord.

Note: The night is considered the time in between isha and fajr prayer. Qiyam al-layl, “standing at night,” is often used to define the voluntary night prayers offered before sleeping, and tahajjud, “giving up sleep,” are usually the supererogatory nightly prayers prayed before fajr after having slept. For the sake of ease, this article does so too. Both terms, however, are generally applied interchangeably.

Among the Righteous

Tamim al-Dari was one of the sahaba who was well-known for his wholehearted dedication to the night prayer. He would be the first to light up the glimmering oil lamps at the masjid. Our beloved Messenger, may Allah send peace and blessings upon him, would stand in nightly devotion for hours and hours, so much so his feet would swell (Sahih al-Bukhari 4836). Sayyida Zainab once tied a rope hanging in between two pillars in the masjid so she could hold onto it when she got exhausted from standing in prayer at night, though the Prophet, may Allah send peace and blessings on him, advised not to go to such lengths. (Sahih al-Bukhari 1150). Commitment to voluntary prayers in the nighttime was truly a given in the early Muslim community. These moonlit hours were created for both sleep and worship.

“Allah makes the night into the day and the day into the night. Allah hears and sees all things.” (Surat al-Hadid 6; illumination by Nilgün Gedik)

The Prophet said so himself, may Allah send peace and blessings upon him: The best prayer after the obligatory prayer is prayer at night (Sunan an-Nasai 1614). It is the habit of the righteous who came before us. It brings us closer to our Creator, expiates our evil deeds, and prevents us from sinning (Sunan al-Tirmidhi 3549). Night vigil is an opportunity to be elevated in rank, as we know that Allah can raise us to a station of praise when we commit to it (Surat al-Isra, 79).

Through what is referred to as the Hadith of the Heavenly Dispute, we learn that our beloved Prophet, may Allah send peace and blessings upon him, once asked Allah in a dream what the highest angels dispute about. Alongside providing food and speaking gently, praying at night was one of the most virtuous deeds the angels argued about when discussing the expiation of sins (Mishkat al-Masabih 748).

Surat al-Furqan reminds us that the true servants of the Most Compassionate are those who walk on the earth humbly, and when the foolish address them improperly, they only respond with peace. They are those who spend a good portion of the night prostrating themselves and standing before their Lord (63-64). The upright? They are those who sleep only little at night and pray for forgiveness before dawn (Surat al-Dhariyat 17-18).

The knights of the night are among the real muminin. Surat al-Sajdah tells us so. “The only true believers in Our revelation are those who, when it is recited to them, fall into prostration and glorify the praises of their Lord and are not too proud. They abandon their beds, invoking their Lord with hope and fear, and donate from what We have provided for them. No soul can imagine what delights are kept in store for them as a reward for what they used to do” (15-17).

Calligraphy by Emre Sessiz of two Quranic verses: “And you did not throw when you threw but Allah did throw” (8:17), and “And We are closer to him than the jugular vein” (50:16)

What Happens at Night?

It is said that Imam Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafii compared the dua made at the time of tahajjud to an arrow that does not miss its mark. In the last third of the night, Allah comes down to the lowest heaven, asking “Is there anyone to invoke Me, so that I may respond to invocation? Is there anyone to ask Me, so that I may grant him his request? Is there anyone seeking My forgiveness, so that I may forgive him?” (Sahih al-Bukhari 1145).

This means that in this last part of the night, your Creator comes and seeks you out. As the night prayer tends to be more concealed, some argue that it is closer in sincerity. It is kept between the worshipper and Allah, a little secret between you and Him in the stillness of the night. In those moments before you stand to pray at daybreak, you can get as close to Him as you can in this dunya. You are invited to pour your heart out, beg for forgiveness, and ask for anything you so desperately yearn for.

Night prayer brings comfort to the soul. It is a soothing balm of sakina that we need to make it through the day. Men of knowledge such as Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali and Jamaluddin Abdul-Rahman Ibn al-Jawzi have dedicated endless writings to qiyam al-layl, the latter considering the night prayer as the ultimate spiritual weapon of the believer. Leaving sleep is a disciplining trial that is hard on the lower self. The battle with the bed is when tahajjud does its deepest work, even before the prayer begins. Do we want to snooze and snore, or does our heart long for closeness to Allah and choose it over rest and comfort? In addition, recitation in night prayer offers an opportunity to profound contemplation as our daily distractions are put to sleep.

Fireflies in Dark Times

Praying at night was one of the first sunan established. The Prophet, may Allah send peace and blessings upon him, stressed its importance in his first sermon in Madina (Sunan Ibn Majah 3251). Given its context, we can read the practices mentioned in this sermon as key elements to build a close-knit community: spreading peace to promote unity and social cohesion, offering food to those in need, and praying at night. It is a way to strengthen our spiritual wellbeing and resilience, a tool to purify our heart and make our willpower steadfast and our body more powerful. These are key elements to build a foundation on. Imagine the effect we can have on the Ummah, the relief we can bring. Imagine how it can allow us to excel in doing good and bringing our best self to the table.

When our Prophet was distressed in Makkah, Allah addressed him through Surat al-Muzzammil, may Allah send peace and blessings upon him. The Surah’s first verses (1-8) read, “O you wrapped in your clothes! Stand all night in prayer except a little, pray half the night, or a little less, or a little more, and recite the Qur’an properly in a measured way. For We will soon send upon you a weighty revelation. Indeed, worship in the night is more impactful and suitable for recitation. For during the day you are over-occupied with worldly duties. Always remember the Name of your Lord, and devote yourself to Him wholeheartedly.” For our beloved Messenger, may Allah send peace and blessings upon him, to be able to handle this weighty revelation, this heavy task that was looming, he had to prepare himself spiritually. For us to be able to carry our own role in this dunya gracefully, we need to do the same. Tahajjud can help us with that.

A lantern-lit room at night, by Franscisco Fronseca

Rise at Night and Rise in Rank

The broken-hearted, the sinners, the great, those who have tried and those who try, the virtuous, the ones that are lost and those who do well. Tahajjud is a call to us all. Even if you have not been able to fully commit to the five daily prayers consistently, you can try to pray a little at night. Perhaps it will offer you the strength you lack to fulfill the obligatory during the day. A waterfall of other good habits might sprout from it.

The struggle starts the day before. Fill your daylight hours with good deeds, avoid sins to avoid a heavy heart, steer clear of man-sized meals before you go to sleep, recite your evening adhkar, and sleep early with the intention of waking up for tahajjud. Make notes during the day on what to make dua for and turn your place of prayer in a serenely attractive spot. If you are a woman and you would like a circle of support, you can join Rabata’s Tahajjud Threads on WhatsApp. If you need a sturdy wake-up call, you can try the most irritating Fajr alarm ever developed. Remember, when you wake up your spouse and resort to sprinkling water in their face to do so, Allah shows mercy for this most romantic act (Riyad al-Salihin 1183).

Start with a pure intention. As tahajjud is voluntary, there is no fixed set of rakʿat required. It is prayed in sets of two and recommended to start with two short rakʿat (Riyad al-Salihin 1179). The Prophet, may Allah send peace and blessings upon, would pray eight rakʿat in total, four times two. Yet for you to build this habit, begin lightly. You can start by waking up 15 minutes before fajr and sticking to two rakʿat. Depending on the scholarly opinion you follow, you can conclude with the odd witr prayer.

Once you have been able to establish a recurring routine, you can wake up earlier and add more rakʿat. Remember that the actions that Allah loves most are the most constant, even if little (Sahih al-Bukhari 6464). Give yourself time to get used to it and do not despair. Our soul is changed by what we return to. Only steadily our bond of love with the Divine becomes rooted.

You can turn to longer ayat or shorter ones. In your dhikr and dua, focus on forgiveness. Recite out loud and let the meanings of the words seep into your heart. Did you know that the angels come down to listen to your recitation (Sahih Ibn Hibban 779)? If you follow the Shafii madhab, you can read from a mushaf in your sunna prayers and gradually complete a khatma in your night prayers this way.

Allah is calling you. You can be one of those pajama heroes whose limbs drag themselves out of their beds and who illuminate their homes like Tamim al-Dari did. Turn your house into a lighthouse for our people. You do not even have to adorn yourself with your best attire for this extraordinary encounter. Have a look, dig deep into the pockets of your soul. Are you answering the invitation?

Related Posts:

Good Sleep, Good Health, and Tahajjud: Sh. Yaser Birjas

A Tahajjud Journey To Inspire Your Own : A Ramadan Goal That’s Not As Hard As It Seems

The post Tahajjud: A Call to All Pajama Heroes appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

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We met at university in Gaza. Genocide changed the plot of our love story.

Quiet service and a long-term vision for upcoming generations were the hallmarks of a little-known yet important Islamic teacher in the United States who passed away this week. Yahiya Emerick may not be a household name, but it is likely that Muslims growing up in North America will have encountered his books: he left a legacy of Islamic literature for various ages that is hard to match, certainly in the Anglophone world.

Yahiya John Joseph Emerick was born into an Irish-American Baptist family in the American Midwest in 1971. Having picked up a fascination with fantasy literature in his youth, he brought adaptable, creative writing skills and an active imagination into the world of Muslim writing after converting to Islam. That conversion came after some trouble during his teenage years in accepting the concept of the Trinity among Christians. In his first year of university during the late 1980s, he studied the Quran for some six months and, as he said during a rare interview, “couldn’t deny the personal appeal from God to the reader.”

By contrast Emerick was disappointed in the writing quality of many English-language Islamic books during his early years in the faith. “I saw,” he said in the same interview with the UmmahReads blog, “that a lot of Islamic books were written in a very one-dimensional way without much verve or imagination. I wanted to write books that would show people how I saw Islam when I came into it. For me, Islam was a blend of spiritual, emotional, intellectual and practical things all woven together in an artistic tapestry that one could use to decorate their inner and outer world.”

As a history schoolteacher, Emerick began an impromptu fictional series about Ahmad and Layla Deen that formed part of his oeuvre: such fictional stories about and for Muslims were much rarer when he started out than they are now. On the importance of fiction for Muslim children, he explained, “Kids look almost exclusively for inspiration and identity from their peer group. Books are another window into viewing and adopting attitudes and if our kids spend their reading time reading only about non-Muslims and their world, then our Muslim kids will feel that the non-Muslim world is the ‘real’ world…Having some books with Muslim characters allows our kids to see that, in addition to the non-Muslim world, there are places and spaces to be Muslim, also. The two can even mix, and in that mix, Islam can still remain.”

In addition to fiction, Emerick wrote a large number of books explaining Islam for readers of various ages: these included an addition to the famous “Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding” series, which publishes basic explainers for novices and was particularly widespread during the 1990s and 2000s. Several of his books were written to explain the Quran, especially to teenagers. “Muslims take it for granted that, well, a kid from a Muslim family will be and stay Muslim by osmosis and association.” In a secular environment, “Muslims have…to do da’wah to our own children in order to win their loyalty for life. I write books, therefore, to bring Islam to our young people in a way tailored for them. Too many of our ‘scholars’ live in ivory minarets and fail to see the lives of the real people below them.”

On the growing body of Muslim literature in the Anglophone world, he remarked that he would like to see more “teenage, real life experiences.  A lot more literature for the tween set. We need a monthly kids magazine and a separate monthly teen magazine. These have been tried in the past, but always failed, due to a variety of factors. We also need more diverse literature, not just flighty poetry or political books.”

Emerick’s body of work was particularly impressive given that he worked two jobs and largely self-published through his personal press, Amirah Publishing Company. In addition, he was involved in both activism and interfaith initiatives and founded the Islamic Foundation of North America bookstore. His books have covered a large number of topics and genres, and his death to cancer is a loss to the Muslim community.

One of Yahiya Emerick’s many books.

One of his former students, Fawzia Syed, expressed her shock in a social media post. “Brother Yahiya” was her first Islamic Studies teacher, the first convert she had met, and one whose work she still uses as a “starter kit” for young Muslims.

“The depth of my sadness has honestly surprised me,” she wrote. Emerick had been her first Islamic studies teacher and an accessible one. As he worked on his Islam edition for the Complete Idiot’s Guide series during recesses, she recalled, “my friend and I would bother him while he was writing, asking him all kinds of questions. We’d ask him what he was writing about, about Islam, why he became Muslim, and probably every random question curious middle schoolers think of. One of the things I appreciate most is that I was never too intimidated to ask him questions. He was never impatient with answering, nor did he ever make feel any of my questions were silly. He was an authority figure, but I felt like I could ask him anything — either he would answer us or laugh it away.”

Serving upcoming generations for Allah’s sake was a major theme in Emerick’s life, as explained in his final thoughts in the UmmahReads interview: “I believe we, as Muslims, need to transform ourselves to meet this challenge. We must come out of our cocoons, smell the chai and see how we can make Islam relevant for the coming centuries. Future generations will either have an easier time being Muslim or a harder time based on our groundwork today. That’s a big responsibility and it is what Allah (swt) requires of us. Strive together in His cause, the Qur’an tells us, and we will be compensated with satisfaction and Allah’s good pleasure. Truly that is what seekers should work to achieve!  Ameen.”

Emerick’s student, Syed, recalled that he had gifted her three of his books as his former student. After his signature at the end, he wrote, “Thinking long term.”

Innalillahi wa inna ilayhi rajioun. May Allah accept his service.

The post Thinking Long-Term: The Legacy of Yahiya Emerick appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

An Inconvenient American in Syria: The Curious Case of Bilal Abdul-Kareem

Ibrahim Moiz

13 July 2026

Bilal Abdul Kareem has spent over a decade reporting in Syria.

That Syria would be shed of fifty years of grasping control by a dictator’s family was unthinkable ten years ago, when the war that would eventually see the ouster of the Assad dynasty was at its peak. In 2016 Syria was fought over by a bewildering kaleidoscope of actors: a crippled regime had invited in militias backed by Iran, mercenaries backed by Russia, and the militaries of both countries; a violent Daesh emirate had sprawled over the Iraqi border to take over much of the east; an American invasion had backed a largely Kurdish front against Daesh; and pitted against all these camps were a largely Islamist collection of rebels backed by either Qaeda or by a Turkish military that, in opposition to its American-backed Kurdish insurgents, had also surged into Syria.

Today the situation is transformed. Tens of thousands of Syrians have returned home under a government more benign than any predecessor in over a half-century. Daesh, always more an Iraqi than Syrian phenomenon, seems out for the count. Most foreign militaries have left, though Israel, that most bloodthirsty of regional spoilers, has continued brazen incursions beyond its occupation of the Golan Heights, hoping to break off the Druze minority in the south. Russia, preoccupied in Ukraine and Mali, has accepted its defeat; Iran, reluctant to admit a betrayal by the Assad family that would expose the wastage of its Syrian incursion, is now preoccupied in a war against the relentless aggression of both Israel and the United States.

The latest foreign military to leave Syria is that of the United States, who discarded years of support for Kurdish militants in northeast Syria to the satisfaction of Turkiye, given that many of these American-backed “Syrian Kurds” were in fact Turkish rebels. There has been a remarkable rapport between Ankara and the new Syrian regime led by Ahmad Sharaa, who was, ten years ago at the war’s peak, still part of Qaeda. Having discarded that link in summer 2016, Sharaa has worked closely with Turkiye to the discontent, ironically, of otherwise bitter enemies Iran and Israel, but to the evident satisfaction of Washington. Against more belligerent colleagues who follow the party line of former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett that Turkiye and Syria are now Israel’s major threats, American envoy Tom Barrack has worked out an arrangement where the United States cooperates in “counterterrorism” with Syria, purportedly against Daesh. The Americans who, ten years ago, were bombing and arming militants through northern Syria to fight against Sharaa have now embraced him as a counterterrorism partner.

An American Outlier

Yet one American who has not fared so well is Bilal Abdul-Kareem, an African-American journalist whose presence in Syria has largely conveniently been forgotten but who was, at the peak of the war, the boldest and most recognizable foreign reporter in the country and chose to live, marry, and settle there. Abdul-Kareem’s name brings to mind the Syrian war’s crescendo in 2016, when the battle for the major city of Aleppo was winding to a bloody conclusion in a campaign where tens of thousands were killed. In those days, English-speaking foreigners such as this writer could access Abdul-Kareem’s reports from the heart of eastern Aleppo, amid shattered buildings and choking rubble.

Journalists are often divided on to what extent they can become advocates for their subject. In Abdul-Kareem’s mind, certainly, there appears to have been no doubt on the matter; his reportage went hand in hand with advocacy, and his sympathy was squarely with the Syrian revolt against the Assad dynasty, and especially with the Islamic element that he believed was its conscience and underlying ethos.

Today some supporters of the new Syrian state, particularly those keen to dispel ideas of its being an extremist group, are uncomfortable with this Islam-centred viewpoint, believing that it would play into the hands of the 2010s revolt’s many enemies who frequently lumped in Daesh, which actually did very little fighting against Bashar Assad, with the revolt at large. Many critics of this type hail from the more socially liberal advocacy of the 2010s revolt, often based in Washington and sensitive to any charges of the “religious radicalism” that has been such a convenient enemy of the American elite, and much of the Western elite for that matter, in the twenty-first century. Added to this is the fear, often shared by some Syrian Muslims over the past century, that the emphasis on Islam might play into the hands of foreign powers who want to wedge off minorities against a long-suppressed Sunni Muslim majority.

The fact, however, is that it was precisely Sunni Islamist groups that held out in the Syrian battlefields and eventually managed to unseat Assad. There is no more glaring example than Sharaa himself, who had a bounty on his head for years by the same Washington that now welcomes him.

During the 2010s, many “liberal” advocates of the Syrian revolt in Washington would point out Sharaa as an example of a “bad actor” that might benefit if the United States did not support the revolt. As it happened, when the United States invaded Syria in September 2014 Sharaa and his group were second only to Daesh in their list of targets.

As it also happened, the United States has ended up reconciling with Sharaa, who is now cheerled by the same circles that once vilified him. If nothing else, Abdul-Kareem is more consistent in his views than his critics: today it is easy to dismiss him as a foreigner out of touch with Syrians, yet during the war he had far closer links and more interaction with the 2010s Syrian militant groups, and indeed much of civil society, that defeated Assad than do most of his critics today.

Aleppan Alamo

Once more 2016 Aleppo is instructive: at this peak of the war, when not only the United States was pointedly distancing itself from the actual revolt in favour of misleadingly misnamed Kurdish “rebels” that only ever fought the rebels’ Turkish backer, Abdul-Kareem was reporting from the beleaguered city. During that battle, Sharaa’s field commander leading a daring counterattack against the Russian army, Usama Nammoura (known variously as Abu Hajar and Abu Omar), was killed not by the Russians but by an American airstrike. In the heat of the multifaceted Syrian war, a Washington establishment that publicly criticized Russian brutality was quite happy to pick off commanders who actually led the fight against Russia. Although Sharaa had severed his ties with Qaeda shortly before Nammoura’s assassination, at that stage the United States was clearly not satisfied.

During this final desperate stage of the Aleppo campaign, Abdul-Kareem interviewed a prominent field commander, Abdul-Muin Ashidda (also known as Abul-Abed), who had recently left the Ahrarul-Sham group that was then the largest among Syria’s militant groups. As bluntly outspoken as his interviewer, Ashidda railed out at the rebels’ lack of coordination and especially at Turkiye, whose army had recently entered Syria but had, to his annoyance, failed to relieve Aleppo.

This was, it should be noted in fairness, a shortsighted view: it was then far beyond an extremely preoccupied Turkiye’s capacity to save Aleppo, and in fact later Ankara’s diplomacy and military would crucially and repeatedly shield the rebels against Russia. In short, contrary to Ashidda’s critique, the Turks helped when and where they could. Nonetheless these complaints, which Abdul-Kareem faithfully recorded and might have shared, spoke to frustrations among rebels then under severe fire in their biggest stronghold, which collapsed after a climactic months-long campaign in December 2016. Moreover, Ashidda’s call for independence from foreign reliance struck a chord.

Days later, in the early weeks of 2017, Sharaa announced a new group called Tahrirul-Sham, pointedly claiming to be independent of any foreign tutelage. It was built around his existing Nusra Front, and very quickly other rebels, including those from larger groups like Ahrarul-Sham, flocked to join what initially appeared to be a broad coalition: Ashidda himself was an early recruit. In fact, Sharaa and his inner circle maintained the key levers of power within the group, and used their newfound popularity to strike out at their former cohort-turned-competitor, Ahrarul-Sham, from whom they took much of Idlib in summer 2017. Ahrarul-Sham largely refused to fight their brethren, and Sharaa’s unilateralism shocked recent confederates, many of whom broke away.It  should be noted that Abdul-Kareem’s early coverage of Tahrirul-Sham was largely positive; he optimistically hailed the provincial government Sharaa subsequently set up in Idlib as Syria’s first elected government in years.

Sharaa proved a wily operator, first establishing his supremacy among rebels, including Ahrarul-Sham, then mending his fences with a Turkiye that sturdily shielded Idlib against Russian takeover, while sidelining and eliminating Qaeda loyalists who resented his defection from the group. As the years passed, both Abdul-Kareem and Ashidda soured on Sharaa: their problem was less ideology than the nature of governance and more specifically security, which was often secretive and arbitrary. Though Islamic courts and mediators aplenty existed, Sharaa had brazenly disregarded them in seizing Idlib from his former comrades in 2017; with the same cavalier attitude, his administration in Idlib occasionally seized and imprisoned people well beyond any rationale of emergency measures. At various stages both Abdul-Kareem and Ashidda, whose 2016 tirade had helped trigger the momentum behind Sharaa’s supremacy, were jailed and mistreated in ways that could not conceivably be justified under any implementation of Islamic law.

It is unclear how much of this can be attributed to Sharaa: what is clear is that his security forces behaved with wide latitude and little censure. The stirring changes in Syria since Sharaa’s takeover have yet to include security transparency. Though there is no remote comparison with the decades-long, industrial-scale abuses of the preceding regime under the Assad family, which included the summary torture and executions of tens of thousands of Syrians in a practical police state, it is clear that the “revolutionary” Syrian government has a long way to go to match rhetoric with reality in this specific and very important regard.

Abdul-Muin Ashidda, like Bilal Abdul-Kareem, initially supported but then criticized and fell afoul of Ahmad Sharaa.

None of this is an automatic endorsement of the personal views of Abdul-Kareem. It should be noted, however, that despite policy criticisms he has consistently expressed goodwill toward the new Syrian state and, especially, the largely Islamist fighters who led it to power. Abdul-Kareem’s criticisms were largely focused at overreach by the security forces and what he views as unedifying diplomacy with Donald Trump’s United States. In a social media video last winter, he publicly stated: “We simply cannot legitimise the presence of the enemy, and I said America is the enemy of the Syrian people.”  As a disenfranchised American citizen himself, who has survived airstrikes by his own country’s government, Abdul-Kareem perhaps has more reason for hostility than most, but this suspicion toward the United States is by no means unique in Syria.

One episode that might have landed Abdul-Kareem in particular trouble was his interview with Hani Sibai, a London-based ideologue who has never forgiven Sharaa for having abandoned Qaeda. Though there is no indication that Abdul-Kareem shares Sibai’s affinity for Qaeda, he certainly did oppose Syrian contact with the United States. To the Syrian regime, the danger of such an interview lay in the influence that such a figure might have over the Islamists, both Syrian and otherwise, that make up a large proportion of its army. It was perhaps this that precipitated Abdul-Kareem’s arrest: he had prefaced his public criticism of Sharaa with the words, “I’m not going to sugarcoat this, and it probably is going to get me in trouble”, and certainly that much was true.

The irony is that weeks after Abdul-Kareem’s arrest, Syria and the United States struck a deal wherby the American army did withdraw from the Syrian northeast and abandon its local vassals, who soon gave way. This might have satisfied Abdul-Kareem had he been at liberty to witness it, but there was a price to pay: American airstrikes have continued in Syria as before, principally focused on alleged Daesh holdouts though in at least one notable case a victim was found to not have been involved with Daesh at all.

Ahmad Sharaa’s diplomacy with Donald Trump has so far blunted Israeli aggression but raises longer-term risks for Syrian security with regards to the United States.

Good Cops, Bad Cops, Arrests and America

For a Pakistani citizen such as myself, the American role in Syria raises similarities with the Pakistan of my own youth, during the military regime of Pervez Musharraf. The comparison between military dictator Musharraf and Islamist commander Sharaa might not be obvious, particularly given that Islamists at large widely detest the former and have embraced the latter. But there are eerie parallels: it is often forgotten that, much as Sharaa earned credentials fighting a “jihad”, Musharraf benefited from the reputation he had garnered from having fought India and supporting Kashmiri “mujahideen” earlier in his career. When Musharraf took over Pakistan in 1999, he was originally welcomed by many Islamist circles and frozen out by the United States.

The tables turned in 2001, when Musharraf supported the American invasion of Afghanistan and provided counterterrorism coordination with the United States. Much like Sharaa’s vaunted diplomacy today, the Pakistani dictator fell in line with a regional pattern where other countries, from Kyrgyzstan to Uzbekistan to even Iran, backed the American war in Afghanistan: Pakistan simply hopped on the bandwagon, with certain crucial limits, in the ignobly opportunistic spirit of “If you can’t beat them, join them”. Similarly today Syrian diplomacy with the United States is simply joining a regional bandwagon where other governments, from Lebanon to Jordan and Egypt, have already acquiesced, indeed to a much greater extent, American militarism in the Middle East. As Pakistan’s history with Islamist militants was seen as a valuable asset for intelligence in Washington in 2001, so too is Sharaa’s history with various militants today.

Another similarity lies in the fact that diplomacy with the United States was seen, in 2000s Pakistan and 2020s Syria, as preferable to pressure by a nastier neighbour: in Pakistan’s case this was India and in Syria’s case it is Israel. India had not only lobbied for the American war on Afghanistan but also for its expansion into Pakistan, and the winter of 2001-02 exploited a murky militant attack on its parliament to amass half a million soldiers on the Pakistani border. It was this threat, and the fear of an Indian-American coalition, that pushed Pakistanis to accept acquiescence with Washington as a supposed alternative: the logic ran that if Musharraf embraced American leader George Bush, it would prevent Bush from embracing India. In retrospect, however, this apparent compromise only enabled a Washington that only drew closer to India to infringe on Pakistan in other, more indirect ways: the United States proved simply the “good cop” to India’s “bad cop”, and the airstrikes it began in northern Pakistan with increasing unilateralism set off a civil war in Waziristan that has since spread and has yet to abate to the current day.

Switch India for Israel a quarter-century later and Syria is in an analogous position. Proponents of Syrian rapprochement with Trump often cite a very real Israeli threat: Tel Aviv has made no secret of its hostility toward Damascus and, much like New Delhi with Pakistan a quarter-century ago, is lobbying the United States to let it expand its war into Syria. In flattering Trump, Syria hopes to stave off this immediate threat. Yet this bonhomie comes at a real price of facilitating American airstrikes in Syria, and as Musharraf found out to Pakistan’s detriment this is a slippery slope that could lead to longer-term repercussions. In short, there is no guarantee that the United States will not return to its “good cop-bad cop” routine, particularly given the Washington establishment’s long, stubbornly symbiotic relationship with Syria.

Of course, the parallels are not exact. Pakistan was a nuclear-armed state; Syria today is a weak, recovering country still under partial occupation. Conversely, the international climate in 2001 was almost uniformly conducive to unilateral American aggression; today, there is far more dissent against a declining United States. Pakistan was more or less regionally isolated in 2001; Syria is today supported by a major regional power in Ankara. Perhaps this is why Damascus feels it has more to gain and less to lose from diplomacy with a pointedly unreliable Trump: that remains to be seen.

The question of Syria’s relations with the United States, their context and dangers, pose a very real debate. Unfortunately, there is scant debate to be had on one hand with the likes of Sibai, whom Abdul-Kareem was perhaps unwise to give airtime, but also when Syrian security can so quickly abandon its promises of justice and jail a longstanding sympathizer without pretext. Again writing as a Pakistani who witnessed the impact of American-backed autocracy during Musharraf’s regime, this is an unhealthy sign and Sharaa’s government would be well-advised to at least provide some clarity as to the rationale of Abdul-Kareem’s arrest, if not release him outright. Given that even members of the former regime, with its numerous well-documented crimes, are set to receive a public day in court, there is no conceivable reason to imprison a well-wisher of the Syrian people and state without explanation.

Conclusion

Syria has some impressive achievements in the year and a half that Bashar Assad fell. Sharaa has done a fair job of building a governing coalition, and withstood severe pressure by an Israel that lost no time in vilifying and attacking southern Syria. The new regime has also faced genuine, serious emergencies: its first year alone saw Israeli bombardment and support for Druze separatists, the American-backed Kurdish militia in the east, and remnants of the former regime in the west.

Despite this, most of Syria is at least for the moment more secure, and by all accounts most of its population better-placed than under the tyranny that fell in 2024. A rebuilding Syrian state has reached out to numerous actors across geopolitical camps, staved off numerous challenges that were supported by hostile neighbours, and negotiated conditional withdrawals, including by the American military without joining the pro-Israel camp that so many other Arab states have under far less duress.

But injustices can multiple quickly if left to fester, and that can have a deteriorating effect on other aspects of governance and life. A Syria that cannot afford such deterioration can redress the issue by extending the justice and transparency it has long promised to its inconveniently outspoken prisoner Bilal Abdul-Kareem.

[Disclaimer: this article reflects the views of the author, and not necessarily those of MuslimMatters; a non-profit organization that welcomes editorials with diverse political perspectives.]

The post An Inconvenient American in Syria: The Curious Case of Bilal Abdul-Kareem appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Five years after the ultra-conservative Islamists retook Afghanistan, students describe male pupils being beaten for minor rule breaches and inexperienced teachers struggling to deliver lessons

Before he leaves for Kabul University each morning, Hashmat* checks his face for the beard he has been ordered to grow. Male students are required to grow their facial hair and wear traditional Afghan clothes and those who fall short are punished. Hashmat says he recently saw a classmate beaten for wearing trousers.

“They look at you before they listen to you. If your appearance is wrong, you are already in trouble before the class begins,” he says.

Continue reading...

The caravan enjoys a brief sanctuary in Mazar, where Darius reflects on turning sixteen and watches Weili form an unexpected new friendship.

Read Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16  | Part 17 | Part 18

Please note that I moved the ending of the previous chapter to this chapter, and made a few small changes.

* * *

An Incredibly Decent Man

Most nights, once the caravan was secured for the night, I found Weili, and we sat and talked. But sometimes she could not be found. She had her moods, and some nights a kind of darkness would come over her, when all she could see was what she had lost, and what she didn’t have. On such nights she wanted to be alone. She’d sleep in one of the cargo wagons, or even lay her bedroll in the trees far from camp. I’d told her that the latter was unsafe, but she persisted.

On such nights I might find Ahmed’s campfire. There was always a circle of brothers sitting with him as he talked about the meaning of a Quranic surah, or told the life story of one of the sahabah. The number of his followers had grown steadily, and some nights there were fifty men sitting around his fire. Many of the guards were Hui Muslims from non-practicing families, with little knowledge of Islam, who had never attended any Islamic services beyond Eid prayers or the occasional janazah when a relative died. Now, however, many were praying regularly, and memorizing the Quran with Ahmed.

It wasn’t just his knowledge, or the stories he told. Ahmed was a fortyish, compact man of medium height who carried himself with a quiet dignity. I was an observer of people, and I’d seen many things. When a man was overcome with depression at being so far from his family, and sat alone in the darkness, feeling as if no one in the world cared, Ahmed would show up to sit with him and put a hand on his shoulder. When a mule was overloaded and struggling, Ahmed would whisper a word to Sergeant Karim, who would redistribute the load.

Once, when we passed through a town near Samarkand, I followed Ahmed from a distance as he rode off alone. He went to the local market and spent what must have been a month’s salary to buy dozens of pairs of shoes, which he distributed to barefoot children who had likely never owned such a thing. Their smiles and squeals of delight touched me, and I almost cried. Ahmed never told anyone in the caravan about that or his other acts of charity, and I never mentioned it either. But people knew what an incredibly decent man he was, and they loved him.

Other nights I might find Longwei, who had his own group of fans who enjoyed his raucous tall tales.

Yet other nights I practiced Five Animals, and that drew a crowd of its own. I ran through my empty hand forms, then spear and finally the dao. Many of my watchers had never seen a classically trained martial artist, and even if they had, likely not one of my caliber. That sounds vain, but it’s true. People gasped and applauded. Occasionally some shouted derisive comments:

“You’re very good at massacring imaginary opponents, Bridge Killer!”

“I think you missed the jinn on your right, farm boy!”

Yet I knew that behind their derision was envy, for they had seen how I fought. Sergeant Karim sometimes paid bonuses to guards who fought especially well in defense of the caravan, and three times I had received such bonuses. So no matter the comments, I walked away from my practice sessions with my head high – maybe too high.

Orange Bellbird

One night, however, I was tired. My horse Belly had been giving me a hard time all day, balking at bridges, shying away from odd-shaped sticks or stones, and at times simply stopping for no discernible reason. Weili could not be found, I was not in the mood for Longwei’s travel tales, and while I always enjoyed Ahmed’s lectures, on that night I wasn’t in the mood. So I made camp, read my medical textbook for a while, then doused the fire and prepared to sleep.

I had just closed my eyes when a voice I knew well said, “Have you considered my poem?”

I opened my eyes and looked up at Longwei’s tall, powerful form standing over me, his pot belly bulging over his belt.

“Which one?”

He regarded me solemnly. “Never mind the poem. In the forests of Southeast Asia there is a bird called an orange bellbird. It’s small, but sings more beautifully than any lute or harp. When you hear it, you are reminded of Allah’s angels. You feel that the world is beautiful, and that everything is possible. Yet if you catch it and cage it, you will be disappointed, for it will sit silently, and will soon die. You can never own an orange bellbird. You can only appreciate it from a distance.”

I made a helpless gesture. “Are we talking about flowers or birds?”

Longwei pursed his lips. “Neither.” He walked away, and I fell asleep and dreamed that I fell into a hole and found myself in a cave, and when I emerged I was on the other side of a mountain range from the caravan, and could not find my way back.

Safe Harbor

For two weeks we passed through unrelenting mountains. We traveled roads that hugged the sides of cliffs, where a single wrong step would send a man to his death. Strangely, my horse Belly, who was normally so willful and independent minded, took every step carefully, and obeyed my every command.

We crossed mountain passes where we layered our clothing and put blankets on the animals. We shivered through the nights, even with fires burning. Anyone who was not on guard duty slept inside the covered wagons, crammed in among the goods we transported.

One particularly cold night I found a group of guards huddled around a blazing fire, listening to Memdooh. He was a young man in his early twenties, thin with a scraggly beard. A decent fighter, but not spectacular. He engaged in a unique art form in which he created poetry that he made up on the fly. It was always boastful and sometimes funny. Sometimes I found him annoying, but one night I was passing his campfire, and the applause from the watchers drew me in, so I paused to listen. It was a long, arrogant rhyme about his fighting ability, which I did not care for. But one stanza made me smile:

I ride from a northern land
curved sword in my hand.
I’m young but I’m hard
for I’m a caravan guard!

I remembered those lines. Later I turned them into a little song that I would sing to myself as I rode.

A few days later we crossed a pass and in the distance saw a wide valley filled with green orchards and blue streams. Far in the distance was a city. My heart soared to see it, and my grin nearly split my face.

Sergeant Karim called everyone together.

“This region,” he announced, “is part of the Khanate of Bukhara, but the city you see ahead is a Tajik city called Mazar, and it is a safe harbor for Five Stars. We have a relationship with them. We bring them goods from other lands, we buy their glassware and woodworks, and they host us. They are friends.

“Tomorrow is Yawm Arafah. I know many of you will be fasting. We will roll on tonight until we reach the walls of Mazar, and there we will camp. Though you may be fasting, there is a lot of work to be done. We will remain in Mazar for the three days of Eid ul-Adha, and you will have the time off to relax and enjoy as the merchants conduct their trade.”

A loud cheer went up at this.

“After Mazar,” Karim continued, “we will enter Afghanistan. It is a wild, lawless land, and you will have to be on guard. I will need you at your best. After Afghanistan, we will be in Persia.”

Again the audience applauded.

“Back to your stations,” Karim concluded. “Mazar awaits. Oh, and by the way -” He looked around for Weili. “Mazar always has a huge archery competition on Eid.”

We traveled all night long, and shortly before dawn pitched camp a short distance outside the walls of Mazar. We prayed Fajr, and then nearly all of us – with the exception of a handful of guards – slept the sleep of the dead.

Yawm Arafah

The following day proved that a stationary caravan was no idle caravan. If anything, there was more work than usual. Nearly all the Hui guards were fasting, largely due to Ahmed’s influence.

Wagons that had groaned and rattled over thousands of miles were finally inspected properly. Wheels were removed, axles cleaned and greased, loose iron bands hammered back into place, cracked planks replaced, ropes re-tied, canvas repaired, and inventories checked against the merchants’ ledgers.

The horses required even more attention. Their hooves were cleaned and trimmed. Shoes were replaced where necessary. Harnesses were mended, saddles repaired, manes combed free of burrs and tangled hair. A few animals had rubbed sores beneath their tack, requiring medicine and several days’ rest. Others were bathed in the nearby river until their coats shone once again.

We did all this while fasting. There we were, in sight of the walls of a safe and friendly city, and we spent the entire day working on empty stomachs. By the end of the day my stomach ached with a deep hunger of a kind that I had not felt since I was a child living alone on the farm while my father was in prison. But I knew that it was ‘ibadah, and that the hunger was its own kind of barakah. I wasn’t hungry because I’d been abandoned and forgotten, but because I had chosen to make a sacrifice in service to Allah. That made all the difference.

As a result, neither I nor anyone else complained about the work. We were too immersed in the spiritual state of the fast, and the introspective thoughts that came with such a state.

As the sun dipped below the horizon that day, Ahmed called us together. A large group of townspeople had come out to greet us, bringing with them dates, roasted mutton, fresh bread and yogurt. We broke our fast with them, and I felt content. Only then did I understand Sergeant Karim’s strategy. He had also somehow managed to have an entire caravan repaired from axle to harness without anyone complaining very much. I suspected he had planned it that way from the beginning.

As we ate, Weili peppered the townspeople with questions about tomorrow’s archery competition. All these peoples of Central Asia spoke some variation of Turkic – so Longwei said – and many of us guards had picked up the common words. So some level of communication was possible.

Every time Weili asked about the competition, however, the locals slid their eyes over her recurve bow, smiled, and shook their heads. Weili gave me a puzzled glance, and I shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe they don’t let women compete?” I offered.

“I don’t think that’s it. It’s my bow they’re looking at, not me.”

Salat Al-Eid

The following morning, before sunrise, the town came alive.

Streams of people flowed toward the great field where Salat Al-Eid would be held. This field was in fact outside the city walls, and within a long arrow shot of our caravan.

Families walked together carrying prayer rugs beneath their arms. Children skipped ahead in new clothes, scarcely able to contain their excitement. Old men embraced one another before the prayer had even begun.

I had never seen so many Muslims gathered in one place.

Nor had I ever seen such beautiful clothing.

The men wore embroidered robes in deep blues, emerald greens and rich crimson, with woven belts and elaborately wrapped turbans. The women seemed to have gathered every color Allah had placed in the world. Flowing dresses shimmered with intricate embroidery, and silver jewelry caught the morning sun.

The people themselves seemed remarkably handsome.

I found myself wondering whether the mountain air or the clear water somehow made them that way.

“Don’t stare at the women,” Ahmed murmured beside me.

“I wasn’t,” I said indignantly.

“You were.”

“I was observing the people.”

I noticed a boy no older than twelve weaving quietly through the crowd. His eyes never lifted higher than the waists of the worshippers around him. I watched him slip two fingers toward the purse hanging from an elderly man’s belt.

I reached out and caught his wrist. He froze.

I looked him in the eye. “Not today, kid.”

His face turned crimson. After a moment he nodded sheepishly, and I released him. Without another word he disappeared into the crowd.

The prayer itself was unlike anything I had experienced before. Row after row stretched across the field until they seemed almost to merge with the horizon. Ahmed stood somewhere among the worshippers, yet from where I stood I could no longer pick him out.

The imam delivered the khutbah in the local language. I understood very little beyond the occasional Arabic verse from the Qur’an. It was something about the Muhajireen and the Ansar. Something about the generosity of the Ansar? I wasn’t sure. I wondered if it might be about us, the caravan. Were we the Muhajireen, and the locals the Ansar?

Thousands of voices answered the takbirs together. Thousands made ruku’ and sajdah. I was reminded that I belonged to an ummah larger than any city or nation.

After the prayer workers immediately began setting up in the same field for the archery competition. Meanwhile, people embraced one another. Children compared sweets and toys. Merchants hurried to construct and open stalls that offered grilled meat, fresh bread and sweet pastries drifted through the air.

I purchased two skewers of roasted lamb wrapped in warm flatbread, along with a small paper cone of honey-coated almonds. I thought about the last Eid I had spent with my uncle, aunt and cousin, and something suddenly occurred to me. Excited, I went looking for Weili.

A Realization

I eventually found her sitting alone beneath a broad tree at the edge of the field, watching families celebrate in the distance.

“There you are,” I said, dropping down beside her. She and I had grown very close by this point. We spent a lot of our free time together, though always in public. Our relationship was not physical, but I found myself dreaming about her occasionally. Even though Kuangren’s wedding had been a fiasco held at swordpoint, I thought about it a lot. Kuangren’s bride was no older than Weili. Yet whenever I considered the prospect of marrying Weili, my mouth became dry, and sweat broke out on my forehead. I knew that Weili liked me, but beyond that I was not sure of anything.

She smiled.

“Enjoying yourself?”

“I just realized something.” I could not keep the grin from my face.

“What?”

“I’m sixteen.”

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I turned sixteen. A few months back, actually. It hadn’t occurred to me until today.”

“Oh.” She looked at me for a long moment. “Are you serious? You’re only sixteen?”

I laughed. “What do you mean, only sixteen? Yes, I am sixteen! I feel like I’m saying the word sixteen a lot.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

She tilted her head.

“I thought you were older.”

“What do you mean? Why?”

“You carry yourself like someone older. You take your duties seriously, you’re literate, you study. And your fighting ability…” She trailed off, still looking faintly puzzled. “I just assumed.”

I laughed. “Well, now you know.”

She smiled politely, but there was something thoughtful behind her eyes that I couldn’t quite read.

“You know that I’m nineteen, right?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I know that.”

She lapsed into silence. I noticed she wasn’t watching the festivities at all. Her gaze remained fixed somewhere beyond the crowds.

“Why are you sitting here by yourself anyway?”

She was quiet for a while before answering.

“Eid always makes me think about my parents.”

“I’m sorry.”

She nodded absently. “It’s alright.”

Another silence settled between us.

Then, almost as though speaking to herself rather than to me, she added, “You’re too young to really understand.”

I frowned. It struck me as a bizarre thing to say. I had outlived both of my parents. I had seen men die, and had killed them myself. I supported myself and worked hard. What did age have to do with anything? Yes, she was three years older than me, but three years was nothing.

These words rose to my lips, but I swallowed them.

Instead I simply sat beside her beneath the tree while the laughter and scents of the festival drifted toward us on the warm afternoon breeze.

Tournament Rules

Within a few hours, the field had been transformed. Banners hung from rooftops and fences. People continued to arrive. Families rode in on carts and horseback. Musicians played, and there was hardly a space to stand. Apparently competitors traveled from throughout the region to participate in the archery competition, and the winner received not only a substantial prize but considerable prestige.

Even Kuangren came along to the competition, accompanied by his wife Gulnur, which I thought was a singularly strange name, though in light of her beauty, who really cared? Kuangren walked with a cane, and leaned on Gulnur for support.

He hadn’t been the same since the lashing. He walked bent over like an old man, and didn’t like for anyone to touch him. He still had not been able to resume his duties. Yet Sergeant Karim continued to pay Kuangren’s salary, and to give him and his wife a wagon of their own. I wasn’t sure I would ever understand Karim.

When I’d first beheld Gulnur, riding hard at her father’s side with a knife on her hip and a bow on her back, her long chestnut hair streaming behind her, I’d thought her a wild thing. I imagined the wars that would rage between her and Kuangren as he continued his scandalous ways, and she tried to reform him.

There had been no wars, however. Maybe it was just Kuangren’s physical incapacity, but he seemed different. For all his protests at the wedding, I saw the way he looked at his wife now, as if she were the brightest star in the sky. I never would have expected it. SubhanAllah. Allah could change anyone by means of anyone.

Weili came out of her funk and grew excited, bombarding the locals with questions about the competition, the rules, the bows and the previous champions. Her excitement was infectious, and I was excited for her.

Unlike the tournaments I had known, this gathering was divided into three separate contests. They were all archery contests, but there were categories based on skill level or strength. In the first, the targets stood at perhaps sixty paces. In the second category the targets were twice that distance away, while the third row of targets seemed so impossibly distant that I wondered whether anyone could strike them at all. Each contest required its own entry fee and offered its own prize, with the greatest reward reserved for the archers bold enough to attempt the longest shot.

Each archer would get only three shots.

I watched Weili, curious to see her reaction. She had, after all, won the archery contest back in Deep Harbor. That’s why she had been hired by Five Stars. And her skill wasn’t just theoretical. I had seen her shoot men down in combat, drawing her arrows as fast as a man might fling pebbles, one after another, with people screaming in rage or fear, horses whinnying and enemy arrows flying past her. I’d even seen her shoot from horseback, on the move, firing while she controlled the horse with her knees.

To my surprise, it was not the targets that captured Weili’s attention. It was the bows. She wandered over to a group of competitors preparing for the contests and stopped short. The bows they carried were enormous. Even unstrung, many stood taller than the men themselves. The bows were thick and powerful, built not merely to shoot arrows but to hurl them extraordinary distances.

Now I understood why the villagers had been giggling at Weili’s bow.

“I’ve never seen anything like these,” she murmured.

One of the local archers, a thick-bodied young man with a bald head and a lazy smile, grinned at her curiosity and, with a friendly gesture, offered her his bow. He tapped his chest. “Arslan.”

Weili gave her name, and accepted the bow with both hands, then laughed aloud.

“It weighs as much as a child.”

I took the bow from her, planted my feet, and attempted to draw it. I got the string halfway to my chin. Several nearby spectators chuckled good-naturedly.

“You see?” Weili said with a grin.

“I think these people must have grown up lifting yaks over their heads.”

One of the older men clapped me on the shoulder approvingly. I had no idea if he’d actually understood me. Some of these people, especially the merchants, did speak our language.

Arslan

A man stood on a podium and made an announcement.

“Did he just say,” I wondered, “that you can only enter if your name is rainbow?”

Weili punched me in the shoulder. She had learned more of these languages than me. “He says last call to enter, and you must bring your own bow.” She flashed me a smile. “I’m signing up for the middle one.”

“You aren’t serious,” I said.

“I am.”

“These people have probably been shooting since they could walk.”

“So have I.”

She paid a few silver coins and entered the middle competition.

There were a number of women in the short-distance competition, but Weili was the only woman in the middle range category. The local archers regarded her slender recurve bow with open amusement. Beside their towering longbows it looked like a child’s toy. A few exchanged smiles, and one elderly competitor shrugged as though indulging an enthusiastic foreigner.

Then the shooting began.

One after another the contestants loosed their arrows. Most struck the target somewhere upon its face. A handful found the center.

Then Weili stepped forward.

She inhaled slowly, raised her bow high to account for the distance – it looked like she was aiming at the sky rather than the target – and drew the string with smooth confidence.

The arrow flew high and clean, arced down and struck almost dead center.

The murmuring stopped.

Her second arrow landed scarcely a hand’s breadth from the first, and the third split the edge of one of her earlier shafts. It was an unparalleled, stunning performance. Of course I had seen her shoot many times, but never like this.

When the scores were announced, there could be no doubt. The foreign woman had won the middle-distance category.

The applause was warm and genuine. Smiling broadly, Weili accepted an embroidered riding cloak, a small purse of silver, and a carved wooden plaque bearing the seal of the local archery guild. She bowed awkwardly to the crowd, provoking another round of cheerful laughter.

As she stepped away from the field, the broad-shouldered young bald man – Arslan – approached her. He looked perhaps twenty years of age, with sun-darkened skin, powerful forearms and the easy confidence of someone who had spent his entire life with a bow in his hands.

“You win,” he said. “Very good.”

Weili grinned and bowed with a flourish.

Arslan pointed toward the farthest range, then mimed drawing a bow. “I shoot. You come?”

Weili nodded enthusiastically and we joined the crowd watching the long distance competition. It proved astonishing. Several competitors failed even to reach the distant targets. Others managed only glancing hits upon the outer rings. Then Arslan stepped forward carrying his immense longbow.

He drew it as effortlessly as I might have drawn my dao. The bow bent into a graceful arc, the string sang, and the arrow flew straight and true, with only a slight arc. It struck on the middle ring of the target, not at the center but close. The second landed closer, and the third buried itself squarely in the heart.

The field erupted in cheers.

Children chased after him while older men embraced him proudly. Even the competitors he had defeated smiled and applauded.

Weili applauded as enthusiastically as anyone.

“I’ve never seen anyone shoot like that,” she said quietly.

I hadn’t either.

Eventually Arslan made his way over to us, still surrounded by admirers. Spotting Weili, he smiled and approached. They attempted a conversation using little more than gestures, smiles and the occasional borrowed word supplied by passing merchants who knew fragments of both languages.

Watching them, I found myself smiling as well. At that moment there was no jealousy in me. Only admiration for remarkable skill, and amusement at two strangers trying so earnestly to understand one another.

I like this as a closing scene. I made one small change: rather than having Darius say, “I have a lot of good things in my life,” I let him realize it gradually. It feels a little more like him, and I think it lands harder.

Belly

The camp had grown quiet by the time I wandered back among the wagons. Here and there a few low conversations drifted through the darkness, punctuated by an occasional laugh, but most of the caravan had already turned in. Tomorrow the festivities would continue, and after that we would leave Mazar behind and enter Afghanistan.

Belly lifted his head as I approached. Moonlight gleamed faintly upon his black coat. He gave a soft whicker that might have been a greeting, or might simply have meant he hoped I had brought him something to eat.

“I know,” I said, smiling. “You always think I have an apple hidden somewhere.”

He stretched his nose toward my pockets anyway.

“And guess what?” I said grinning. “I do. You think I’d forget you on Eid?” I took a large, juicy green apple out of one pocket and fed it to him. He chewed noisily, head tipped back, dripping juice.

I laughed quietly and fetched the brush.

“You were a good horse today. Better than yesterday, anyway. Remember when you refused to go over the mountain pass the night before last because you couldn’t see what was on the other side? At least today you didn’t decide a stick was a snake, or that a perfectly ordinary rock was secretly a tiger.”

He flicked one ear back at me but otherwise ignored the criticism.

As I worked the brush through his thick coat, he gradually relaxed. His head lowered, and one hind leg cocked comfortably beneath him.

“You know,” I said after a while, “looks like Weili’s made a new friend.”

Belly twitched an ear.

“Good for her.” I wasn’t sure whether I really meant it. Maybe I did.

For a time I brushed him in silence, then another thought returned to me.

“Isn’t it funny that I forgot my own birthday?”

Belly breathed warmly through his nostrils.

“My birthday is sometime in the summer, when the cicadas are loud. I don’t know the day. So Zihan Ma decided that from now on it would be the fifteenth day of the eighth month.” I smiled to myself. “Seems as good a day as any.”

I paused, running the brush slowly down his neck.

“What’s wrong with being sixteen anyway?”

Belly seemed to consider the matter deeply before turning his head to investigate my pockets once again.

“No more apples, sorry.”

He snorted.

“You wouldn’t know this,” I continued, “but last year Zihan Ma gave me a white kufi cap and a sandalwood sabhah for my birthday.”

My throat tightened unexpectedly.

“No one ever gave me birthday presents before.”

The brush slowed in my hand.

“Of course…” I swallowed. “No one gave me anything this year.”

The words hung in the cool night air. To my embarrassment I felt my eyes begin to sting.

“But…” I said softly, “…that’s alright.”

I rested my forehead against Belly’s neck. He smelled of leather, clean hair, and the faint sweetness of hay.

“I have a lot, don’t I?”

He answered by nudging my shoulder insistently.

I laughed despite myself. “No, I still don’t have an apple.”

He searched my pockets one last time, unwilling to believe me. I scratched him behind the ears.

“Afghanistan next,” I murmured. “Let’s hope you’re a little less stubborn over there.”

Belly merely snorted, as if making no promises at all.

* * *

As-salamu alaykum dear readers. I was stuck for a bit. I needed to get to the heart of the story. After a conversation with my daughter, I figured it out, alhamdulillah.

Come back next week for Part 20 – Bloody Afghanistan

Reader comments and constructive criticism are important to me, so please comment!

 

See the Story Index for Wael Abdelgawad’s other stories on this website.

Wael Abdelgawad’s novels – including Pieces of a Dream, The Repeaters and Zaid Karim Private Investigator – are available in ebook and print form on his author page at Amazon.com.

Related:

Pieces of a Dream | Part 1: The Cabbie and the Muslim Woman

Trust Fund And A Yellow Lamborghini: A Short Story

The post Far Away [Part 19] – An Apple For Belly appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

A reflection on spiritual counsel, political authority, and the ethics of justice.

By Dr. Bekim Belica

With love.

The Key That Opens Hearts

There is a quiet wisdom in the belief that good speech opens what force cannot. A heart rarely yields to command, pressure, or display. It opens when language carries sincerity, restraint, and mercy. In this sense, speech is not merely a tool of communication. It is an ethical act. It can protect dignity, guide conscience, and awaken responsibility.

The tradition of spiritual counsel has long understood this. A word spoken with humility can correct without humiliating. A word spoken with love can reveal a truth that power might otherwise resist. The human heart has its own lock, and good speech, when rooted in sincerity, becomes one of its keys. Praise be to Allah; the hearts of people are not opened by harshness alone, but often through the gentleness of a word placed at the right moment.

A Sultan Seeks Spiritual Counsel

A story is told of Sultan Mehmed II who approached Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa after learning that many seekers had been welcomed into the lodge, while he himself had not been accepted among them. The question could have been asked with royal authority, but he asked it with humility.

“Honored Friend of Allah, you accepted everyone at your door. Why did you not accept us? Did we make a mistake? Did we do something wrong? Did we neglect something?”

Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa did not answer as one trying to flatter a ruler. Nor did he answer as one trying to distance himself from worldly power in order to appear pure. His response carried a more difficult wisdom. He recognized that the palace and the lodge were not identical spaces, and that each carried its own form of accountability.

“My Sultan,” Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa replied, “you are entrusted with justice, leadership, and the protection of the people, while we are entrusted with supplication. Each of us must remain in our appointed place.”

The answer did not diminish Sultan Mehmed II’s spiritual capacity. Rather, it placed his political responsibility within a moral and sacred frame. To govern justly was not presented as a lesser path, nor as a distraction from devotion. It was a form of service with consequences that extended beyond the ruler’s private soul.

Justice as an Act of Worship

Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa then said something that unsettled any simple hierarchy between the spiritual life and public duty.

“My Sultan, one day that you spend ruling with justice is better than a thousand days that we spend in remembrance of Allah.”

Such a statement is not a dismissal of remembrance. It is a reminder that worship cannot be reduced to the visible gestures of devotion. A person entrusted with authority serves Allah not only by withdrawing into prayer, but by preventing oppression, protecting the vulnerable, and judging without favoritism. Justice, when sincerely upheld, becomes a form of remembrance enacted in the world.

Sultan Mehmed II, hearing this, wondered aloud whether he was being judged unfit for the path of supplication. Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa answered with tenderness.

“No, my Sultan. Your heart is softer than ours.”

The response is striking because it reverses expectation. Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa does not accuse the ruler of hardness. He does not suggest that political life has made him spiritually incapable. Instead, he identifies softness as both a gift and a danger. A heart deeply moved by divine love may long to leave behind the weight of office. Yet not every longing, even when noble, should be followed without discernment.

The Weight of Leadership

Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa explained that if Sultan Mehmed II entered the lodge and tasted the sweetness of spiritual absorption, he might not return to the duties of governance. The concern was not that the sultan would become worse, but that he might become absent from a responsibility only he could fulfill. Love, when it is not disciplined by duty, can become a form of escape. The path to Allah does not always lead a person away from the world. Sometimes it sends him back into it, carrying a heavier awareness of what has been entrusted to him.

“The ruler of the empire and the nation of Muhammad is a trust placed in your hands, my Sultan,” Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa said. “If you neglect your responsibility, harm will come to the people. The consequences of that neglect will weigh heavily upon both you and us.”

Here Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa offers a political theology of responsibility. Leadership is not treated as privilege. It is treated as amanah, a trust. The ruler does not possess the people. He is answerable for them. His authority is morally legitimate only insofar as it serves justice. If he abandons that trust, the damage is not private. It enters homes, courts, markets, families, and the vulnerable places where ordinary people experience the decisions of those above them.

Guarding Hearts from Dependence

Sultan Mehmed II understood, yet another question remained in his heart.

“I wish you had at least come with your disciples, the seekers who gather in your lodge,” he said. “Why did you deprive us of your kind words?”

Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa’s answer again revealed the subtlety of spiritual leadership.

“I feared that the disciples might see your generosity and begin to rely upon your kindness rather than Allah’s kindness.”

This was not ingratitude toward Sultan Mehmed II. It was a protection of the seekers. Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa knew that spiritual communities can be tested not only by hardship, but also by patronage. Generosity from the powerful can relieve material need, but it can also shift the inward gaze from the Provider to the benefactor. The danger is not wealth itself, but attachment. A heart may claim to trust Allah while quietly becoming dependent on the favor of people.

Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa was therefore guarding both sides. He was protecting Sultan Mehmed II from abandoning governance in the name of spiritual longing, and he was protecting the disciples from confusing royal generosity with divine provision. His restraint was not coldness. It was love governed by insight.

Then he said to Sultan Mehmed II:

“We are always here for you, my Sultan. Your heart beats within our hearts.”

This sentence carries the emotional center of the story. Distance did not mean rejection. The closed door was not a denial of love. It was an act of care shaped by knowledge of station, capacity, and consequence. Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa did not need Sultan Mehmed II to become a disciple in order to honor him. He needed him to become more fully accountable as a ruler.

The Foundation of Just Rule

Sultan Mehmed II, moved by this exchange, asked whether there was anything Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa desired from him. Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa’s request was simple, but it held the whole meaning of the conversation.

“Judge fairly, my Sultan. Judge justly, so that we may remain loyal to this blessed city of Constantinople, a city opened to receive the glad tidings of our Noble Messenger.”

Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa asked for no wealth, no title, no estate, and no personal advantage. His concern was justice. This is important because justice is the public face of mercy. Without it, devotion becomes sentimental and authority becomes dangerous. A society may admire piety, celebrate heritage, and speak beautifully of sacred ideals, but if judgment is corrupted, the moral order begins to fracture.

The request also reveals that love for a city is not sustained by nostalgia alone. Constantinople, in this telling, is not merely a place of conquest or memory. It is a trust that must be honored through fairness. A city opened with sacred hope must not be governed through negligence, arrogance, or favoritism. Its spiritual meaning must be renewed through the conduct of those who rule and those who pray.

Good Speech and Sacred Responsibility

The story should not be read as a rejection of public life in favor of private devotion, nor as a romantic elevation of power. Its deeper teaching is that each station has its own adab, its own discipline. Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa serves through counsel, prayer, restraint, and purification of intention. Sultan Mehmed II serves through justice, protection, judgment, and responsibility. Neither station is complete without humility, and neither is safe without accountability.

Good speech is the thread that holds the encounter together. Sultan Mehmed II asks without pride. Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa answers without fear. Correction is given without insult. Authority listens without defensiveness. Spiritual insight does not humiliate political responsibility, and political authority does not demand spiritual submission. Their exchange becomes possible because both men speak from recognition rather than ego.

This is why the opening claim matters. The secret of creation is good speech, not because words alone build worlds, but because speech reveals the condition of the heart from which action proceeds. A just command can protect a people. A merciful correction can redirect a life. A sincere word can prevent a ruler from mistaking escape for holiness, and can prevent a seeker from mistaking patronage for reliance upon Allah.

Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa’s wisdom lies in knowing that love is not always expressed by bringing someone closer. At times, love returns a person to the place where his duty awaits him. It says: your longing is real, but so is your trust. Your heart may wish for retreat, but your people need justice. Your tears may belong to the lodge, but your accountability belongs to the court, the city, and the lives affected by your rule.

A Timeless Lesson

In an age that often separates spirituality from governance, and private feeling from public responsibility, this story offers a more demanding vision. It asks whether devotion can shape power without being consumed by it. It asks whether rulers can receive counsel without resentment. It asks whether spiritual people can speak to authority without seeking its favor. It asks whether good speech can still open the locked doors of the heart.

The answer is not found in ornamented language alone. It is found when speech becomes truthful, measured, and merciful. It is found when justice is treated as worship. It is found when leadership is understood as trust rather than possession. It is found when the people of prayer and the people of authority recognize that both will answer to Allah for what was placed in their hands.

May Allah grant us speech that heals without flattering, corrects without wounding, and guides without pride. May He grant those in authority the courage to judge fairly, and those who counsel them the sincerity to seek nothing but truth. May He keep our hearts attached to Him alone, while making our actions a mercy for His creation.

Ameen.

Related:

Practical Spirituality Part 1: The Inaugural Address of the Prophet

The Spirituality Of Gratitude

The post Good Speech and Sacred Trust: Lessons from Sultan Mehmed II and Shaykh Abu’l-Wafa appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

A monthly digest of key developments in Palestine showcasing powerful images by photojournalists.

Whenever I wore the baggy green, I was reminded of what that cap represented – a team that was stronger because each player brought something different

A cricket scorecard is pretty straightforward.

It shows you how many runs you scored, how long you played and whether your team won or lost. Cricket has always been appealing to me because of that honesty. The numbers don’t care about your appearance, where you were born or what you believe.

Continue reading...

Israeli prison guards beat Gaza pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya with hammer, batons in administrative detention.

“Why are Muslim women becoming feminists?” is the (not so) new “why are Muslim youth becoming radicalized?” sentiment… not amongst non-Muslims fearing the paths of angry young Muslims questioning Western socio-political hegemony, but amongst Muslims who are convinced that Muslim women are plunging our community into destruction by questioning the norms of our cultures and even of our faith. What does it really mean for Muslims to buy into the framework of feminism?

In order to answer the question of why Muslim women have been turning to feminism, we must be willing to have a long and very uncomfortable set of conversations among ourselves. There is no single or simple answer, there is a great deal of community accountability and reckoning required, and there is no neat, tidy way to solve the myriad of problems that we will see evinced throughout this discussion. If anyone truly cares about the wellbeing of Muslim women – and Muslim men, for that matter – we must be willing to overcome the set of (faulty) defenses that we have constructed against all perceived attacks on our community, which has a tendency of conflating the Deen itself with the practices of the people, even when the latter is in wild contradiction of the former.

However, it’s not just about why Muslim women are turning to feminism. Many will ask why such a question is relevant in the first place. Why does it matter that Muslim women are ascribing themselves to feminism? After all, isn’t Islam a feminist religion? Doesn’t Islam uphold women’s rights? Why wouldn’t Muslim women be focused on women’s rights?

These complex questions, and equally complex answers, will be discussed in this paper, but be warned: this is not some pithy piece that will “put feminists in their place” or “smash the patriarchy once and for all.” This is more than just your average Muslim refutation piece. This series is meant to be a glimpse into our history, our ongoing realities, and painful truths that we must finally face before we can seek effective solutions and implement solutions that will mitigate the damage inflicted on our Ummah for centuries.

What Is Feminism?

There is no single definition of feminism. And there’s the rub – to engage with the discussion of feminism in the first place, one must be willing to acknowledge and engage with the messiness of it all. You cannot simply claim that something is “feminism,” come up with a clever comeback, and then declare victory over “feminism.” Whether in academia, social media, or the real world, there are multiple “feminisms” that are being discussed, developed, and deconstructed. There are the many waves of Western feminism; Black feminism; POC feminism; “womanism”1, Christian and Jewish feminism; socialist/ Marxist feminism; “Muslim feminism” (which itself has multiple layers to it) and even “Islamist feminism (or womanism)” (Badran, 2009, pg. 242-245; Hidayatullah, 2014, pg 37-45).

Dictionaries will give you varying definitions (“the belief that women should be allowed the same rights, power, and opportunities as men and be treated in the same way” from the Cambridge Dictionary; “belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes” from Merriam-Webster – emphasis mine). Loosely and colloquially, many understand feminism as believing in the complete equality of men and women and seeking to replicate that equality at all levels of life and society. Even this is not entirely accurate, as many fiercely discuss and debate the importance of differentiating between “total equality” vs “equity.”

It is important to note that secular feminism has its own unique history in the West, rooted in centuries of ingrained Church-perpetuated beliefs around the inherent inferiority of women, from blaming Eve for Adam’s fall from heaven to witch-hunts and more. I will not fall into the trite habit of boasting about how Islam gave women rights 1400+ years before women in the West received the right to vote. While it is an accurate statement, it does not reflect the realities of Muslim women’s experiences in Muslim societies throughout those 1400+ years. Others have elaborated on the rights Islam gave women elsewhere, and in more scholarly detail I ever could. Our concern, however, is with modern realities, not long-ago eras of Islam’s greatest ideals realized and then lost.

The label of “feminism” has a fraught history in non-Western countries, specifically the Muslim world, where it was used as a tool of colonization even as the suffrage movement was being clamped down in Western countries (Ahmed, 1992, pg. 152-153). Whether under Lord Cromer in Egypt in the late 1880s, or the French in Algeria in the same time period (Rahnama, 2023, pg. 120-153), ‘feminism’ was little more than an imperial tool weaponized for colonial purposes against Muslim populations. Nor was this a historic phenomenon; feminism continues to be used to justify violent Western imperialism against Muslim lands (Ezaydi, 2026, pg 173-197), from the original “War on Terror” invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq to the ongoing genocide in Palestine and, currently, the destruction of Iran.

However, this is not to dismiss any and all efforts in the name of women’s rights as a solely colonial enterprise. Even as the West introduced the very category of women’s rights to political and social discourse, there were those who objected to colonization while recognizing that women were, indeed, experiencing significant oppression in our own societies (Mubarak, 2022, pg. 57-61). Women’s rights movements in Muslim countries, often referred to as “feminism,” had their own unique discussions, priorities, and activisms that did not always equate to Western secular feminist agendas (Badran, 2009, pg 1-6; Badran, 1995, pg 223-250). At times, women’s rights movements started in the same place before diverging, as with the formidable Islamist revival figure, Zaynab al-Ghazali, who split from Huda Sha’rawi’s feminist group in 1936 (Badran, 2009, pg. 24-27). Many Islamic activists, including Zaynab al-Ghazali, sought to reject both colonization and the oppression of women, all under an Islamic framework.

Unfortunately, many of us – especially in the West – are disconnected from our Islamic heritage, both ancient and contemporary. In women like Zaynab al-Ghazali and Shaykha Dr. Heba Raouf Ezzat we have examples of how to address the complex issues of anti-Islamic agendas alongside engaging in serious critique of unIslamic attitudes and practices found in Muslim societies (McLarney, 2015, pg. 219-253). Yet – for whatever reasons – their works have neither been widely translated nor made part of the dominant discourse, whether academic or Islamic. Indeed, it is deeply concerning that many who spend hundreds of thousands of hours pontificating on the topic of Islam and women in lectures, webinars, and courses somehow omit their work entirely. As a result, Muslims in the West today conflate any kind of “women’s rights” discussions with feminism even when it is not grounded in secular discourse. Traditionally trained, orthodox shaykhaat (female Islamic scholars) are constantly accused of feminism when they advocate for women’s Shari’ah rights or challenge unIslamic attitudes and behaviours towards women that is claimed to be “Islamic”; even male scholars who advocate for women are accused of being corrupted by feminism, called “white knights,” and attacked for challenging the status quo.

We must be intelligent enough to recognize that, given our geological, social, and linguistic contexts, it is impossible for us to avoid engaging with certain discourses or using certain types of terminology (e.g. patriarchy; misogyny; androcentrism) when we discuss gendered matters. These words are a part of the English language, with clear definitions, even if colloquial usage influences the emotional impact of these words; just as we use terms like “racism,” “ethnocentrism,” and more when we discuss racism as a general concept as well as within Muslim communities. To claim that these words have no basis in our Islamic tradition is to render us mute on more than race and gender issues; it is an idiotic claim that would invalidate half our Islamic intellectual tradition, which contended with far more serious issues of philosophy and creed. Unless we all revert to speaking the fus’ha Arabic of the Messenger’s era and refuse to acknowledge our existence in the modern timeline, we must get over these emotional arguments and deal with the realities we live in – including speaking English and living in Western contexts.

However, this does not mean that we should not develop our own frameworks and vocabularies – we absolutely should, and at least some figures dedicated to meaningful work in the field have undertaken these efforts (McLarney, 2015). This also does not mean that we should not be extremely cautious in terms of the language we used, being aware of the way in which certain terminology is weaponized, and the foundational assumptions underlying that language. Engaging in these discussions to begin with must come with careful analyses of the terminology used, the philosophies behind them, and our theological positionality as Muslims who must contend with these epistemologies. As Talal Asad (2018) notes, the language of secularism (and thus, feminism) is not neutral; it is embedded in power, history, and practice. We cannot be blind to this reality and the ways in which it impacts us at every level.

Colloquial use of terminology that originated in academia usually moves beyond their dictionary definitions and becomes heavily laden with cultural meanings that remove nuance, conflate cause-and-effect, and adopt problematic assumptions that are not properly interrogated. We see much of this especially in online discourse, which takes phrases such as “toxic masculinity” (originally meant to critique some societal beliefs around how men are perceived as masculine) and turns them into caricature accusations against all traits associated with men. This must be kept in mind when having conversations around Islam and feminism, as it is necessary for us to consider the contexts in which we are speaking, and to whom; the average online Muslim won’t be able to parse the difference between academic verbiage and casual usage when the words used are the same. The way one person uses the word “patriarchy” as a neutral descriptor vs another who uses it as a sweeping condemnation make a massive difference in how thoughts and ideas are communicated and internalized. Preachers, activists, academics, and influencers spend far too much time talking past each other than engaging with other meaningfully precisely because of this mismatch of understanding and usage of vocabulary.

We must also be intelligent enough to distinguish between those actively calling to the secular values and definitions of feminism, those who just want to improve women’s rights but only know how to do so using popular feminist vocabulary, and those who are actively engaged with Islamic tradition to uphold Islamic values around women’s rights. If we are not willing to do this much, then we prove ourselves to be insincere in dealing with the very serious issues that plague our Ummah today.

With all this in mind, references to “feminism” in this paper will refer to secular value based movements, not just any conversations around women’s rights. Where relevant, I will specify between different types of feminist movements.

As we proceed, we must keep the following in mind: when injustice becomes a norm, resistance is inevitable. In a Western context, this means that feminism itself was inevitable, as a response to the oppression that besieged women at every level. From being viewed as property to finally being able to own property, from the right to access equal education to protections against discrimination, and more, one must acknowledge that the suffragist movement in Western countries resulted in real, tangible, positive results that benefit women – Muslim as well as non-Muslim – today. How far feminism has gone beyond resisting oppression and pursuing justice to go to another extreme is something else to be considered.

In Muslim contexts, we must realize that engaging with the lived realities and the discourse of feminism, shared via media and technology, was and is also inevitable. What is not inevitable is a future wherein all Muslims seeking solutions to gendered injustice turn to secular feminism – but only if we as a community are committed to putting in the work to oppose this injustice from within our own traditions.

What’s So Bad About Feminism?

This is the part where many people expect either long, convoluted discussions about Marxist and neoliberal constructions of societal hierarchy and power structures… or reductive memes about “feminists are happy to make coffee for their bosses but not their husbands!” I am here to do neither.

So what is so bad about feminism? Put simply: it is a framework that does not begin with the belief in a Creator who is the All-Knowing, the All-Wise, the Most Just Lawmaker. Feminism in its many mutations, and especially its most widespread and contemporary iterations, is mired in a worldview devoid of knowledge and belief in Allah and His Guidance. Discussions around morality and sexuality, gender and hierarchy, are permuted through a lens structured solely upon human-made ideas of good and evil. Feminism, along with every other philosophy that exists, is the result of humans trying to make meaning of the world without a foundation of Divine Guidance. It is especially important to note that in the Western context, secularism (and thus feminism) is inextricably tied to the history and consequences of the Enlightenment – a movement emerging from volatile Christian violence and that eventually resulted in cutting off the concept of “God” from public life, and consequently from private morality. Thus, a deliberate choice has been made to eradicate the role of God from the most fundamental aspects of human life, with unsurprising ramifications.

It is not surprising that so many women who have experienced or witnessed injustice and oppression at the hands of men think that men are inherently the problem, or that any social structure wherein men have authority is inherently harmful to women. After all, this is what their experience has taught them. From a secular perspective, religion has only ever been weaponized against women, to women’s profound detriment. Male-led societies have rarely resulted in the uplifting of women, but in their suppression and humiliation. This is the soil from which emerges a feminist hermeneutics of suspicion: a perspective that is predicated upon the assumption that all or most religious and cultural structures are created by and for male interests.2 One could argue that for those without Islam, this is a logical conclusion to come to. For those without Islam, there is no God who determines good and evil or promises judgment; no Divinely ordained set of ethics by which to live, to judge, to hold oneself or others accountable; no spiritual framework which women can turn to with confidence that their very existence is respected, honoured, and valued. In a secular worldview, there is no faith in a Hereafter wherein justice will be meted out. Justice itself is a concept entirely at the whims of the dominant powers that be, malleable and ever-changing with the latest political, social, or intellectual trend.

Islam, however, gives us a different foundation upon which to build our faith and our worldview. As Muslims, we believe completely in the Qur’an as the first source of Divine Guidance and Legislation; we believe in the role of the Sunnah as the second primary source of spiritual direction and practical rulings. We also have an understanding of the rich, varied corpus of traditional Islamic scholarship – a tradition that doesn’t exist as a fossilized entity to be followed blindly, but which continues to develop to this day. We also have a healthy recognition that our scholarship is not infallible; at the same time, through our Islamic tradition, we understand that rulings and structures have deeper meaning and wisdom. Legal authority or hierarchy does not automatically equate ontological superiority. Every question that is associated with feminism, from questioning female worth to discussions around sexual behaviour, from gender roles to finances, is ultimately answered within the framework of believing that Allah revealed a Divine structure for us to exist within. Most comfortingly, we understand as believers that where justice is not implemented in this world, it most certainly will be upheld in the Hereafter by the Most Just, on the Day when none can escape His Justice.

In summary, we must always remember that no matter the philosophy or ideology in question, anything that is not firmly grounded upon the Qur’an and Sunnah – and most importantly, upon taqwa of Allah – is not something that we can rely upon. While there may be some kernels of truth to be found, or some elements of accuracy in their ideas, they will always be fundamentally flawed. It is through Islam alone that one will ever find a truly comprehensive concept of justice.

The Trauma to Feminism Pipeline

It is a caricature that Muslim feminists are spoiled young women studying liberal arts at a liberal university on their fathers’ dime. To start with this assumption is already a sign of refusing to engage with the reality of Muslim women’s experiences. We have no statistics from within the Muslim community to tell us exactly how many Muslim women began identifying as feminist after going to university. It is also true that there are many women who have not experienced trauma who identify with the term ‘feminist,’ for various reasons. We do have considerable anecdotal evidence from Islamic scholars (both male and female) deeply engaged in grassroots da’wah work, who testify to the trend of Muslim women ascribing to the term “feminist” after enduring significant traumatic experiences.

These traumas are very real: witnessing or experiencing abuse at the hands of men evoking their status as qawwamoon; forced marriages; FGM3 being touted as a part of Islam4; being raised with the beliefs that women are inherently inferior to men in Islam5 6, that women do not enter Jannah except through the permission of a man, that Allah hates women, that women’s education is haraam7, and so on8. Fataawah, Islamic books, and masjid lectures abound labeling women as weak, emotional, incapable of rational thought or action, and constructing ideas of “wifely obedience” that go beyond the pale and into the realm of accepting abuse silently. When these are touted as the Islamic stance on women’s existence, how are Muslim women supposed to think well of Allah?

It is also common to find that people have ingrained assumptions about Islamic values and rulings based on faulty premises; for example, that hijab was mandated by men to control female sexuality, rather than that hijab is a command from Allah that is part of a larger vision of sexual ethics for all believers. Other ideas, such as teaching that women’s sole purpose in life is to become wives and mothers, do little to bring Muslim women closer to Islam.

Many girls grow up with a warped understanding of Islam itself, often because of their parents’ and communities’ lack of tarbiya. There is almost always a gross ignorance of Islam, Islamic values, ethics, frameworks, and rulings. The conflation of culture (whether South Asian, Arab, or otherwise) with Islam has been a massive source of confusion, pain, and injustice for Muslim women around the world. These traumas become a motivating force to push Muslim women away from Islam.

It is only understandable that girls and women who are not raised to believe in their inherent worth as believers in the sight of Allah, who are excluded from worshipping Allah in His Houses, whose understanding of their existence revolves around sentiments of disgust and anger, will inevitably question these premises. It also understandable that, when penalized for asking questions in the first place (as happens to many women who sincerely go to scholars with their questions), these women will seek answers from outside of our tradition in an attempt to reconcile their fitri understanding that the Most Just Creator could never condone such vile injustices.

Indeed, an oft-ignored element of the phenomenon of Muslim women identifying with the label of feminism is that the Muslim community as a whole has demonstrated a consistent refusal to meaningfully deal with these issues from the ground up, on a regular basis. Many Muslim women who ask questions or challenge our community’s status quo are immediately vilified as “feminists” trying to undermine Islam even when they explicitly say they’re not feminists and don’t identify with feminism (a common challenge faced even by traditionally trained women Islamic scholars!). When faced with such antagonism from other Muslims, many of these women actively choose to identify as feminists, since their attempts to engage from within using a solely Islamic-based terminology yielded no change or benefit. Using the language of feminism gives them the opportunity to tap into wider discussions, address certain phenomena with more specific vocabulary, and utilize existing research and social work that has been done regarding women’s issues.

If Muslims are sincere about addressing the problems of feminism within our community, then it must happen proactively, not reactively. That is to say, it is not effective or meaningful to spend thousands of hours debating “feminism as deviance”; what will prevent a mass exodus of Muslim women from looking outwards for solutions will be to aggressively deal with our community’s problems from a firmly grounded perspective in the Qur’an and Sunnah. AlHamdulillah, we are beginning to see this work being done in various capacities, but the reality is that much more work is needed in this regard – especially in light of the red pill ideology permeating many spaces and doubling down on justifying the harms done to Muslim women in the name of Islam.

I can speak to all the above very personally: this was precisely part of my journey as a Muslim woman, first reeling from the immense personal distress of being in a toxic marriage characterized as “Islamic,” and then confronted by a communal refusal amongst Muslims to even acknowledge all the ways that our faith is weaponized against women. The more I tried to point to the Deen as a solution to the very real problems that we have as a community, the more Muslims were hostile to even recognizing those problems, and resorted to labelling me (and other Muslim women trying to do the same) as “feminists.” Ironically, this pushed me directly towards engaging with feminist discourse, which was problematic in many ways. In hindsight, there were many perspectives and ideas that I shared that I now regret; despite having some familiarity with the Islamic sciences, I was not well grounded enough to be able to identify some of feminist philosophy’s fundamental flaws and the ways it would impact my way of thinking. Often without realizing it, I found myself absorbing ideas that were not in keeping with our faith; even as I was cognizant of certain fundamental principles of Islam, I found myself subconsciously absorbing attitudes and perspectives that did not align with those principles. It has taken years of personal error, spiritual growth, and increased learning to step away from the vortex and understand more deeply how wrong things can go when one is attached to the wrong framework.

My experience as a conservative Muslim woman who gravitated toward feminism in response to oppression in the name of “traditional Islam” has reinforced the urgent need for the Ummah to seriously engage with the recurring harms Muslim women identify in our thought and practice. Had Muslim leadership and communities meaningfully addressed the dhulm perpetuated in our spaces, many women (including myself) would never have been spurred towards other methods of dealing with our community’s problems.

After years of reflection, research, lived experience, and spiritual growth, I am more convinced than ever that the ultimate solutions to the Ummah’s internal and external struggles—personal and spiritual alike—lie within Islam itself. External ideologies can never offer the holistic answers we require. However, I also believe – just as emphatically – that unless the Ummah engages Muslim women’s concerns with seriousness, nuance, and accountability for our collective failures, we will continue to see Muslim women turning to the philosophies of feminism in search of justice and dignity.

Victims of Modernity

That’s not to say that every Muslim woman who finds herself turning towards feminism is a victim of abuse or gross cultural practices. Sometimes she’s a victim of modernity – no different from the many Muslim men wandering about who are also suffering from this affliction (though their diseases remain either undetected or simply considered not as serious).9

Man or woman, the quality of the average Western Muslim’s Islamic upbringing leaves much to be desired. When we already contend with statistics that show that only about 42% of American Muslims even pray five times a day, can we really have high hopes that the majority of young Muslims are being raised with a robust, holistic knowledge of Islam itself? How many Muslims, male or female, have been taught to understand Islam as a systematic, structured way of life? How many young Muslims have even a rudimentary awareness of the development of the Islamic sciences, let alone how rulings around hijab or other gendered matters came to be? To expect that Muslim women should somehow know the finer details of these scholarly discussions while their male counterparts do not, and to accuse such women of disrespecting our tradition when they simply do not know, is a double standard that only does our Ummah damage to uphold.

Coupled with the lack of thorough Islamic upbringing is the absorption of modern secular liberal values, whether through the education system, entertainment and media, or simply the society that Western Muslims are raised in. This, too, is part of a larger, overarching concern that exceeds the scope of this paper, yet is required to be considered more deeply: should Muslims really be content with settling in nonMuslim lands and raising our children in cultural and intellectual environments that we are not preparing them to contend with appropriately? Muslim parents bear a great burden around the tarbiya that they provide – or do not provide – to their children, and this has endless repercussions on the state of the Muslim Ummah at large.

A common issue specifically around discussions of feminism and Islam is the projecting of modern secular liberal values upon Islam itself, with little to no understanding that secular values – feminist or otherwise – are built upon a socio-theological and historical context that is utterly different from Islam and devoid of the presence of Allah. There is rarely an awareness of how feminism was used as a colonial tool to dismantle Muslim societies as part of the effort to portray the West as inherently superior and rational, while Islam was belittled as being a backwards, oppressive faith.

Statements like “Islam is a feminist religion!” and “Prophet Muhammad was the first feminist!”10 are predicated upon understandings of “justice,” “freedom,” and rights discourse that are distinctly divergent from the understandings of those same words within the Islamic spiritual-legal tradition. Questions of authority, marriage, sexual consent, abortion, and all the other trigger topics are then picked apart and understood through an intellectual paradigm that is utterly discordant with an Islamic worldview.

Perhaps most insidiously, this absorption of Western frameworks results in a type of internalized Islamophobia. There is a reduction of Islam to a private spirituality and of “Muslim-ness” as a cultural identity, rather than a holistic, publicly lived worldview and lifestyle that includes the public, the private, the domestic, the political, the social, the cultural, the ritual, and more. A sense of Western exceptionalism arises, one in which there is an assumption of Western secular values as a universal truth and superior moral system over Islamic truth, despite the constant state of flux of Western secular values.11

In these circles, it is not uncommon to find an Othering of religious Muslims as backwards and misogynist; sometimes the racism comes out blatantly by using terms such as “Taliban” or “Wahhabi” as slurs against Muslims seen as too conservative. The concept of Islam as the ultimate, timeless Truth revealed by the All-Knowing and Most Just Lawmaker is replaced by the blind, implicit belief that contemporary Western mores are the sole arbiter of what is right, what is moral, and what is just. From here on out, it is all too easy to slip from into perennialism, and from there into atheism itself.

Not the Intersectionality We’re Looking For

A consequence of being steeped in secular liberal discourse is that from well-meaning discussions around human rights and oppression, a sharp left turn is taken into the weeds of social justice warrior12 rhetoric. While it is understandable that Muslims seek allyship amongst others who will support our rights (especially in the age of ongoing illegal detainments, Zionist targeting, and endlessly increasing Islamophobia from the right wing and centrist left alike), we have sadly taken to unsavory bedfellows.

Moving beyond understanding the concept of intersectionality as it applies to certain valid spheres,13 there is an embrace of intersectionality with all elements – most notably the LGBTQ movement and its push to not just normalize homosexuality, but to celebrate it. The intersectionality of LGBTQ issues with wider rights discourse meant that Muslims looking for support for our civil rights were compromised by the expectation to change our own moral stances. It wasn’t enough for us to simply acknowledge that yes, LGBTQ people are entitled to the same legal rights and protections that everyone is supposed to have in a secular society. We were expected to move into the realm of explicit support for their causes, too; that our morality was now to mirror their ideas of morality (or lack thereof). To defy this was to be labeled bigoted, hateful, and essentially confirming racist stereotypes of Muslims as backwards, savage, and a threat to enlightened Western civilization.

As a community, we witnessed the snowball effect of this intersectionality. A blurring of sensibilities and the desensitization of our Islamic moral beliefs around sexuality have led to egregious public displays of utterly unacceptable nonsense. The examples are endless: from Ilhan Omar, a hijabi woman, dancing at Pride Marches to claims that “Islam has always had a place for homosexuality and gender fluidity!”; Scott Kugle’s laughable attempt at re-interpreting the Qur’an to allow for homosexuality; organizations like HEART aggressively attacking Muslims who uphold the Islamic prohibitions against homosexuality; blaming the political right for traditional Islamic stances against a range of issues from abortion to homosexuality, and more. At a theological level, the complicating of and rejection of “patriarchal heteronormativity” has resulted in explicit blasphemy: Rashida Tlaib publicly declaring that “my Allah is a She,” echoing the likes of Amina Wadud and others (who clearly missed the memo about Allah’s chosen way to reference Himself in the Qur’an14). Ominously, the LGBTQ cause has been weaponized by Western development and humanitarian aid organizations as an imperialist tool against Muslims.

The Qur’an and Sunnah are rendered sacrifices on the altar of intersectionality. An Islamic worldview is perceived as not just moot, but shameful. Contemporary ethics are projected onto Islam; Islam no longer defines the foundation of morality, but is expected to meet the standards of Western society on any given day, regardless of how quickly the wind blows in another direction. For those of us who still believe deeply in social justice work (as we should, in keeping with Islamic ethos), it is imperative that we do this work while firmly grounded in Islamic principles. Imam Dawud Walid’s book, “Towards Sacred Activism,” provides a solid foundation of how to navigate social justice activism without falling into the precarious pitfalls of inadvertently supporting belief systems that profoundly contradict the very foundations of our faith.

Social Media Arrogance, Social Reality Consequences

There is another place where we see the frameworks and language of feminism used to create a Frankenstein’s monster of discourse around Islam and women’s rights: the Internet. Social media, particularly on platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, have become a breeding ground for anyone and everyone to grab a mic and start pontificating on what they think Islam says about Islam, women, and every other topic under the sun. While Dawah Bro Inc. is perhaps most easily identified as an ugly subculture of the Muslamic Internet, they are just one side of the toxic social media coin. The other side of the coin is what can perhaps be labeled as Muslim Girl Boss : flooding social media feeds with sound bytes claiming that “Islam says wives don’t have to do anything!” or “Khadijah (ra) was a CEO!” or “talking about hijab is spiritual blackmail!”15

This particular genre of social media influencers consists of individuals who have no traditional background in Islamic studies, yet feel confident enough with their secular educational backgrounds to speak on Islamic matters. This is particularly dangerous, as secular educational training – even in “Islamic studies” – is a wildly different worldview than that of genuine Islamic knowledge. Even those who claim to reference fiqh tend to have little or no understanding of usool al-fiqh, the differences between madhaahib and their internal structures, and the greater holistic legal and ethical considerations of the Shari’ah.

The result is that – whether Ted Talk or podcast, YouTube short or viral TikTok video – the sweeping claims being made are both wildly incorrect and cringe-inducing. Unfortunately, they also snag hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of views; generate endless comments; are stitched by other content creators; and contribute to a Frankenfiqh discourse in Muslim online spaces that has no concern for the depth and nuance of true Islamic scholarship. Not coincidentally, these takes also reflect a very particular set of worldviews: one based on secularism, individualism, capitalism, and pop feminism.

Just as Dawah Bro Inc. thrives on creating toxic perspectives around gender roles and relationships, where women are caricatured as greedy, vindictive, and deceitful towards innocent men, Muslim Girl Boss creates its own warped reality. Women who do not share aspirations of shattering corporate glass ceilings are demeaned as brainwashed baby breeders; relationships built on mutual reciprocity, albeit presenting in “traditional” ways such as husbands as breadwinners and wives attending to the domestic sphere, are recreated as inherently dangerous to women.

The weaponization of pop-therapy vernacular (not to be confused with valid therapeutic interventions!) is used to convince women that normal marital miscommunications and disagreements are equivalent to abuse. Emotional validation is given priority over all else, including personal accountability. Fiqh of marriage is dismissed wholesale as misogyny from classical scholars, to be rejected in favour of contemporary secular relationship norms (despite the erratic and fickle nature of the latter). Rather than fostering healthy discussions around gender roles and interactions in society, those immersed in pop-feminist spaces create an environment of suspicion and hostility towards those perceived as supporting a patriarchal structure within the Muslim community.

Even the use of terminology such as “patriarchy” and “misogyny” is devoid of nuance, often swapped interchangeably for one another without pausing to consider the implications. More dangerously, those who have some passing familiarity with Islamic vocabulary wield technical Islamic jargon in a manner that strips the phrases of their legal context, leaving viewers with wildly incorrect conclusions that are attributed to the Shari’ah. Many Muslim women walk away from this content feeling as though they cannot trust traditional Islamic scholarship, while also feeling justified in believing that Islam does, in fact, conform to modern 21st century Western ideals. Endless videos fill the algorithm with warnings that Islamic scholarship is a behemoth of misogyny to be rejected, that Islam itself is little different from Christianity or Judaism, that the structures of the Islamic sciences are a house of cards to be swept away.

These social media personalities do a lot more than just undermine the role of traditional Islamic scholarship; they also construct a culture of pseudo-intellectualism (characterized, ironically, by significant ignorance) and heightened antagonism between Muslim men and women. Rather than shedding light on Islamic law’s nuanced approach to all matters – including gender roles, responsibilities, and rights – they flatten the discourse into one of patriarchy vs feminism, of male oppression vs female victimhood. In their professed quest to enlighten the public about all things Islam and women, they muddy the waters of intellectual integrity, nuanced knowledge, and Ummatic allyship in the cause of justice for men and women alike.

These online dumpster fires don’t just stay online – they leak into the real world, causing young Muslim men to gravitate towards false machismo under the guise of Islamic masculinity and quoting Andrew Tate, while Muslim women grasp for responses that reject what is clearly poisonous to the Ummah’s soul. Unfortunately, many of those responses contain just as much poison, especially the increasingly common rejection of ahadith as a source of Islamic authority, based on accusations of misogyny and corruption. Muslim men and women view each other with suspicion even as they try to get married (to one another!), struggle to find alignment in religious values (despite sharing the same deen), and clash even in masjid spaces as polarizing views are weaponized on the minbar and divide the community16. There is little sense of believing men and believing women as allies of one another, seeking Allah’s Pleasure and to establish justice in the Ummah and around the world.

The phenomenon of these influencers reflects two very dangerous patterns of behaviour: the first is the sheer arrogance of speaking on matters of Islam without actual Islamic knowledge gained from traditional study; and the second is a culture of presumption that anyone can speak on religious matters, regardless of their training (or lack thereof). Bluntly speaking, this is a type of spiritual disease; one which comes with widespread, dangerous social consequences alongside the negative impact on their own spiritual states. By putting themselves in the position of speaking on such matters as Islamic law and ethics, these influencers are presenting themselves as experts – rather than directing their audiences towards those who truly are qualified to do so, including numerous female scholars with genuine traditional training and qualifications in the Islamic sciences.

It is imperative that as a collective, Muslims who have genuine concerns around women’s rights and issues concerning women do not turn to social media shills as figures of authority or influence. We must not enable their ignorance and their hubris; we must not mistake their grifts for grassroots work; we must not reward their attention seeking with our hits, views, and stitches. Instead, we must reorient ourselves to the actual methodology of seeking knowledge. Pursuing real-work change must take place from within our own tradition, not from a shaky framework cobbled together from colonialism, secularism, capitalism, individualism, feminism, and the millions of others -isms bogging down our intellectual processes and fogging our cultural filters.

From the Streets to the Ivory Towers

Most Muslims are “average” Muslims, and you don’t have to be a university graduate to be impacted by the factors that we discussed in the previous sections. Lack of Islamic knowledge, absorbing ideas around Western secular superiority, and being chronically online are all issues to be found amongst the everyday Muslim. Feminism is just one growth of the ugly morass that is the Western sociopolitical hegemony that has, alas, infected the entire world.

But for those who have gone past social media soundbytes and found themselves immersed in deeper explorations of feminism and Islam, what needs to be known about that beast colloquially known as Muslim feminism? How have the discussions in the ivory towers of academia trickled their way onto our streets, and how are Muslim women impacted when we pick up books penned addressing the topic of Islam and women? While there are endless articles, webinars, and YouTube lectures pontificating on feminism and its impacts on Muslims, there is very little actual understanding in the Muslim community of what and how feminism in a Muslim context emerged, developed, and continues to influence others – and what isn’t feminism no matter how much one tries to make it so.

As someone who used the label of ‘feminist’ for many years, I am the first to note that most people embroiling themselves in these discussions don’t know what they’re talking about. The vast majority of people who use the term feminist have not studied feminism, are not even aware of its long (often sordid) history, or the confusion of thought trends ascribed to feminism, and even more rarely have read works by Muslim feminist authors. Over the years, however, I have taken the time to actually read works by notable Muslim feminist academics and developed a much deeper understanding of the fundamental theological flaws behind “Muslim feminism.” It is only by engaging with these works, rather than relying on flimsy stereotypes, caricatures, and outdated ideas of what “feminist” discourse entails, that we can most effectively address the very real, very dangerous beliefs undergirding the entire structure.

Many women find themselves picking up copies of Amina Wadud or Fatima Mernissi’s books at some point or another – sometimes as required readings in a university religions class, and sometimes out of desperation, in search for anything to more seriously address their questions around Islam and women (especially if they were already berated by imams for daring to ask those questions in the first place!). Unfortunately, this reading is usually done without a solid understanding of aqeedah, tafseer, the development of fiqh, or Islamic scholarship in general. Without a grounding in the Islamic sciences, such readers are left unable to identify just how deeply problematic, and wildly incorrect, these authors’ foundational premises and ultimate conclusions are.

The next part of this article will examine the ideological structures underpinning the field of Muslim feminism in academia, key figures and their contributions to the field, and the necessity of effective responses to these ideas.

References

Ahmed, L. (1992). Women and gender in Islam. Yale University Press.

Asad, T. (2003). Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford University Press.

Asad, T. (2018). Secular Translations: Nation-state, Modern Self, and Calculative Reason. Columbia University Press.

Badran, M. (1995). Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt. Princeton University Press.

Badran, M. (2009). Feminism in Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences. Oneworld Publications.

Ezaydi, S. (2026). The Othered Woman: How White Feminism Harms Muslim Women. Pluto Press.

Hidayatullah, A. A. (2014). Feminist Edges of the Qur’an. Oxford University Press.

McLarney, E. A. (2015). Soft Force: Women in Egypt’s Islamic Awakening. Princeton University Press.

Mubarak, H. (2022). Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands: Controversies in Modern Qur’anic Commentaries. Oxford University Press.

Rahnama, S. (2025). The Future Is Feminist: Women and Social Change in Interwar Algeria. Cornell University Press.

Related:

ShaykhaTalk: Female Scholarship Or Feminism?

Addressing Abuse Amongst Muslims: A Community Call-In & Leadership Directives | The Female Scholars Network

 

1     Alice Walker, “In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose” (1983)2    This concept will be further examined in part 2 of this series, specifically in the context of feminist academic works in relation to Islamic scholarship.3    Female genital mutilation: the removal of some or any part of the vulva, especially the clitoris, as practiced in various regions of the world4    This is a very different discussion from female circumcision, around which there are many contentious discussions in our Islamic legal tradition. 5    https://tafsir.app/ibn-uthaymeen/33/356    https://www.islamweb.net/en/fatwa/381173/equality-between-men-and-women7    https://wifaq.org.za/?p=192878    https://fataawa.co.za/talks-by-yasmin-mogahed/9    Common practices include abandoning salah, consuming porn, engaging in zina, normalizing riba, outright apostacy, and more. However, these issues are rarely brought up with the same intensity and repetition brought to discussions about Muslim women.10     Interestingly, the first documented use of this phrase came from a Muslim man in Algeria, Cherif bin Larbi Cadi, who sought to rebut colonial attacks on Islam (Rahnama, 2023, pg. 89).11    Consider topics like the age of consent and the concept of consent; what was “decent” two or three decades ago compared to what is acceptable now; ideas around gender roles, family structure, and more. See here and here.12    Not to be confused with the term ‘social justice’ itself, a term which was used long before the current iteration of online discourse, as can be seen in Syed Qutb’s work “Social Justice in Islam” (1953).13    I.e. Allying with various groups for political causes that do not fundamentally compromise our theology or moral values 14    And, of course, keeping mind that Allah is neither male nor female, and thus the discussion need not be taken any further than that! 15    Nor does it help that Dawah Bro Inc. feeds into this with their own “fiqh doesn’t care about your feelings!” takes that, ironically, are equally as ignorant as the Girl Bosses, no matter how much they try to dress it up in the legal jargon of Islamic jurisprudence.16    for example, by welcoming spiritual abusers back into positions of authority

The post Muslims and the F-Word: Feminism, Dhulm, and Jahiliyyah appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

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