Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya says Kamal Adwan hospital faces Israeli threat of forced evacuation.

[This three-part article is a summary of some of my thoughts about the current state of the Western Muslim community – inspired by Jonathan Haidt’s book, the Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions & Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. Read Part 1 here]

Almost 10 years ago, I bought a book called Adab-ul-Din wal-Dunya, i.e. the Protocols (or etiquettes) of the Afterlife & the Worldly Life. This is a book written by Imam al-Mardawi d: 450 AH, a senior jurist & scholar of tafsir from the Shafi’i school of thought. The first chapter of the book was about what the author described as the most important protocol or etiquette: the intellect. At that point in my studies and spiritual experience, I was genuinely confused. I thought that perhaps Islam, belief in God, or Tawhid, etc should be the first protocols.

However in the years since then, as a teacher and researcher of Islam who works in the community and has a social media presence, I have realized he was absolutely right. Imam al-Mardawi explained that the intellect is where belief in God, the Prophet Muhammad and a sound understanding of the Qur’an and Sunnah starts. Again, he was absolutely right. Never underestimate our luminaries from the past.

Throughout the Qur’an and Sunnah, the importance of knowledge, intellect, and learning is repeatedly emphasized. The revelation of the Qur’an began with the command to ‘read’. The Qur’an itself is a book that requires knowledge of the Arabic language, the Sirah of the Prophet , and the Hadith to understand thoroughly.

What happens when you have little to no knowledge? Everyone has to base their beliefs and conclusions on something. Human beings cannot function without beliefs. Knowledge has the special characteristic of being impersonal.

Most Muslims in the West go to public school. There is no systematic study of Islam there. If they do go to Islamic schools, the quality of Islamic education is often poor as most Islamic schools don’t invest in qualified Islamic Studies programs or teachers. In many Muslim countries, despite their many issues, most Muslims have at least been studying Islam systematically for much of their lives.

Without that education, we end up with a vacuum of knowledge, but society, family, and culture dictate that we must make decisions about our religious beliefs and practices. The only recourse becomes emotion. Unfortunately what we call ‘being educated’ today is the education of the dunya, not the religion. But are you really ‘educated’ if you don’t understand your own ontological worldview?

Emotions are useful, but they cannot be trusted for our beliefs. Not only are emotions personal and thus biased on our subjective personal experiences, but trusting in them too many leads to psychological problems. Those who know this best are people are either psychotherapists or people who have suffered from mental illnesses like anxiety or depression and have learned to manage them. In anxiety, for example, your emotions of fear, self-criticism, and uncertainty take over your reason-based decision-making processes. You’re 28 years old, but overwhelming fear due to trauma from seeing your dad have a heart attack keeps convincing you that you are having a heart attack every time you feel a twitch in your chest. You get dozens of tests done to ensure you have no heart problems, but you read a page of Mayoclinic and all the fear comes back. True story by the way.

What we are seeing today in Muslim society in the West is people literally holding up their emotions as evidence for what they believe, say, and do. I have seen that many Muslim parents justify how they choose to bring up their kids without consulting a single fiqh book (e.g. that kids should be encouraged to pray at the age of 7, and reprimanded over it starting at the age of 10), or even any research-based parenting books. What tricks them into parenting the way they do is a well-intentioned but grossly uninformed love for their kids. They won’t enforce prayer on their kids early because ‘I’m being easy on them, look how tired they are and how much homework they have’, they won’t understand that they have to be a parent and not a friend, or let their kids make mistakes, because ‘unconditional love’. This ‘unconditional love’ is what will destroy their children’s Islam and their psychological well-being because of absent or helicopter parenting.

I have seen Muslims flinch or pull away at the emotional discomfort of being corrected or reprimanded with basic facts, even when done in a very polite, understanding, and respectful way. The problem is that in a vacuum of knowledge, and in a culture that celebrates the role of emotion over the intellect, this is a disaster. We end up confusing the impact of what people say to us with their intentions, thinking that they are ‘oppressing’ us, suppressing us, or being rude to us when in fact they’re just trying to correct us with facts. For most of human history, this would usually be a miscommunication, but now it’s a mantra.

The Imam or Shaykh speaking about women’s requirement to obey their husbands, or husbands’ responsibility to financially maintain their families is nowadays interpreted as an offensive, insidious or personal attack. The woman will call it misogynist, and the man will call it feminist. I once posted a reminder on my page about the importance of the 5 daily prayers, and it was absurd to see that some people were actually offended and started defending the fact that it was difficult to pray Fajr. Talk about how mortgages are haram and a grown man will start whining about how absurd it is to pay someone else’s rent. If you are offended by basic factual information, it is a serious problem. At the very least, accept the factual as factual. Social media exacerbates this, not only by not giving us the necessary undistracted time to reflect and hold ourselves accountable but also because it has created a culture in which we need to respond right away instead of putting down the phone for a few hours to think about what we just saw or read.

Don’t forget that it was Shaytan’s emotions of pride and arrogance that led to him to make his most regrettable decision of rebelling against the Creator and dooming himself to Hell.

Solutions:

1. We must seek Islamic knowledge. I don’t mean YouTube videos and Twitter posts. That is NOT knowledge. That is raw data. Structured knowledge is taken from teachers, well-designed courses, and programs. There are many such programs nowadays designed for the public. Many are online. The excuses for not learning due to access or unavailability are no longer admissible. Either study or acknowledge that you are choosing to remain ignorant and thus leave your emotions to be the judge of what you believe.
2. Islamic institutions and religious leadership MUST provide fardh-ayn programs, i.e. comprehensive Islamic education programs for the public that provide them the foundations of Islamic theology, fiqh, and spirituality that they need to function as Muslims on a daily basis. This has become fardh on these organizations and individuals themselves. Flowery talks with coffee served in the background are NOT a replacement for this. We need more educators and less speakers. Learn how to educate the public and not just preach to them.
3. Learn to manage your emotions. Override them with the knowledge of right and wrong in Islam. It’s easier said than done, but emotional intelligence is a concept that is extremely important for Muslims. Unfortunately today due to the political situation in the West this concept has almost been forgotten. As Muslims however we need to rise about this and learn from the emotional intelligence of the Prophet .

*To be contd. in Part 3…

[This article was first published here]

 

Related:

– A Real Crisis In The Trust Of Muslim Scholars And Leadership

– Why Studying And Teaching Aqidah is Necessary for the Ulama And Students of Knowledge

The post The Coddling Of The Western Muslim Mind: [Part II] The Islam Of Emotionalism appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Yasmin Abu Namous and her daughters are all visually impaired and struggle to obtain food and water daily.

Conservative leader says ‘seeing Labour government reminds everyone who the real opponent is’ and rejects claim she should announce more policy now

During the Conservative leadership contest Kemi Badenoch wrote an article for the Sunday Telegraph about immigration in which she suggested the UK should not be admitting migrants who do not accept British values. She said:

We cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnichostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not. I am struck for example, by the number of recent immigrants to the UK who hate Israel. That sentiment has no place here …

Our country is not a dormitory for people to come here and make money. It is our home. Those we chose to welcome, we expect to share our values and contribute to our society.

People assume that I’m always talking about Islam, but I’m not really. It’s one of many variations of culture which we have in the country because of immigration, especially the more recent immigration which has been too high.

To understand what I’m saying, you have to look at where I grew up [Nigeria], where there are 300 different languages and cultures, everybody looks the same, and people don’t get on unless there is a unifying thing.

One of the things that profoundly affected my view on the world was what happened 10 years ago when those 300 schoolgirls were abducted from their school by Boko Haram, a terrorist group in northern Nigeria. It has a lot of parallels with what happened on October 7.

And this group had been indulged – you know, ‘It’s just Islam, they’re just people who are poor and they’re fighting for their rights’, and then it moved into something really hideous and terrible, and it’s now just a depraved group of people who assault Christians, women, destroy families.

Remember, that steel plant was one I was helping to manage [when she was business secretary]. I didn’t nationalise it then, did I?

It depends. With many of these things, it depends.

Aren’t you tired of people who just tell you what you want to hear? I will not do that.

And that’s why I don’t answer those questions, because the answer is always, and should always be, it depends.

Continue reading...

Privacy is lost at a time of genocide.

Prophet Yaqub and Sons Out of Control

If we hear of a family today where all the others bully one sibling, we may ask – well, what are the parents doing about it? We know that Prophet Yaqub was a divinely guided Prophet of Allah , and we all look up to our Prophets with great respect. But also try to imagine Prophet Yaqub as a regular dad agonizing over what sinister plots his out-of-control sons might cook up to hurt Yusuf . Think of how desperately he wanted to protect Yusuf and find a way to repair the relationships between his children. Imagine the frustration he endured when he saw or came to know of another messed up thing one of them had done to poor Yusuf . How about we picture the urgent conversations he’s had with his wife or trusted friends and all the solutions he had tried but failed? 

Imagining Prophet Yaqub’s predicament in such a way helps us better empathize and sympathize with him as parents. And when we consider that a Prophet himself could not have better managed the dynamics between his children to the extent that one was nearly murdered, it puts our own suffering into context. It helps us realize that as parents, we can only do so much. Not everything is in our control. Even though we are the heads of our families, sometimes our children will not conform to the transparent divides of right and wrong we guide them towards.

“He said, ‘O my son, do not relate your vision to your brothers or they will contrive against you a plan. Indeed Satan, to man, is a manifest enemy. Surely Satan is a sworn enemy to humankind.“ [Surah Yusuf; 12:5] 

Prophet Yaqub had the wisdom to accept that his influence wasn’t the only factor that swayed his children. He acknowledges that Shaytan and the forces of evil are powerful and that his children could fall prey to them. Of course, he still tried to protect Yusuf and call his sons back to the truth, but there was only so much he can do, as guidance is ultimately in Allah’s Hands.

“And they brought upon his shirt false blood. [Jacob] said, ‘Rather, your souls have enticed you to something, so patience is most fitting. And Allah is the one sought for help against that which you describe.'” [Surah Yusuf: 12;18]

Prophet Yusuf [alayhis] faced personal grief on an elevated level. [PC: Bernd Dittrich (unsplash)]

Prophet Yaqub shows us how to live with the reality that Allah guides only some people and not all. Imagine Prophet Yaqub as an average father. It would be excruciating for any father to endure a situation in which his children killed anyone out of spite. How disappointed would any parent be to find out such horrifying news? But when we factor in that his sons killed their sibling, one of his children–that makes it so much worse because he is facing personal grief on an additional level. He might never see his favorite son again, and the world may have lost a Prophet. This incredible patience and resiliency of spirit, even though it devastates Prophet Yaqub to the extent that it causes him to lose his eyesight, is a powerful reminder of the hardships that any parent can suffer at the hands of their disobedient children. The silver lining in Prophet Yaqub’s story is that his sons eventually repent from their terrible deed, and his family reunite. As struggling parents, we can try our best to endure our situations patiently and keep turning to Allah to guide our children. 

Prophet Nuh and a Disobedient Son

We know that Prophet Nuh famously leads his followers safely through a catastrophic flood. We might also know that Prophet Nuh could not save his son’s life during the flood. Although he calls out to his son directly and invites him aboard the ship [Surah Hud; 11:42], his son then refuses in a very ignorant way. Prophet Nuh’s son’s reply shows his lack of faith in Allah as the All-Powerful God. His son says in the Quran,

“[But] he said, “I will take refuge on a mountain to protect me from the water.” [Noah] said, “There is no protector today from the decree of Allah, except for whom He gives mercy.” And the waves came between them, and he was among the drowned.” [Surah Hud: 11;43]

“I will take refuge on a mountain, which will protect me from the water,” he says. Prophet Nuh desperately gives him sincere advice and dawah, immediately responding, “Today no one is protected from Allah’s decree…” But his son does not accept his father’s final plea. Waves separate them, and his son drowns. 

Do we not think that Prophet Nuh tried his best to give da’wah to his son and teach him the truth for many years before the flood? We know what an intimate bond a father and son share and how much facetime they must have had living as a family. He must have been one of the best role models a child could ever ask for…but still, even though Prophet Nuh fought until the last second to protect and guide his son, he was ultimately unable to save his son from Allah’s terrifying punishment. 

Imagine how much heartbreak Nuh feels when he realizes that he has managed to save the lives of elephants and dozens of random animals, but not one of his own flesh and blood. In the following verses of Surat Hud, Allah reveals just how challenging it is for Nuh to see his son drown in front of his eyes. He says to Allah , “‘Certainly my son is also of my family,’’’ conveying the deep hurt he feels when his son dies [Surah Hud, 11:45]. Nuh is referring to Allah’s Decree in ayah 40, where Allah uses the Arabic word “ahlika,” your family, to describe the people that Nuh is responsible for collecting onto the ship. In ayah 46, Allah replies,

 

‘He said, “O Noah, indeed he is not of your family; indeed, he is [one whose] work was other than righteous, so ask Me not for that about which you have no knowledge. Indeed, I advise you, lest you be among the ignorant.”

Some scholars have mentioned the word “ahl” in these verses in Surat Hud and also in Surat al-Anbiya, which is better defined as followers than family. Still, there is obviously some linguistic allowance for Nuh to feel confused about why his son died. As his story in this surah continues, we see that Nuh obediently accepts Allah’s Will with Prophetic patience – but that does not detract from how painful his situation truly is. 

We know Nuh tries to guide his son until the very end, but it is not enough. There are Muslim parents out there who are living the same reality. They have tried and tried to help guide their children towards Islam and leading upright lives for years. Through no deficiency of their own, Allah had decreed that their children would never accept divine guidance, and their children have died outside of a state of submission to Allah .

Just like Nuh vocalizes in Surat Hud, parents in similar situations may feel unimaginable grief and confusion. Maybe there is the addition of shame when going to the masjid or out to community events because of the rumors surrounding this child. Although these parents suffer from a painful situation, it is a small comfort that they are in the great company of Prophet Nuh and can make his heart-wrenching dua during difficult times:

“[Noah] said, “My Lord, I seek refuge in You from asking that of which I have no knowledge. And unless You forgive me and have mercy upon me, I will be among the losers.” [Surah Al-Hud: 11;47]

Some of us parents may have children who have done terrible things. It could be a child who has committed murder, stopped praying or renounced their faith, has a haram lifestyle with romantic relationships or substance use, or acts in hurtful ways to their parents, whom they should respect the most in this world. Understanding the plight of Prophets Yaqub and Nuh at an intimate level helps those of us who are facing the unthinkable cope with the reality that we cannot always control our children.

 

Related:

– Did The Prophet ﷺ Wear Glasses? – Raising Your Children To Be Resilient Muslims

– Parenting Older Kids: Focusing On Success In The Deen

The post Family Troubles Of The Prophets: A MuslimMatters Series – [Part II] My Kids Are Out Of Control appeared first on MuslimMatters.org.

Faculty slam university’s “slanderous” efforts to appease Israel lobby.