There are periods in history when having faith itself begins to resemble insanity.

And Jerusalem has everything to do with that feeling.

Let me explain.

To be a believer in this time is to seem somewhat insane according to the materialist and sensory metric of our times. After all, according to basic, rational, observable calculus, all arrows point to doom, to the triumph of evil and the brutal defeat of the oppressed. The good has seemingly firmly lost this round. Palestinians are at the brink of extermination. Southern Lebanon is being erased and there are one million displaced in the Land of the Cedar Tree. Live-streamed genocide has become a permanent fixture of our daily lives. Flotilla members are openly tortured by Israel and the brutal ethno-state faces zero repercussions. Muslims are in their billions but they are under siege by impotent leaders and spiritually and mentally colonized hypnosis. Arab governments proceed shamelessly on the path of (ab)normalization, while al-Aqsa is in harms way, and the salivating plans of the callously evil Greater Israel seem well underway.

To be a believer in this time of little hope seems naïve, ridiculous even, that it is no wonder why atheists and agnostics think of people of faith as provincial, delusional or wishful thinkers. The obvious odds seem so impossibly stacked against the weak and the dispossessed that hope and faith in this time feels foolish. There seems to be no logical way out of this deadlock of repression.

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But that is exactly why cultivating true belief during this time—more than ever—is so existential, so necessary: the absolute truth can never truly be defeated, erased, even if it appears to be missing according to external secularist/rational calculus.

Paradoxically, because belief is that which is most out of place in this moment of rampant immorality, it is precisely why it is imperative. In this time of endemic, systemic gaslighting, the power of the path of belief rests in its transcendence over the worlds of forms. It reigns in the realm of metaphysical, active guardianship of the truth. Materialist and secularist rationales cannot access this reality because they are self-limiting and finite, whereas the Truth is by definition, unyielding to external constructs and emotions. Hence, allyship with the truth is always superior to allyship with limited ideological, materialist, humanist or geopolitical calculus because the truth exists outside of their bounds in perpetual, unseen transcendence.

Enter ṣiddīqiyya.

Ṣiddīqiyya occupies a unique station in the Islamic imagination. This is the station that describes complete verification (taṣdīq), it is the condition of a heart so deeply rooted in truth that it is constantly and actively affirms it, even (or especially) when outward circumstances appear to contradict or negate them. To be a ṣiddīq is not merely to speaks the truth, it is to inhabit the very soul of truth.

To be a ṣiddīq is to occupy a way of being such that the Divine reality becomes more certain to them than the evidence of their one’s senses.

In Orwell’s 1984, the Party’s ultimate act of domination is forcing people to reject obvious reality. Orwell writes:

“The final, most essential command is to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.”

For Orwell, the final act of repressive systems is represented in the destruction of truth itself. Yet the history of revelation presents another paradox, where the believer is often Divinely commanded to distrust their eyes and ears, to disbelieve appearances. Not because of some naïve denialism or delusional thinking, but because the truth is frequently concealed by the mirages of worldly tyranny.

After all, the sea before Musa looked uncrossable. The fire before Ibrahim looked deadly. Hajar’s quest for water in the scorching desert for water looked like suicide. Maryam’s immaculate birth seemed impossible. David was no match for Goliath. The Night Journey—the Mi’raj— looked like a lie. Yunus’ emergence from the belly of the whale is a tall tale. Winning at Badr was a tactical impossibility. By all worldly accounts, these narratives seemed impossible, and hence, insane.

But every age presents its own test of sight and divides people into two types: those who see with the light of belief coupled by principled action, and those who see with the deceiving eye of forms alone.

Today, Palestine and the warpath of Pax Judaica confront humanity with the gravest of collective vision tests. Outwardly, our rational senses only see undeterred evil, rubble, siege, abandonment, and unfathomable destruction. Our ears hear “experts” and naysayers explain why resistance to this leviathan is suicide, why liberation is impossible. To this camp, their arithmetic of power is settled in the external world of forms only. It privileges form > truth.

For this reason, Muslim sages have distinguished between mere truthfulness (ṣidq) and ṣiddīqiyya. There are many people speak truth on occasion, and strive to be honest and truthful. But this is not what the ṣiddīqiyya is about. The ṣiddīq is not simply an honest person, rather to be a ṣiddīq is to become truthfulness personified. The ṣiddīq’s certainty permeates their intellect, imbibes their speech, animates their actions, raises their hopes, and subdues their fears, such that they become a walking testament of truth, for truth.

To embody ṣiddīqiyya is to no longer oscillate between belief and doubt according to changing external circumstances, rather, it is to remain steadfast while the world burns. It is to hold on to the scorching embers of justice even as the whole world demands capitulation. Siddīqiyya is to depart completely from finite calculus, choosing instead to be anchored in the infinite, in the immovable, unchangeable promise of Truth. In Allah alone.

This is why the Qur’an places the rank of the ṣiddīqūn immediately after the prophets and describes them as the guarantors of revelation for any age, be it colonial modernity or the dajallic present day. The siddīq’s defining characteristic is not miraculous, charismatic power, nor immediate military victory, not even scholarly genius or credentials. Rather, the ṣiddīq’s hallmark is unseen and rests in their unwavering certitude in the impossible.

To be a ṣiddīq is to recognize truth well before it becomes conventional, before the arc of history bends towards it, when it had so few friends it could barely be recognized. For if the truth were popular, it would no longer require a station as rare as ṣiddīqiyya—prophets, knowers of God and righteous saints— to affirm it. Otherwise, we would all be the same.

Ṣiddīqiyya, therefore, is not naiveté, it is the lofty plains of the triumph of certainty over sight. It is to trust the unseen factors more deeply than the seen factors, no matter how impossible they seem. It is to taste the promise of Allah more deeply than the consensus of the age, and to affirm revelation more deeply than fickle world of forms.

And the seat of ṣiddīqiyya rests in the primordial locus of Jerusalem, al-Quds.

After all, Maryam alayha as-salam, the blessed mother of ‘Isa, Jesus—referred to as ṣiddīqa in the Qur’an— and Abu Bakr, the closest bosom fried of the Prophet, are remembered through this title. Maryam bint Imran and Abu Bakr both affirmed Prophethood as it came with impossible (and sometimes lethal) circumstances. And for both of them, this title came about through a Jerusalemite connection.

Maryam of Jerusalem carried a child without a father and received much scorn from society for this.

And Abu Bakr gained the moniker as-Siddīq only after he affirmed the description of al-Aqsa that the Prophet ﷺ gave as a waking vision of Jerusalem appeared before him in Mecca the day after he returned from the heavenly journey that the Quryash elites mocked as a lie, as a tall tale.

Both ṣiddīqin, Maryam and Abu Bakr were asked to make a choice between “sane”, visible reality and “audacious” Divine reality, and they both chose the only path worth living and dying for: that of impossible certitude.

Jerusalem carries the prayerful, devotional fragrance of Maryam. Today, its walls still echo with the reverence of her worship, its sorrowful, occupied stones testify to her hunger, devotion, her childbirth, her fear and her reliance. Al-Quds perpetually reverberates with her immovable oath to truth, her Maryamic certainty.

And Abu Bakr stands as a symbol of khilafa, of Prophetic inheritance. As a continued trust and mandate. As a loyal friend to the lonely, the stranger and the persecuted.

As ṣiddīqin, their mandate is needed across the ages. Every epoch has its test of ṣiddīqiyya. Every generation encounters a moment when revelation and appearances seem to diverge. Today, many people look upon Palestine and Lebanon and the collusion of Arab rulers and see only defeat. They see siege, starvation, abandonment, and overwhelming force. They count the inaction of Muslims, the billion-dollar weapons’ deals, shady back door alliances, the impenetrable borders, and the mounting number of martyrs. They examine the existential question of Palestine through the godless arithmetic of worldly power alone.

It is through the spirit of impossible certitude that Palestine as the qudsi (holy) headquarters of universal justice-seeking and principled, prophetic resistance to tyranny, supremacy and evil.

Because the opposite of ṣiddīqiyya is another spiritual polar opposite state: that of nifaq, hypocrisy. The hallmark of a munafiq is the person who theorizes defeat, normalizes it, or makes it their job to persuade others to accept the whip of tyranny as natural, as status quo. But for free people and every human civilization whose foundations lay on the universal prophetic ethos cannot—by its own nature—accommodate defeat: it must resist till the very end. Its people must exhaust every possibility available to them, even if it means breathing through the hole of a needle. It means tapping into the seemingly evaporated reservoirs of strength, resilience, and renewal to fortify one another, as witnesses to God, their souls and humanity.

Because this path—of impossible certitude—courses through the veins of the most honorable chapters of Islamic history. After the setback of Uhud, Allah did not instruct the believers to internalize defeat. Rather, He strengthened them: “Do not lose heart, nor fall into despair, for you shall prevail if you are believers.” Likewise, when the Prophet ﷺ instructed ʿUmar to respond to the arrogant boasts of the Quraysh after the battle, ʿUmar chose to elevate the discussion beyond worldly measures of victory and loss, to the transcendental metrics of truth and justice.

The Qur’an calls each of us to the path of radical trust, to the stature of ṣiddīqiyya, by repeatedly referring to the hypocrites and rebuking their discourse. The Qur’an shows us that hypocrisy was so much more than mere military abstention, pragmatism or cowardice; it was a mechanism to demoralize the believers. The hypocrites of today question the intentions of struggling believers, they cast doubt upon their convictions and broadly label them “khawarij”, “Islamists” or “Muslim Brotherhood”, thereby internalizing colonial “war on terror” rhetoric against fellow Muslims.

Nifāq—like ṣiddīqiyya—is not confined to a particular century. It is a recurring disposition that reappears whenever communities are most severely tested.

Today, Palestinian people and every ṣiddīqi whose vision is laser sharp, who till sees al-Quds as the moral qibla of Islam, they are simply naïve believers. They “walk the walk” and show it through action. They don’t just pay lip service to the truth, they are paying the ultimate price of this prolonged battle for the sake of impossible certitude. The price they are paying is immense, sometimes too immense, beyond question. Yet the price they are paying with their conviction and certitude is a much safer path than the inward idolatry, defeatism and subjugation many Muslims have internalized as a false god.

The people of Filastin, Lebanon and others demand of us a re-orientation back to the imperative of history-altering belief, to restore the maqam (status) of ṣiddīqiyya—the scarcely trodden path of radical belief and action— for a spiritually decimated and morally emaciated age. In their steadfastness, they ask us the only question worth asking on a daily basis: whether we are true believers, if we still possess the capacity to affirm God’s promise when every visible sign appears to point elsewhere. And whether the ummah is comprised of hypocrites (munafiqin) or if it still contains men and women—siddiqin—capable of taṣdīq before seeing victory externally speaking.

Ultimately, the ṣiddīqi spirit of every “insane” person resisting monstrous evil cannot be crushed. Whether it is waving the Palestinian flag in Tehran or singing for Imam Hussain in Gaza, these times are producing a generation who will continue to deeply embarrass neoliberal modernity. How can they be crushed, when a father gathers the remains of his children and still says alhamdulilah? When a mother buries her son and speaks about the imminent reunion in jannah, that he is alive and comes to her in her dreams every night? What is this, then, if not the ultimate triumph of truth over form?

To be a ṣiddīq in this time is to be Ibrahim, as he looked at the cycles of the sun and the moon, each captivating him for a moment, yet eventually they each disappear.

“I do not love things that set,” he declares.

This statement, “I do not love things that set,” encapsulates the entire history of revelation.

To the human being, the true object of devotion must be permanent, present, and unvanquished by the elements and the passage of time. Whatever rises and falls, appears and disappears, conquers and then crumbles, cannot by its very nature serve as the ultimate measure of reality.

Empires are among the greatest of these setting stars. At one moment they seem eternal. Their armies appear invincible, their wealth inexhaustible, their narratives iron clad. Yet they occupy a horizon of superficial vision that people begin mistaking their short lived dominance for reality, forgetting that, empires, like the sun and moon, also set.

Ṣiddīqiyya begins when one refuses to worship the narrow tunnel vision of the changing horizon. We don’t worship the sunset, or the moon rise, we worship the Maker of the tides and breaker of empires. The ṣiddīq understands that transient power, however overwhelming, remains just that: transient. To be a ṣiddīq is to anchor oneself instead to the One who neither rises nor sets, neither appears nor disappears, neither weakens nor declines, neither waxes nor wanes.

This is the secret of Palestine’s endurance.

Many people look at the empire and see the sun of Pax Judaica at its zenith. The people of al-Quds look beyond the sun itself. They know that every worldly power eventually descends beneath the horizon. Al-Qahhar alone remains.

The contemporary supermacist Judeo-Christian campaign of terror against Islam and Muslims cannot comprehend this reality because it only believes in material outcomes. It is jealous of Muslim trusteeship over Jerusalem because it only understands victory through numbers, land grabs, economies, weapons, surveillance, and the double speak of the ruse-based order. Through a “might makes right” mentality.

But the people of al-Quds possess another inheritance altogether. They belong to a civilizational ethos guided by the long forgotten “right makes might” mentality. They are tied to the spirit impossible certitude tied to the very essence of Jerusalem, whose lineage is Maryam, the mother of ruh Allah, and Abu Bakr, the bosom friend of habib Allah.

Perhaps this is why the people of the book who failed their prophetic covenants are obsessed with controlling and dominating Jerusalem. Whoever controls its sacred narrative controls humanity’s very imagination of itself. The struggle over Palestine has never been territorial alone. It has always been a metaphysical struggle over the very soul of humanity. It is the litmus test for those who choose prophetic transcendence against those who ally themselves with the taghut of brute power, bloodlust, greed, and anti-human annihilation.

Jerusalem stands a timeless testimony to the fact that the greatest catastrophe of the modern Muslim condition is not military weakness, rather, it is the erosion of impossible certitude from the hearts of people, and the weakening of metaphysical certainty. Many people still pray, but many no longer believe that Allah can rupture history itself.

The end of radical belief is the greatest collective nakba of all.

Al-Quds represents the qibla of impossible certitude. Its primordial presence grants victory to the Prophetic ethos and destroys the logic of the menacing empire. It whispers across generations that truth survives even when (or especially when) surrounded by impossible odds.

Perhaps this is why Palestine feels both unbearable and antidotal to the materialistic, cynical, modern conscience: Gaza has forced humanity to choose between two polar worldviews: the empire’s religion of tyranny of inevitability, vs. prophetic belief that Allah alone is sovereign above creation.

And perhaps that is the ultimate secret and medicine that Palestine, al-Quds, so freely gives as the locus of ṣiddīqiyya. Whoever loves it deeply and principally enough eventually finds themselves standing before the same question posed to Abu Bakr or Maryam centuries ago: will you believe your deceitful eyes and ears, or stand atop the mountain of impossible, history-altering, certitude?

Relevant past articles:

This double blind peer reviewed essay, Islam After1 Gaza was recently published in the inaugural issue of the new academic journal, Hashiya: Scholarship on the Edge.

It is available via open access here. I share some excerpts below:

“The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said that “at the beginning of every century Allah will send to this umma someone who will renew for it its religion.” Although not a single figure, perhaps the gravity of our moment allows for a degree of interpretative license to suggest Gaza has inspired the renewal (tajdīd) needed for our times.The tajdīd that Gaza sparked came at a great cost. The singular ṣumūḍ of its people, whose harrowing displays of sacrifice have revived what had for decades, if not centuries, grown dormant in the Muslim conscience. Their thousands of martyrs tore away layers of illusions such as “international law” and “human rights” and reawakened a sense of Islamic unity that bypassed regimes and borders, speaking directly to the hearts of millions, if not billions, of grieved ordinary believers across the world. It restored to the center the questions that had been deliberately deferred across generations: What does it mean to belong to an umma fractured by colonial borders and worldly power yet bound by faith? What is the responsibility of a Muslim in an age of extermination livestreamed in real time? And where does moral authority truly reside when Muslim rulers have forfeited it? In the face of annihilation, Gaza forced a collective return to the Qur’an and the Prophetic model as living sources of meaning and action. If tajdīd is the revival of faith at a moment of decay, then Gaza has epitomized that role through active truth-bearing, forcing the dormant, complicit world around it to reorder its priorities and clarify its loyalties, while reminding a wounded umma who it is and what it truly needs to stand for.”

“Despite the lawlessness, the bloodshed, and the strife, this lowest point presents a hinge moment for the state of Islam. The moral failure of the current world dis-order has reached its nadir, revealing an enormous moral and political vacuum. As great titans clash and old hegemonies fracture, the question presses with renewed urgency and gravity: What is the role of Islam and Muslims in this moment on a civilizational scale? Is it fair for the most vulnerable and sanctioned communities to shoulder the task of defending Islamic sovereignty alone while the wealthiest and most powerful Muslims in the Gulf and the West resume their consumerist lifestyles, as they sit back and watch? Where do we locate the collective role of the umma as a moral force and witness, and as a bearer of an alternative vision in a world being violently remade? Can the umma ever recover from the moral stain of its abandonment of the people of Gaza, Sudan, Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Kashmir, and Yemen, and the Rohingya, the Bosnians, the Uyghurs, and the other defenseless Muslims who have been pummeled, slaughtered, and displaced in broad daylight with such impunity while their state leaders stood idly by—worse still, when most were complicit in the crime by upholding trade agreements, security coordination, and normalization efforts such as the Abraham Accords?”

“After Gaza, have we reached the end of Islamic thought?”

“For all the genius this umma has produced, we have analyzed enough and certainly theorized enough. Our minds and shelves are full, and the diagnoses are complete, yet the world around us continues to burn. For what can analysis do in the face of a young boy in Gaza, a WCNSF (wounded child, no surviving family), as he is bitten by rats, shivering in a cold, muddy tent? Do not all debates cease in the presence of a mother noosed by the RSF in Sudan or the slain schoolgirls of Minab in Iran? Is intellectualism not tone-deaf to the family of a disabled Afghan mujāhid, or a survivor of Iraq’s Abu Ghraib?

The well-funded seminars, conferences, and pulpits fall short of adequately addressing the conditions of a child laborer in the mines of Congo or a sickly Mexican father dying in ICE dungeons. How can Islamic thought even profess to provide answers for such relentless crimes against humanity in systemic form, such pervasive chaos? That’s just it: Thought cannot. Only action can.”

To read the full article, visit the Hashiya website.

Born on May 19, 1925, Malcolm would have been 101 years old if he were alive today.

With his birthday coming up, many will likely write tributes to invoke the great American shahīd, and laud his bravery, boldness, conviction and vision.

But let us be honest. How many of his admirers truly choose to walk Malcolm’s footsteps of sacrificing comfort, radical honesty and speaking truth to power?

How many dare to tread the path he blazed of warrior-hood, over the path of indentured slavery to respectability/upward mobility/access/sounding diplomatic/self interest?

The truth is, Malcolm would probably have had very few friends in the mainstream Muslim community today.

He would have found them too meek and too mealy mouthed in confronting tyranny and the wolves in sheep’s clothing in our midst. He likely would have thought them to be too insular, too ethnocentric, too legalistic and rigid, and more concerned with securing social advantage than their responsibilities towards the ummah.

He would have likely thought most Muslim boards/institutions/scholars/mosques as too captured by assimilationist mindsets, indifferent to the spiritual and political rot that festers beneath the facade of perfectionist piety.

He likely would not have found affinity with the “celebrity shaykhs” but with those unseen soldiers in the margins, the few, true invisible actors selflessly committed to empanaciparoty justice for African Americans, Muslims and all people in the least glamorous and unlikeliest of places.

And the truth is, this lack of love would have likely been reciprocal.

Malcolm would likely not be found “orthodox” enough for the speaker circuit, too radical for professional crowds. His lack of “ijazas” and fiery tone would have unsettled most suburban masjid boards.

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Because this was true even in his own lifetime. People who encountered him described him as intimidating, dangerous even. How could he not be, for he became a free, sovereign man in every sense of the word: intellectually sharp, morally uncompromising, intensely disciplined, and most of all, very difficult to manipulate.

Just like Umar bin al-Khattab’s mere presence was enough to have the devil flee from his path, so too would many flee from the unsettling prescriptions of truth that Malcolm medicinally offered uncompromisingly.

If he were among us today, many would have turned away from the hard inner work that his example demanded. They would have likely fled from the disinfectant qualities of the sunlight of the truth he spoke, preferring instead the comfortable shadows of fake smiles, pretense and keeping up appearances.

Because it is a principle universally acknowledged that the truth and its lonely emissaries have few friends.

African American journalist Gil Noble admitted that he was “put off” by Malcolm X at the time. He found his message was “too blunt” and “dangerous.” Noble described how Malcolm was unsettling because he did not seem to care for the era’s social pressures that trained people not to confront issues directly. He confessed that people only saw his true worth and celebrated him after his death. Noble’s reflection is unsurprising, and captures the enigma that is Malcolm X: admired, feared, projected unto, but relatively few could fully accompany him.

We so easily invoke Malcolm, but we do not often acknowledge that he lived a very lonesome life. Not simply due to the many thankless battles he waged, but because his very presence exposed collective and individual compromise, cowardice, dependency, and moral sleepwalking.

He was repulsed by the idea of the oppressed walking around hunched over, afraid of the light of their own power, histories, vernacular and scripture.

He detested the stench of fear on his people. He was against “straight-jacketed thinking, and straight-jacketed societies.”

He inhabited a different realm than most, because indifference to injustice was simply an impossibility for him.

In a previous, viral previous post, I wrote of the continuous life of Malcolm:

“When Malcolm moved in the world, it is important to remember that he foresaw his death. He spoke and acted like a man who was dead—a shahid (a martyr)—already:

I’m a man who believes that I died 20 years ago. And I live like a man who is dead already. I have no fear whatsoever of anybody or anything.

In essence, Malcolm still lives: martyrs don’t die. He fulfilled the prophetic injunction of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ who advised: “die before you die.” He—like the people of Palestine—embody the shahada (witnessing) of la ilaha illa Allah, Muhammad Rasul Allah. That there is nothing in this world truly worthy of worship other than the One. Embodying the shahada in action offers a model of what true, transformative tawhid (Oneness) can do in the world: it can outlast all tyrants.”

Malcolm inculcated lived, activated tawhid, because the reality of death—and thus, eternal life—hung over him always. In that sense, he put this wretched dunya it is rightful place, in his back pocket, never neglecting it, tending to it only as a means to an end: cultivating a life rife with sweet existential truth and purpose.

He lived as all of us should: a gharib, as a stranger, per the Prophet Muhammad’s injunction: “be in this world like a traveler or a stranger,” and “Islam began as something strange, and it will return to being strange as it began, so glad tidings (tuba) are for the strangers.”

Rather than pass on the bitter tonic of estrangement, it quenched him, preferring it over the honeyed, soothing elixir of denial, assimilation and pretense.

He extracted himself spiritually and mentally from the idolatrous clasps of convention. First, from mainstream America, then eventually from parts of the Nation, and many times, he extracted himself from relationships with former “friends” who feared the consequences of his searing clarity.

He likely would have walked away from the herd of immigrant “mega church-style Islam,” and would have found it closer to the vestiges of the slavery-inherited Christianity that he converted away from.

He stripped himself of so many delusions and shattered so many idols that he found himself alone with the Alone, standing atop a mountain of truth in a profoundly isolated place.

On this summit, however, he could take solace being in the company of an legion of honor: past, present, and future revolutionaries, messengers, and freedom fighters who likewise stood apart from their age. Of course, it must be said that Malcolm was not a standalone man. He was supported and nurtured by matriarchs, workers, intellectuals and brothers alongside him the 20th century Black Radical Tradition movement and cultivated important friendships and networks locally and internationally with Muslim and Pan-African leaders. He was supported, uplifted and loved by many in his age.

But the reality is, in every age, there are some who fight, and some who don’t. Not all people are destined for the fighting life. Today, some communities are confronting state violence with their bodies head-on—from protests in Minnesota to the resistance in Gaza—while others retreat into curated comforts: matcha lattes, Dubai chocolate, suhur fests, and the perpetual planning of the next vacation or even the next ʿumrah, unperturbed by the suffering unfolding around them.

Similarly, it must have been bitterly estranging for Prophet Yusuf to know that the people of ancient Egypt ate, drank, and continued on with their merry lives while the languished in prison, betrayed by his brothers.

The early sage Al-Hasan al-Basri, hunted by Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, must have felt the pangs of painful isolation knowing that the people of Basra lived resumed their life while he was denied even the dignity of leaving imprisonment to bury his daughter and pray over her.

And the people of Baghdad laughed, lived and played with their children while the jurist Ahmad ibn Hanbal was transferred from one prison to another and from one torturer to another. Likewise, most Muslims of their era likely resumed their mundane lives while figures like Ibn al-Jawzi, Malik ibn Anas, Abu Hanifa were imprisoned, flogged, sometimes until their shoulders were dislocated, or until their bodies grew frail and sick.

Such is the high price of reneging a life of dwarfdom. The price of escaping the herd.

Such is the price of a life ornamented with dignity, and the honored, inner posture of true mental and spiritual freedom.

It behooves us to articulate that most people are simply unwilling to pay it. In every age, estrangement is the bosom friend of those who elect to undertake existential struggles for dignity, freedom and justice while others remain content with conformity.

But what many miss is that the alienation born out of stubborn steadfastness is among the highest acts of worship and crowning testaments of what it means to be Muslim, to be human.

Because the unseen reality of estranged individuals is that they are not marginal to society; quite the contrary, they are its unknown axial poles. Its awtād—the pegs upon which Allah deputizes for truth and justice to be firmly fastened, even as the world mistakes them for pariahs.

The estrangement feels thankless in the interim, but it is rewarded handsomely in the court of celestial reckoning: the court that ultimately matters most.

There, in the celestial court, there is no people pleasing, no institution worship, no weak excuses, no lies. There is only the liberating, final, all-encompassing light of Divine justice and truth, before which tyranny is incinerated and every illusion laid bare.

One would think, that in this age of live-streamed genocidal dystopia, the only natural response would seem to be for a million Malcolm Xs rising from the ashes of fury. Yet instead, we are somehow met with deeper defeatism, greater meekness, and an almost unnatural capitulation to power. His lonely legacy—of moral clarity, courage, and uncompromising dignity—feels painfully absent now more than ever.

Millions are more sedated than ever, resigned to the inevitability of the status quo while their brethren taste blood in their mouths, fighting for a more dignified existence. Some, as this Substack has previously shown, even use Islam’s supposed canonical legal pragmatism as a fig leaf for their perpetual cowardice.

This sharp contrast—between the sheep and the lions—is natural, cyclical. It is archetypal. It is cosmic code. It is an eternal reminder that if the trustees of the Divine message do not feel alone in this world, they are not doing it right, for estrangement from the world is the way of wilāya (sainthood).

In the scarcely trodden, lonesome fight for justice, the inverse of solitude is a ‘urs (wedding) in the unseen. It is a Divine effusion that few are honored to taste.

It is an āya for the weary seeker and the lone fighters in this bitter moment, Allah suffices as walī—as closest protector and companion—when most of creation has withdrawn or turned away.

For it is He who disciplines the souls of believers, purifying their hearts from fickle, worldly mirages. It is He who poured upon Malcolm and other fearless shuhada intimate knowledge and careful, Divine nurturing.

Even if only a few pure, fearless hearts remain on this oft-untrodden path, they suffice as shining emissaries for the truth.

The rarer they are in any society, the more sacred they are in the eyes of God, the more effective their transformative fury.

Malcolm’s lonely legacy reminds us what Islam in America—and indeed in the world—could look like, led from the soul, instead of the ego. Away from identity politics, performative piety and reactionary calculus. We need this model now, more than ever, for its all its blistering, fearless, universal, uniting urgency and potential.

Marking Malcolm’s 101th birthday, let us pay tribute to the high price he paid of estrangement (ghurba) in the dunya in his struggle against supremacists and cowardly “friends.”

A prince so high, it cost him to die at the altar of himself, so that we could inherit a timeless legacy of courage, looming over our little coddled, afraid selves.

Though we can never fully repay this gift, we must strive towards inculcating but some of his radical honesty, searing introspection and vulnerable humility. If he were alive, would we also find Malcolm “too blunt and dangerous” and lionize him after it is too late? Or would we truly take a fearless stand along with him?

May his example and memory be a balm for the estranged, and a reckoning for decaying, denialist Muslim institutions that are complicit in perpetuating moral rot and injustice.

We are missing your dignified scent and lone example, Hajj. Happy celestial birthday.

This is the most cited aphorism in the 13th century classical Sufi manual, the Hikam of Ibn ʿAtaʾillah. It is often invoked to warn of the hidden dangers of arrogance and the desire to be seen:

For some, it is easy to heed this aphorism a little too well.

After all, in many cultures, the obscure woman, “the woman as martyr” is celebrated, exalted. But even the selfless path can lead to women become society’s sacrificial lamb. Too often, women entomb themselves in their labor, in their children or their households and delay their own spiritual actualization. Comfort in obscurity is their more natural state, it is almost ontological. It is as if burial in obscurity is the feminine modus operandi.

This inward inclination is reflected Qur’anically. Maryam, the mother of Jesus, said “I wish I were buried before this,” and even fasted from speaking. Swallowed by grief, the mother of Moses tasted the sorrow of grief and separation. The mother of Isma’il, Hajar ran in the desert of solitude with her crying, hungry baby. Yet despite being buried in the womb of oblivion, they became one of the most influential women across the ages, changing the very arc of human history. Even sorrow seems to be fused with the feminine, with Allah repeatedly enjoining women in the Qur’an in particular against sadness “lā tahzanī.”

Women are praised for endurance so often that their suffering itself becomes romanticized. In this distortion, the “selfless” woman is expected to absorb pain without complaint, to nurture without replenishment, to forgive and overlook dysfunction without ever receiving justice. This is an aberration. Excessive cultural expectations of playing the role of the “obedient” silently suffering woman is neither holy nor Prophetic: it is merely sanctified exploitation under the guise of piety, virtue and patience.

Because authentically transformative obscurity is freedom from the ego’s incessant demand to be seen, not outright erasure. It is an inner, dignified posture. It is the freedom from needing constant validation. A woman can therefore teach, write, lead, or serve visibly while still remaining inwardly “buried”, even while she does not see herself, only Allah.

For many women of my ummah, however, they posses no such luxury as to disappear into solitude only to return renewed. They are forced to bloom in the midst of catastrophe, to rise from the wreckage before their soul could even grasp for air, or a chance to grieve.

The persecuted women.

The exploited women.

The women living in genocidal conditions.

The imprisoned, shackled women.

Countless women are quite literally buried under the rubble of anti-Muslim state violence.

Marking North American Mother’s Day, I wish to pay tribute to these forgotten women of forced obscurity. To the millions of nameless, faceless suffering women concealed in the cruel gulags of the belly of the beast.

I think of Kashmir’s Asiya Andarbi, the 64-year-old grandmother serving one of the harshest convictions of three life sentences in India’s prisons on baseless accusations, without ever committing a single crime. May God fortify her son, Ahmed, who gratefully interviewed me on his podcast, Koshur Musulman, on the topic of Sufi Warriors, the transcript of which you can read here.

I think of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, the mother and scholar who was betrayed by her home country’s government of Pakistan, whose children were snatched from her arms as babies. She was sold to the Americans, and has been unjustly kept in solitary confinement since 2008, serving an 86-year sentence in Texas, in one of American’s most notoriously inhumane prisons.1

I think of the countless mothers of Palestine, Iran, Lebanon or Sudan, who bury their husbands and children—and pieces of their soul along with them—daily. I think of all the women this oppressive world has failed. How long must they carry the weight of abandonment? What does it even mean to recognize Mother’s Day when mothers are etched with scars of the spiritual exhaustion that come from inhabiting a morally inverted world?

Earlier this year, women in Turkey threw headscarves from the upper prayer hall at the men at a mosque during last ten nights this past Ramadan, to remind them that al-Aqsa is besieged and closed, longing for its worshippers to rerun to it and protect it. As if to say, “wake up oh men! Rise up to the honor that being a Muslim man demands of you!”

From Iran to Texas, the Muslim woman has become the site upon which modern societies project their deepest anxieties about secularity, autonomy, submission, tradition, and transcendence. They have been the nexus of a fierce civilizational, colonially-charged battlefield for centuries. The colonizer is obsessed with ‘saving’ her, undressing her, and killing her. Culturally, all of the intra-Muslim postcolonial frustration, impotence and angst is hung on her like a coat hanger of trauma and insecurities.

But the inverse, unseen reality of this is that the rooted, believing woman is a mirror of truth so powerful it can restore the world’s kilter. Fearless Muslim women are the class the Epstein cabal fears the most: for she represents the ultimate moral reminder of an extinct collective duties of honor and basic humanity. She is the witness. She represents the earthly/celestial. The strong/soft. The emotional/rational.

She is the Sovereign Woman, the holder of the balance this wounded world is sorely crying out for.

Some call this force the “sacred feminine.” Regardless of its name, what I call Sovereign womanhood is indeed a buried power, waiting to be sprung, strangulated beneath the weight of history, yet quietly preparing to take root and bring forth a different world.

Sovereign womanhood is not rooted in rebellion against masculinity, nor in the modern impulse to dissolve distinctions between men and women. It emerges instead from proximity to the shari’a as a wellspring of dignity, to Divine qualities that sustain life, neccesitate justice, and anchor human beings in the universals of mercy, dignity, and moral duty.

And the doyens of sovereign womanhood are our honored mothers. It is often forget that one lauded got resembling the Prophet ﷺ the most, is his daughter, the resplendent mother of believers, the matrilineal line bearer of the Aal al Bayt, the lady liege of the people of paradise, Fatima az-Zahra. They used to say of her, “her walk is exactly the same as that of the Messenger of Allah,” making Fatima both the figurative and literal feminine continuation of her father’s footsteps.

She moved in this world precisely as the Prophet ﷺ did.

This reminds us that the word rijāl means men, but also in Qur’anic terminology it means to be walking, to be literally upstanding.

Saintly women in West African Muslim circles are frequently referred to as a rijāl, not as biological men, but as spiritual men, as people carrying inner, spiritual distinction, wisdom and clarity of insight.

Shaykh Ibrāhim Niasse used to say, “secrets are in the hearts of the distinguished folk (rijāl), not in the bellies of books.” He also said, “Our women are like men and our men are like mountains.”

This framework invites women away from the noise of cultural expectation, political trauma and material excess, to step into the universe of Prophetic womanhood: a powerful, forgotten life force and primordial way of being in a world corrupted by brute power. She wears a metaphysical armor so powerful, it is indestructible.

For many companions, this power was literal. ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib narrated that in fierce fights, they hid behind the Prophet ﷺ for safety. In the Battle of Badr, Ali stated, “...when the fighting became very intense, we used to look for the Prophet & we used to hide behind him... He would walk all the way to the front & stand out there in the front line...”.

But for Palestinian women and female warriors of light the armor is figurative: they are also the upstanding rijāl, so to speak, carrying the Prophetic armor alone in the wilderness of the 21st century, when it feels like the whole world has both objectified and failed them.

So many faceless, nameless women the world over carry this heavy weight, this responsibility of the ummah on their backs. Their faith and resilience has produced generations of freedom fighters and fearless men and women. Their very existence revives what it means to live and breathe true faith, a faith beyond mere external symbols of private piety, a rooted faith that makes the mountains shake and tyrants crumble.

Palestinian mothers have been carrying an unfathomable load on behalf of the ummah: the weight of abandonment, the prayer niches of Al-Aqsa, a sea of tears, a grove ancient olive trees, the chains of the prisoners in Israeli torture dungeons, all on their weary shoulders and within the chambers of their beautiful hearts.

Their ribat (remaining steadfast in a besieged land) under impossible conditions is sustained through the stubborn insistence and ingenuity of women and mothers who feed their families when even when food became scarce, when even flour became soaked with blood. They stitch dignity from scraps, turning sacks into garments, and warm blankets from the cold stars, while demonic, supremacist, settler women use their strollers to block food aid from entering Gaza and cheer and sneer as Palestinians suffer and starve.

They nurture, sustain, and quietly generate hope, insisting on life against conditions that are designed to extinguish all traces of it. History will write down that the valiant ribat of Palestine has subsisted on the insistence of powerful, honorable, women who upheld their faith, who stayed true to their covenant with their Maker.

And the symbol for this historic ribat is the humble isdal, the prayer clothes of the Gazawi women. Their genociders ridicule them and their prayer clothes after exterminating them on TikTok. The same prayer clothes they would sleep in so that in case they are bombed, they made sure their bodies would not be found uncovered.

The humble isdāl is more precious than all the expensive, pricey oud-drenched, silken abayas of the decadent capitals of the Gulf. It is more precious than the finest haute couture of Paris and London, for their humble prayer clothes revived for us in real-time the valor of Nusaybah bin Ka’ab Radiya Allah anha, the companion who participated in the battles of Uhud, Hunain, and Yamamah.

The flowing isdāl of Gazan women calls to mind the steadfast grace of Sayyida Khadijah, who stood beside the Prophet ﷺ when the world turned against him—just as today the men of Gaza are maligned and defamed by those in power.

The simple prayer scarf evokes the quiet courage of Asma bint Abi Bakr, who, even while pregnant, fashioned her own belt to bravely carry sustenance and provision in dangerous conditions.

It calls to mind that searing moment when Sayida Zaynab, this Substack’s muse, when she was marched from Iraq to Damascus stripped of her head covering. Her first plea was not for food or water, but for her scarf, for dignity, even when everything else had been taken. There, in a moment intended to break her, the tyrant Yazid taunted her: “Did you see what Allah has done to your family?” But she answered with a defiance that has echoed across centuries: “I saw nothing from Him except beauty.”

Fourteen centuries later, that same testimony lives on in Gaza, constantly evoked by my dear sister, , who, despite having lost her four children, refuses to let their story be reduced to grief alone; she carries them forward through the force of her words and the steadiness of her faith, declaring once more: “I saw nothing from Allah but beauty.”

The betrayal, she reminds us, does not belong to the Allah—it belongs to the likes of those cowardly “Muslims” who quibble online over sectarian, theological, or gender wars, instead of rushing to fulfill the forgotten code of honor as protectors and as men, who failed their trust as khulafā’ lillāh.

Along with them, Gaza’s men and children were also abandoned. Gaza’s example refuses the shallow binaries of gender wars, because there, men and women have endured the 21st century nakba together. Fathers carrying children from rubble, sons digging graves with bare hands, husbands starving with their families rather than abandoning them.

The men of Gaza did not flee their covenant; many died trying to uphold it. They stood, often with impossible odds and abandoned by the world, between protecting their loved ones and annihilation.

The tragedy of this affair is not that modern Muslim masculinity itself failed, but that so much of the broader world reduced manhood to puffed up chests, pearl-clutching keyboard warriors, extra testosterone, subjugating women as objects and empty posturing while Gazan men reaffirmed it through the Prophetic ideal of active sacrifice, tenderness, endurance, and protection.

Palestinian women have long carried unbearable burdens, yes—but often alongside their men who bled beside them, were buried next to them, and together, they refused to surrender their land or their dignity. Both men and women were abandoned, left to shoulder horrors no human being should ever have faced alone. They redefined what it means to be truly sovereign. Zionism and its active bloodlust, then, is the real source of war on the Muslim family, not American culture wars.

Despite being the most dehumanized people on earth, they established a school of humanity, reviving a model of Islamic societal ethics for the 21^st century. Despite all, they still stand tall, and give birth to lessons of hope and resilience from the womb of tribulation, acting as living reminders that no other than Allah is worthy of obeying and fearing in reality, boldly proclaiming no/lā.

Despite living through the holocaust of our times, they still manage to turn their loss and pain ألم alam, into canvasses of beauty and أمل amal.

The intention is not to romanticize or valorize their suffering. The intention is to honor their struggle, to heed its lessons, as an āya, a sign for us, to awaken, introspect, and act. To re-assess our metrics.

Because the sovereign mothers and women of our time offer a radical redefinition of what beauty truly means. In this vapid world, beauty is often reduced to surgically modified faces, towering skylines, and hollow displays of luxury. To soulless Arab princesses and vapid influencers.

But to the mu’minīn, true beauty reveals itself in a rose pushing through rubble, in the worn hands of an elderly umm shahīd, in the tears of joy from a child completing his ḥifẓ in a tent, in the scarred body of a survivor who endures. It is in ṣabrun jamīl— beautiful patience—when every nuclear force demands them to surrender.

Muslim women have historically always acted as agents of difficult missions, as the foundational teachers of generations of warriors and scholars, as the ribat-sustainers, as the co-builders of civilization. Most importantly, Muslim women have served as moral reminders of duty for men, and have acted as vessels of truth and courage, especially when the ummah was weakest.

The battle for the soul of Islam right now has reached its zenith: Gaza has been the revealer. It exposed every hypocrite, every complicit entity, it ended the myth of the liberal “ruse-based” order, it has exposed every lie of liberalism and human rights.

The moral vacuum is so stark, it must be filled by those most licensed and equipped to inherit it.

And despite being the symbol that this system hates the most, the rooted, fearless, powerful Muslim woman, she holds up the clearest mirror to this system. This makes Muslim women not simply victims, but as the ones most positioned to offer a powerful antidote to all this neoliberal hypocrisy and moral decay. But so long as we are stuck within the realm of the cultural, legal and the rational arguments, we will not get very far.

To counteract this darkness, nothing short of a soul-based revolution will do.

An inner transformation, led by a light that emanates from the heart. Perhaps the very rage women have been taught to suppress as “too emotional” is, in truth, one of the last remaining forces capable of shaking this world from its cultivated indifference.

Perhaps the rage women buried for generations under the command to remain pleasant, composed, and quiet is precisely what will rupture this age of moral anesthesia.

May it become a furnace so fierce that it sets this ailing world ablaze, clearing the ground for another to be born; a world that teaches us once more what it means to be human, and what it means to live with Prophetic purpose.

Serious inner work is required of Sovereign Women. To walk away from the idols of one’s ego and constant need for external validation, from neo-jahili cultural norms or the status quo, to become vessels of truth-telling and upholding justice like our mothers currently living under unbearable conditions in their ribat or their prisons cells.

Ultimately, the “feminine” in Islam is sacred not because it is shallow, counter-cultural or transgressive, but because it carries a primordial amānah (a trust.) It is embodied today in Kashmir, through Asiya Andarabi’s defiance before tyranny. In Dr. Aafia Siddiqui’s steadfastness. Through the courage of Palestinian women despite facing abandonment and catastrophe. These women are not sanctified through their opposition to men, but through their direct dhawq (tasting) and witnessing of truth, achieving inner reliance on their Prophetic armor and upholding their covenant of sacrifice, patience, discernment, and internal, unyielding strength.

Thus, the sacred feminine is not a political or cultural category, but a metaphysical covenant, a pathway of revival for a holistic human code of ethics unbeholden to the shackles of perpetual victimhood or cultural baggage. It does not seek to erase men or compete with them, but to restore balance alongside righteous, Prophetic masculinity, each completing and dignifying the other under the sovereignty of Allah.

In a new dark age increasingly built on brute domination, immorality, and spiritual sterility, the feminine principle in Islam reminds humanity of the forgotten school of rahma (mercy), the sweet reckoning justice of al-Qahhar and the sanctity of life itself.

On this Mother’s Day, we must make a collective confession that we have failed our mothers and sisters like nani Asiya in Kashmir, Dr. Aafiya in Texas, or the women of Palestine. But their sacrifices cannot and will not go in vain.

They cannot keep sacrificing on behalf of the rest of us on the own. They remind us that we too must carry our sacred duty of walking in the footsteps of the past and present great lionesses of our time, to awaken the sleeping ummah, to inspire in our children and in the men in our lives what it means to be a shahada bearer for the final revelation in this most critical, existential time for humanity.

As Ibn ʿAtaʾillah taught centuries ago, “bury yourself in obscurity since what is not buried cannot truly grow.” And those who heed this aphorism best are the sovereign women of this cruel moment, hidden beneath rubble, grief, anonymity, and sacrifice, who carry within them the seeds of another world, because Allah often causes renewal to emerge precisely from what everyone else overlooks or discards.

From exhausted mothers, suffocated mourners, patient daughters, and forgotten widows will spring forth a moral horizon no tyrant can destroy: a world watered by a faithful mothers’ tears, ironed by the fire of suffering, and born from pained hearts that refused surrender.

So Salam, peace be upon our mothers and teachers, and upon all the martyred men, women and children of Palestine, Yemen, Iran, Sudan and Lebanon, who revived for us our hearts and awakened us from slumber to reorder our priorities.

Peace be upon our beloved mothers who carry the weight of the ummah on their shoulders but are promised heaven underneath their blistered feet.

May their sacrifices transform us, may we love them, may we serve them, and most of all, may we be granted the honor of carrying a bit of that heavy armor they have carried too long on their weary backs.

In times of pervasive moral rot and spiritual decay, one of the most potent antidotes is to actualize one’s own defense mechanism, to cultivate one’s in-built spiritual arsenal that exists already within each of us.

(I dissect that elusive, problematic term “spirituality” in other posts, here and here, but will use it anyway here for its universal, practical applicability.)

In this post, I wanted to offer some practical entry points for the spiritually exhausted seeker, for Muslims and non-Muslims alike. I am gratefully blessed with thousands of non-Muslim readers here at Sermons at the Court. I’d like to give them a shoutout for subscribing and being respectfully curious in this space that challenges dormant narratives around Islam and its place in the world.

You must see something enduring in Muslim voices outside the mainstream obsession and demonization of us.

So, thank you for being here.

Perhaps it is the ultimate Western civilizational boogeyman precisely because of the untapped forcefield it represents: its counteracting potential. Decades of hardwired indoctrination won’t tell you that Islam is meant to be a universal message of mercy for all. That the Prophet Muhamad ﷺ is just as much an emissary to California as he is to Iran. That Islam is not a secret club of “pious only” members. It is not just for Arabs or Pakistanis. It is not for those who are “perfect.”

It is a primordial path for the actualization of yearning souls. It is the way back home for the strangers. It is the path of Adam, Moses, Mary, Jesus and Abraham. It is the way of the birds, the trees, and the cosmos. It is the innate knowing of the baby, the bee and the whale.

When you quiet the noise of those who profess to monopolize it, Islam is in reality, painfully beautiful and expansive, and offers much more dynamism and latitude than even Christian religious or secular codes, but sometimes Muslims are the not the best ambassadors of our own faith.

To those who truly study the richness of Islamic creed and practice, one will quickly realize it is for the stragglers, the seekers, the vagabonds and sinners. It is a straight path, but it is not a narrow one; everyone is welcome on this messy marathon of returning to Source, even those who crawl or drag their way through life.

Away from colonially-driven, radicalized obsession and othering, many miss Islam’s universal expanse for every yearning, seeking soul to religare* (to bind back) to their primordial source: the One, (religare is the Latin word for "religion," based on the intrinsic bond or connection between humanity and God.)

A fierce battle is underway between the Prophetic and the profane. And the Prophetic path is the Creator’s blueprint for humanity. It is also a defense system against the spirituality of the Epstein class of cannibals and pedophiles that run the world.

So what is the Prophetic path? It is the understanding that human conduct matters, that humanity is not left haphazardly to fend for itself in the wilderness of creation. Rather, humanity is entrusted with a Divine code by which to live by, that He sent emissaries to humanity with a message to heed and obey. Hence, the Prophetic path is a commitment to that Divine code in lived and actualized ways, not in theoretical or abstract ways. It is a dam of protection, sanctity and meaning of the human experience.

Forces at war with Prophethood have been working hard to distort these teachings for millennia.

Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse of West Africa said that “when the enemies of Islam wanted to dismember it bit by bit, they made Muslims cast doubt on seeking knowledge from the ‘awliyā’ (the friends of God), then they made them desert the awrād (having a daily remembrance—dhikr— practice) then they made them desert the prayer (salat) and when they were through with all of that, they tried to turn the people away from Islam altogether.”

Restoring on the Prophetic path in age when the teachings of Abraham, Moses and Jesus and Mohammad—peace be upon them all—have been betrayed, is hence a form of resistance and resilience for a new dark age. It is not selfish and insular to cultivate a spiritual practice; it is a form of urgent spiritual combat.

Because Islam is both an embracing burda (cloak) for the beloveds and the believers, and a spear against the blasphemous and the bloodthirsty.

To make Islam a bit more accessible to seekers and non-seekers alike, I wanted to share these reflections I compiled over the years through travel, study and firsthand experience. It is my hope that these principles, so to speak, of practical Islamic spirituality, can act as an accessible entryway expansive entryway to anybody, no matter their background.

I also pray it is also useful for people who are Muslim and yet, were not taught Islam this way, for—insert a slew of postcolonial baggage, cultural or traumatic reasons here—.

This post is perhaps a little different than what you are used to on my platform, but I hope these reflections provide grounding in what I believe Islam truly is about, since I do base much of this Substack’s outlook and worldview on it.

Despite the rampant moral depravity and genocidal dystopia we are living in, there is true power in the limitless emancipatory and gentle outlook of Islam, one that can only be unlocked with sincerity and humility by anyone, anywhere.

May it be a balm for anyone who stumbles upon it.

And remember, no person, no construct, nor any force on earth can gate keep you from owning your relationship with yourself, and ultimately, your Creator.

Ten Principles of Islamic Spirituality for Tired Souls:

1) Mercy > Sins

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said, "When Allah created humanity, He wrote in the Book, which is with Him over His Throne: 'Verily, My Mercy prevails over My Wrath."

To believe that one’s shortcomings are too great and too severe for Allah to forgive them—that one is too terrible of a sinner or too wretched of a person, and hence, not worthy of knowing Allah—is one of the greatest self-made idols.

It is a self-made mental prison. Why choose to put your self in the idolatrous shackles of spiritual exile when you could have the comfort of constant, welcoming refuge?

In life, be like Moses and take off your sandals before entering—sandals being your preconceived ideas about yourself, your conditioning or what it means to be a “bad” person.

You are not “bad.” You are in essence continuously loved by Allah. Your existence is a miracle. Life is meant to break you and make you whole in cycles and stages. Do not let the mental chaos allow you to forget that you contain a whole universe within.

When we come to Allah bare-hearted and surrendered—when we hang the sandals of inner chatter for a minute—only then can we feel the rootedness beneath and realize: this affair is not about making a shrine out of me (my sins, my personality, my wretchedness, my shortcomings) after all. It is about surrendering to the Creator, whose very essence is Mercy.

What a relief!

And suddenly, the weight of our baked-in, hidden narcissism lifts bit by bit and we begin to realize: we are not a journey “back” to God, God never left in the first place. It is us who moved.

Put down the crucifix of your self-loathing which you stubbornly carry on your back and simply sit to watch a dew on a rose or a bird chirping on a branch. You will be so overcome with love and Divine beauty, that you realize what your soul always knew all along: that Allah did not create us to punish us, but to encompass everything and everyone with that sweet, drenching rain of love and mercy, which you are an integral part of.

Say, ‘God says, My servants who have harmed yourselves by your own excess, do not despair of God’s mercy. God forgives all sins: He is truly the Most Forgiving, the Most Merciful. (Az-Zumar 39:53)

2) All Good, All the Time

The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said:

“Amazing is the affair of the believer, indeed all of their affair is good and this is not for no one except the believer. If something of good/happiness befalls him/her, he/she is grateful and that is good for him/her. If something of harm befalls him/her and he/she is patient and that is good for him/her.”

When we ascribe or assign value to as “bad” or “good” things in our life, we don’t actually know whether a thing is bad or not for us.

Assigning value to life’s happenings it is akin to trapping the beautiful free bird of destiny in solitary confinement, not feeding it with the seeds of truth and the water of acceptance. By this confinement in the chokehold of our limited judgement, we arrogantly want to write our own story, when it was already penned by the Master Storyteller.

If the affairs of the believer are all good, all the time, regardless, then it becomes much easier to surrender beautifully in all states. This is why a mother in Gaza can bid her martyred son farewell, or a man in can look at the rubble of his home and say, “praise be to God”, alhamdulilah.

Neither joy nor calamity are in and of themselves ever-lasting, rather, it is the knowing that Allah can only decree good for a believer, at all times. It is enough of a balm for existence to know that everything is decreed by God, and hence, cannot but be good in reality. As my dear sister from Gaza writes, “How could the All-Wise decree any decree upon you except with precise wisdom?”

Perhaps you dislike something which is good for you and like something which is bad for you. Allah knows and you do not know. (Baqarah: 216)

3) Self-Flagellation is Not Holy. You Matter.

Similar to #1, people think that harsh self-criticism is a marker of humility. When one is always critical of their actions and intentions, always reprimanding themselves for what they said, how they spoke, how they represent themselves to the outside world, that must mean they are more pious than others.

However, turning away from self is turning away from God. After all, you are the only means for you to know God. No one else can do that for you. So when you reject yourself, it isn’t holy or good, you are rejecting God.

Sure, the self-critic in all of us is healthy in small doses, to protect from ostentation in general. However, the loud inner-critic can sometimes unknowingly become an idol: the constant urge to be better, to be perfect, is to put ourselves in competition with the Possessor of Perfection, Al-Kamil.

Even—or especially—seekers/aspirants fall prey to this the most.

Say to yourself, “Allah loves me, I am enough because I am the only vehicle available to me to reaching Allah, I am the only vessel I possess by which to know Him and that makes my existence profoundly intentional and important. If I discard or disrespect myself, it is not heroic or pious, rather, I am carelessly discarding my only path to Him.” This means caring for your body, mind, and soul in the best way you can is not selfish, it is a trust. It is a form of worship.

Indeed, Allah does not forgive associating others with Him ˹in worship˺,¹ but forgives anything else of whoever He wills. And whoever associates others with Allah has indeed committed a grave sin (An-Nisa:176)

4) Disbelief Takes Root in Concealment

Have you ever noticed how shameless and audacious Pharaohs, tyrants, butchers, liars and thieves are? You wonder to yourself: are they aware they are this evil? How are they not ashamed?

Well, they are not, because they have become expert morticians.

It starts small. Over time, they arrogantly bury and strangulate the signs and instead erect false gods made of their own delusions. They are very talented at dismembering the truth into separate parts, at digging graves, and burying deep, deep into themselves any idea of the Good, such that these things are so concealed, they barely exist in them anymore, and they no longer even recognize them in the world around them.

Linguistically, the word for disbelief, kufr in the Arabic language actually means to bury or conceal something. That's why in classical Arabic, a farmer – specifically the one who has the responsibility of sowing seeds is called a kafir in the Qur’an.

We think that disbelief is to deny or reject God, but in reality, it is covering up the bounties. The signs. The gifts. The truth.

Overlooking gratitude for the small things, compounded, appears to be a negligible act, but its septic stench seeps into the recesses of our hearts, taking root for greater disbelief, ingratitude, and ultimately—becoming totally eclipsed and ungrateful to God, making it easy to becoming oblivious to committing evil. و العياذ بالله

So take heed in the seemingly “small.” Don’t conceal the bounties you are given or the daily truth you that dwells within you out of foolishness or fear. Allow your soul the sunlight of brokenness, of vulnerability, of speaking truthfully and seeking the company of truthful people. Don’t look away from the good that exists always in your life and likewise, don’t bury or avoid injustices that are seemingly small. Commanding the good and enjoining injustice is one of the best ways to avoid arrogant disbelief.

See how they will lie about themselves and how those ˹false gods˺ they fabricated will fail them? (Ana’m: 24)

5) Revelation is Tailor Made for You

The Final Revelation to all humanity, the Qur’an, is not a history book. It is not merely a book of laws. It is not meant to be gate-kept by scholars or clerics. It is spiritual GPS to form your consciousness. It speaks directly and empathetically to you, reaching into your heart and squeezing its ventricles in such a way that only the One who sent you here understands. It is a manifesto against all manners of injustice; injustice against the self, and against others.

Take Pharaoh, who is often mentioned in the Qur’an. More than a historical figure, Pharaoh is a pattern, a model of tyranny. A person who loves power and believes themselves above everyone else. And that pattern exists today and everyday since the creation of time. You might see it in a ruler, in a boss, or even within yourself when you try to dominate others.

Or take the model of Qarun, the wealthy, powerful figure who aligned himself with Pharaoh and Haman against Moses. Qarun is a model of the person who attributes everything to himself. When he gained wealth, he said: “I was only given it because of knowledge I possess.” As if to say: “I earned this. I’m intelligent. I’m strong. No one helped me.” How many of us knowingly or unknowingly carry this mindset? When we gain status or wealth, we say: I achieved this. No one else had anything to do with it. This is the Qarunic pattern of more hidden self worship.

You see, the Qur’an is alive. It speaks to you and about you directly without intermediaries. It is not only prophets and messengers who are chosen, you are also chosen. Yes, none of us can be a prophet anymore, but each one of us can be a friend of God (a wali) or a better yet, a knower of God (arif/arifa billah.)

Each of us has been given a unique heroes’ journey scripted on a primordial tablet. An odyssey tailored specifically for us to live out, since before we were born, like an epic saga on the screen of existence. No one can live that saga for us, we are its main characters.

In this saga, we often play the role of different archetypes. Today, in times of crisis, it is enough to read the chapter on the Battle of the Confederates (al-Ahzab) to understand these different roles and our place within them. The Qur’an doesn’t outline the details of the battle, rather, it provides us with something more important: there are always four types of people who emerge in times of turmoil:

A skeptical group that constantly doubts the cosmic codes.

A discouraging, naysaying, defeatist group that says it’s pointless to confront evil.

A fleeing, fearful group that hides behind excuses.

And a steadfast group that says: “This is what Allah promised us.”

Especially in this age of upheaval, we are clearly seeing these four archetypes present themselves cyclically from warriors, to leaders to scholars. The Qur’anic symbols are clearly present in every struggle between truth and falsehood. Once you recognize them, you can apply them to your own place vis a vis in the struggle between good and evil.

But revelation only takes root in your life when you apply it to yourself. You must read it, ponder on it, and ask: Which group am I in? You may discover that you carry something of all four. In one moment you are steadfast; in another, you are doubtful. So strive to be with the firm, the steadfast, and fight your own Qarunic or Pharaonic tendencies and inclinations.

But knowing that the revelation is tailored specifically to speak to your heart at all times is an incredibly freeing lens to approach the Qur’an with. Next time you sit down with the final revelation for humanity, ask yourself: how does Allah want to shape my consciousness through these verses?

6) Islam is not a spectator sport. God is not a score keeper in the sky.

One does not enter heaven by one’s own deeds, but by mercy alone.

Do not be like that perfect worshipper who asked God to enter heaven with his actions, who, when all his good works were weighed on a scale, they would barely amount to the the single Divine gift of eyesight.

Ultimately, one does not enter heaven through one’s deeds, rather, through grace and mercy alone.

So cease the hidden idolatry of worshipping “Islam”, fiqh, or your own piety.

Your humility, even the idea that you are “good” could only have come to you by permission of the endless generosity and grace of the One. It is unbecoming of a ‘abd Allah to laud an idol you fashion with your own hands: your piety. So worship Allah by drawing nearer to mercy not to simply score, or accumulate points, with Allah.

7) You cannot save anyone but yourself.

Last Eid, a neighbor who is from the Persian diaspora was shocked I gifted her Eid cookies, as I usually do. She said “we are not religious because the regime… in Iran… the Ayatollahs…” I said, “I’m aware of that dynamic, but you can’t let your hatred of “the regime” define your spirituality. Don’t let [your perception] of the Ayatollah get in the way between you and God.” Needless to say, she was speechless but oddly thankful. I am not sure she will be knocking on my door for a cup of sugar anytime soon, but she is always welcome.

When we return to our maker in the grave, the excuses we make for why we never actualized the meaning of our existence and our relationship with Allah will not save us. We cannot carry another soul to shore or ask another soul why they did not save us. We can only learn how not to drown.

The Qur’an settles this for us with searing clarity:

“No bearer of burdens shall bear the burden of another.” (6:164)

Each soul stands alone before Allah—unshielded, untransferred, unrepresented.

We cannot compel guidance for even those most beloved to us, be they direct family members of loved ones:

“You do not guide whom you love, but Allah guides whom He wills.” (28:56)

So the hardest work returns inward:

“O you who believe, upon you is [the care of] your own souls…” (5:105)

You can only save yourself, not others. However, you can “save” others by making your heart a sovereign island of being alone with the Alone. Strive to become a beacon of light, so much so that you become a means for people to see the light just by means of your existence alone, rather a “holier than thou” judge or savior, which nobody likes to be around.

Individual agency is the most powerful and comforting reality about Islam.

We will not be judged as a collective nation, group, or even family, but as unique, singular, individual souls, alhamdulilah.

This is a blessing, but also the beginning of the heading the call of taklīf (responsibility) to throw away the hidden cudgels we depend as excuses that prevent us from self-actualizing.

8) Time is But a Drop

The Prophet ﷺ said:

“What is the dunya (lower abode) compared to the Hereafter except like one of you dipping his finger into the sea—then let him see what it returns with.”

In other words: that thin film of water clinging to your finger when you pull it out, represents the entirety of this world compared to the vast ocean of the Hereafter.

So even our perception of time is skewed and constructed, and therefore, it is not real. If time is but a film of water on your finger, if it glistens for a breath, then slips away, then give it is proper due, no more, no less.

“On the Day they see it, it will be as though they had remained but an evening or a morning.” (79:46)

Dunya is a but a passing shimmer. It is however, the only means we have of knowing Allah, and hence, it is important, but it is not lasting.

After all, Islamic history did not begin in 7th century AD. It began with the creation of the human soul. That primordial moment when Allah asked each oft us, “am I not your Lord?” and we all testified, “Bala.” Indeed. So time itself began then, not in some arbitrary, linear, marker.

That being the case, do not cling to fixed perceptions of time as eternal, nor neglect it as if it is nothing.

“Seek, through what Allah has given you, the Hereafter—but do not forget your share of the world.”(28:77)

What was designed as a mere drop on your finger, was never meant to take up space as a whole ocean in your heart. Remember its place and keep it there, and watch your worldly worries magically shrink.

9. Gratitude is Harder Than Patience

I once visited the former Palestinian political prisoner, Dr. Sami al-Arian, after he was released from prison in his home in 2008. I asked him what he learned most from his experience in jail after 5 and a half years behind bars. He said, “gratitude is more difficult than patience.”

I will never forget that.

It is because gratitude for the air that we breathe, for the eyes which we see with, for our fingers that move freely and the blood that is pumped in our veins without our awareness or control can never truly be fully commensurate for every minuscule blessing we are given.

Calamity, on the other hand, strikes us and rouses us with its jalal (might) so it is easier to be patient when a “bad” thing befalls us, because we have no choice, rather than grateful for all the blessings we don’t even recognize.

Hence, gratitude is an extremely difficult station to hold but, we ask Allah to grant us the gift of a constantly grateful heart, one the does not bury or overlook the Divine gifts.

“And few of My servants are truly grateful.” (34:13):

10. Allah is Known Through Liminalities

Human beings seek certainty and control, but the truth is, Allah is known in the ambiguous edges, that moment when we finally unclasp our grip on certainty into the expanse of surrender.

“He merges the night into the day and the day into the night.” (35:13)

lbn ʿArabī writes in his al-Futūḥāt that “the heart comes to know Allah through the alternation of states.” Therefore, creation itself is structured through contrasts:

“Things are made clear by their opposites.”

Allah is known through His Names, al-Qābiḍ / al-Bāsiṭ (The Constrictor / The Expander), al-Khāfiḍ / al-Rāfiʿ (The Abaser / The Exalter).

Therefore, we cannot know expansion without contraction, nor mercy without awe.

We are designed as creatures of limits, yet, our very purpose is to be led to the One without limit.

We fear Him and obey, and in that fear, we are guarded, but we also We love Him, and in that love, we are drawn and consumed.

If we were angelic beings who merely obey, and if life were only joy, it would not be worth living.

The meaning of life is born through liminalities, contradictions and tensions.

After all, we can only enjoy a symphony when it is punctuated by silence, because without pauses, rests, and spacing, it would just be a continuous blur of noise. We can only taste joy because sorrow hollowed out space for it, and we recognize sorrow because we experienced what was once fleeting joy.

And so, oscillating between expanse and constriction, joy and sorrow, pain and ease, knowing and unknowing, this makes up the staccato of existence in the saga of life. These ebbs and flows all exist within the singular womb of creation—all contained within a single terrarium, so to speak— meaning there is no actual separation between us and God.

This lack of separation—that He is closer to us than our jugular vein—is simultaneously the thickest veil but the grandest comfort to help us endure even the bitterest of trials on this temporary, short, path called life.

For we are with the One, and we returning constantly to Him, there was never any veil, separation at all.

Only union, only One.

Alhamdulilah.

*Any good in this post belongs to Allah alone. Any mistakes are mine.

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In these times of empire collapse, I recall Surat ar-Rum, which begins with غُلِبَتِ ٱلرُّومُ “The Romans have been defeated.”

While Rūm here refers to the Byzantine empire when they fought the Persian Empire in the 7th century, Rūm is interpreted by some scholars to mean Europe, Rome, or the West broadly in the contemporary sense.

Immediately following the verses on the victory and defeat of a civilization as powerful as ar-Rum, Allah posits two questions:

As if a postmortem diagnosis for defeat, we are being shown that the pathways for civilizational triumph lie in the imperative of introspection into two things: ourselves and the past.

This stark inability for self-examination is marked in the words of the demagogues who brought us this new dark age themselves.

For example, Marc Andreessen, Silicon Valley venture capitalist recently boasted he practices “zero introspection.” He joked that he simulates a “tiny Peter Thiel” on his shoulder to argue with and maintain objectivity.

God help us.

Recalling Palantir and other murderous technologies, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the giant eye of Sauron is the symbolic manifestation of the Dark Lord’s malice, unceasing vigilance. It pierces through shadows of “cloud, and earth, and flesh” to observe Middle-earth. But it only looks outward, never within.

Like the ghastly clock tower of Al-Sa’ud, it hovers over the Ka’ba, but does not see it.

On the other hand, there are some tyrants that do look into the past, but arrogantly do not heed its lessons, and worse, weaponize it for their pernicious interests.

The architect of the ongoing massacres for the expansionist aims of the Greater Israel project, Benjamin Netanyahu, recently publicly boasted that he is reading a book entitled The Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion Against the World's Mightiest Empire, and remarked, “We lost that one”, I think we have to win the next one,” almost as a declaration of war, of direct defiance against the West that propped him up. Warning those who are waking up to the ruse they tried so long to uphold: stoking fears of a shari’a takeover to cover for the fact that a Zionist one already has.

Make no mistake, this welcome but long overdue decoupling from Zionism—which only a few years ago seemed impossible—this awakening happening at a global and American national scale now, with even neocon and “count-terror” hawks speaking strongly against Zionism such as Tucker Carlson or Candace Owens (with now, even the Pope and countries like Spain, are defying Israel, too) did not come about due to a sudden moral awakening.

Rather, this radical shift in global opinion is due to the sacrifice of lone resistors in Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran that allowed people to witness the true horrors of this sadistic ideology and its takeover.

Let the record clearly show this.

But the uncomfortable truth is one that even some in the Muslim community would be hard pressed to confess this fact. (They might, one day, when it’s too late, one day soon, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.)

Who would have thought that MAGA Republicans would come around faster than UAE-aligned Muslims?

This proves that all along, when these Muslims were preaching to us about “peace,” they were actually preaching a theology of defeatism.

For example, at the height of the genocide, a conservative professor at a Muslim liberal arts college in Berkeley wrote: “Martyrdom is not a strategy: some showcase Imam Hussein’s challenge of Yazid’s authority and King Faisal b. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz’s oil embargo against the West as decisive victories for Muslims and Islam. But both cases are examples of political failure because neither achieved their worldly goals.”

Never mind that he calls Imam Hussein a “failure.”

Never mind that Allah does not actually ever commands victory of the believers, only striving, struggle and sincerity.

Never mind that doing what you can, however limited, is Qur’anic dictum: “prepare whatever you can, to deter, to terrify the enemies of God,” as testament in this verse:

The real problem with those will try to sell you this theology of defeatism is that it only holds the powerless accountable. It cynically trains Muslims to fear worldly loss more than injustice, to value survival over truth, and reinterpret surrender as “wisdom.”

Arguments that place the onus of “failure” as only falling on the victims of monstrous state terrorism, instead of the offensive state terrorists themselves become automatically defunct.

In their efforts to rise above impious, degenerate culture wars—so as to appear more “rational and pious,” than “radical Islamist woke Muslims”, they tragically over correct so far right, that they begin to think themselves as better than these “angry” and “emotional” Muslims for their ability they to undergo a “sober” analysis in the middle of genocide.

But by equating the real, actual lives of Muslims victims = victimhood culture proves that rightwing Islam cannot see a version of Islam that exists beyond American culture wars. Any understanding of Islam that is reactionary rather than rooted in first principles, will sadly be doomed to stasis. It is more susceptible to heresy, to being morally tone deaf, and thus, a fossilized postmodern construct. The irony.

Yet, on some level there is some truth here, martyrdom is not actually spoken of as a strategy, Islamically speaking.

In the Qur’an and sunnah, martyrdom is a testimony. For a Muslim, basic belief is that it can’t ever really be a loss, neither in this life or the next, period. It is the gift of eternal life that God doesn’t bestow upon just anyone, only the best of us.

It is something that happens to you. Most Muslims facing monstrous violence don’t want to die. They love life.

But they are killed. Therein lies the difference.

Even a non-Muslim Hindu poet, Tagor, could see this universal truth about Imam Hussain’s victory: “In order to keep alive justice and truth, instead of an army or weapons, success can be achieved by sacrificing lives, exactly what Hussain did.”

Taking this Machiavellian—and ironically more secular than Islamic logic—to its fullness and the entire worldview of Islam’s core, animating ethic of justice—the very spirit of the Qur’an—collapses. The Qur’an does not frame those who are killed in the path of Allah as merely failed actors in a miscalculated plan, rather as those who attain eternal life for fulfilling their covenant, for remaining true to what they promised God, precisely because so few people wanted to do it.

Shahada is the highest act because it is the most active testimony of faith: that a soul is entirely entrusted to God, that it is a small price to pay for the truth to continue on living. It draws power from Divine calculus, not temporal, insecure, manmade frames.

The Qur’an never promises that every confrontation yields the immediate upper hand, victory or dominance. But it does establish a sunna kawniya (a cosmic law):

Without resistance → corruption spreads → collapse becomes inevitable

With resistance → truth is preserved → victory remains possible (in Allah’s time)

“And if Allah did not repel some people by means of others, the earth would be corrupted…” (2:251)

Shahada acts as a line in the sand that no empire, no worldly authority and no calculation can erase, as proven by this belated but welcome global awakening against Zionism we are witnessing. Otherwise, if we think Allah would really permit all this bloodshed to go in vain, this signals serious deficient belief.

Because taken to its full conclusion, where does one draw the line of practical pragmatism before departing entirely from the Qur’anic imperative of confronting injustice? According to this logic, Prophet Musa was a naïve instigator for confronting Pharaoh because he was simply too powerful. Dawud had no business confronting Jalut, nor Ibrahim Nimrod.

According to this logic, the 2 million martyrs during 132 years of French colonization in Algeria died in vain. As did the Dervish resistance in Somalia, which resulted in the shahada of one third of Northern Somalia’s population. Same thing for Imam Shamil of the Caucuses, was a “fool” for resisting Russian imperial forces for 25 years, being crushed militarily and dying in exile.

Similarly, it’s not British repression that is the problem when talking about the 1919 Urabi revolt in Egypt, and it’s not the Egyptian security state that led to the Raba’a Massacre of 2013, the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single place.

This logic casts out most of Islamic military history as invalid.

This theology of defeatism in the garb of sensibility will also have you think that Malcolm spoke too truthfully and hence, too foolishly. That the Muslim slave rebellions in the Americas were not tactical and patient enough, that the lives of the quarter million shuhada in Gaza or the schoolgirls of Minab went in vain, well, because they did not achieve what the subjective, changeable human calculus of what is apparent “victory.” This dangerous heretical theology disciplines the oppressed into silence by redefining dignity as brute “inefficiency”

This kind of thinking drags the bar so low that even the bare minimum defiance is considered radical according to this logic: even King Faisal made a mistake when he deployed economic pressure in the US via the oil embargo in the 70s.

No wonder there are many who scoffed at the Islamic Republic of Iran’s small defiance for closing the Sraight of Hormuz and fighting in the only way it can: economic pressure. (No mention of the long record of crippling sanctions against a Muslim country who dared to inch towards a modicum of sovereignty. No, for the prudent and sensible folks, only Muslims are wrong when they choose to “recklessly” assert a shred of dignity and honor, apparently.)

Arguably, many analysts say that Iran won the war with the U.S. and Israel, primarily because the regime survived and retained control of the Strait of Hormuz despite significant military losses. While the U.S. achieved superior kinetic results, the conflict ended in a strategic stalemate that fundamentally hindered its goals.

Besides, a plethora of military setbacks were not actually indicative of overall failure or defeat, even for the Prophet Muhammad himself ﷺ.

Even his staunchest enemies testified to this.

While leading a trading caravan in Syria, the Prophet’s archenemies at the time, Abu Sufyan was summoned to Jerusalem by the ruler Heraclius, who had received a letter from the Prophet ﷺ inviting him to Islam.

Heraclius asked several probing questions (via a translator) to verify the authenticity of this prophethood, demanding truthfulness from Abu Sufyan. He asked him:

“Have you ever fought Muhammad in wars?” Hercules questioned.

“Yes”, answered Abu Sufyan

“What has been the result?” Hercules asked

“Sometimes we have won, sometimes he”, replied Abu Sufyan.

“What does he teach?” asked Hercules

“To worship One God, join no partners with Him, carry out your prayers, be chaste, speak the truth and keep union with your relatives”, answered Abu Sufyan,

Even Abu Sufyan was surprised at himself for listing the truth of these teachings. Hercules stood up and said, “If all you said is true, then I am sure that this Prophet’s Kingdom will reach here where I am standing. I was certain that a Prophet was coming, but I didn’t know that he would be born in Arabia. If I were to go there, I would embrace Islam and wash the Prophet’s feet with my own hands.”

Heracules was not told, “Muhammad won every battle,” he was told, “sometimes he lost, sometimes he won.”

If our view of history starts from 1948, or October 7th, 2023, then sure, all short-sighted people can see is “losses.” But these battles being waged are cumulative. They are comprised of centuries of resisting unexamined supremacy and arrogance, and they are bearing fruit: you would be blind not to be hearing the death knell of a system that has arguably been subsisting on exploitation and pillaging of brown, black and Muslim folk since 1492. The Qur’anic worldview does not ask, “Did you win this century long struggle immediately?” rather, it asks, “Did you stand, or did you yield?”

But defeatist and cynical reactions are actually revelatory and illustrative because they verify that throughout Muslim legacies resisting brutal injustice, three clear camps emerge according to Iranian revolutionary thinker Ali Shari’ati:

1. First, who do not die, those live forever, those who are Hussain-like, the men and women who remain true to what they promised God. These are the embodiments of the Imam Hussain, who, against impossible odds, preferred the lonely path of active witnessing and sacrificing over subjugation and resignation against their own selves.

2. Those who do not attain shahada, those who await, those who perform Zainabic acts of protecting their truth and speaking it. To be like Zaynab bint Ali is to speak a courageous word in the face of a tyrant in the court of her families’ killers, the court of Yazid and Damascus. The mandate of being Zaynabic truth-tellers and witnesses here in the West, where the ceiling for freedom of speech anywhere in the world, becomes the bare minimum requirement.

3. Lastly, Shari’ati cautions, between the Hussayns and the Zaynabs there is no third way: Only the way of Yazid, those who chose the expedient path of power and the dunya calculus of “loss”.

Those who internalize Islamophobic “war on terror” rhetoric, yes, even those on the liberal camp, the fence-sitters who demonize and distant themselves from fellow believers for their sacrifices. Those who stubbornly cling to double consciousness.

Those who have been passed a bloodied baton and choose to look away from it, reminding us, the words of our great American shahid Malcolm, that the house negro and liberal fox are equally culpable: resembling those in the Qur’an who said, “Our Lord, why have You ordained fighting for us? If only You had delayed us for a short time!” (Surah An-Nisa 4:77)

If we are too cowardly to walk the path of Hussain, if we can’t live up to the native Muslim American legacy of confronting slavery and tyranny, then at the very least, let us must not throw our brethren sacrificing life and limb under the bus, neither with cowardly liberal silence nor direct complicity.

This is not woke impiety. This is basic Islam 101. Anyone who tries to erase this understanding of Islam serves one interest and one interest only: that of Zionism.

Because history has proven that struggles for liberation are most often delayed or obstructed not by external, obvious enemies, but the fear-shackled, mentally occupied collaborators within. Those who pragmatically distance themselves for the Hussains—from the 19^th century anti-colonial Sufi scholar warriors I study, to the ragtag lone wolves fighting this supremacist machinery of death in Sudan, Congo, Lebanon or Gaza as we speak.

Because it is not just MAGA-aligned Muslims who do this: how often do we consciously or unconsciously view them through an internalized Islamophobic rhetoric, through colonial or security state lens, as too “radical,” too “reckless”?

How many of us buy into futility of resistance discourse, how many passively accept as universal fact that “Islamic resistance” is a taboo never to be uttered, the third rail, the ultimate Western civilizational boogeyman? Of fear masquerading as prudence?

When we do this, we inadvertently kill our brethren abroad because godless potentates for violence like the Zionists and Christian Zionists can lead humanity off the cliff without any faith-based counter pressure or deterrence.

Perhaps what this system convinced you is the pinnacle of evil is exactly what the world needs: justice through the tawhidic equilibrium. No more Judeo-Christian religious and secular tyranny while Islam is demonized and slashed quietly, bleeding in the corner of history.

The more they try to make Islam the pariah the more apparent the bankruptcy of the structures that claimed to represent order, morality, and authority in Islam’s absence.

A response to the futility of resistance comes from 1871 in Algeria.

At ripe old age of 80 years old, the elderly Shaykh Mohannad Meziene Alhaddad, leader of the Rahmaniyya Sufi order, took up arms against the French and conscripted 100,000 murids to fight. They lost that battle badly and Shaykh Alhaddad was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, but he foresaw that it would only be 5 days, and he passed on the 5th day.

One of his companions asked him: “since you knew that we were going to lose, why did you call for the mobilization?”

The Shaykh said:

You see, for most Muslims fighting disproportionate state violence, it is because the worldly odds are stacked impossibly against them that this increased them in fearlessness, fervor and faith.

To them, the more expedient path of collusion and the mirage of worldly safety signify true spiritual loss. Even Prophets reached a point there was no way they could win, and almost resigned to hopelessness, حتى إذا استيأس الرسل وظنوا أنهم قد كذبوا جاءهم نصرنا “even messengers thought they were rejected by Allah but patiently endured rejection and persecution until Our help came to them.”

The Prophetic blueprint of resistance is one of planting a bitter tree between them and the unjust so that this might act as a timeless faruq—a clear differentiator— or future generations, otherwise, how can we tell the difference between a colonizer from a native, an Abu Bakr from a Abu Jahl, Moses and a Pharaoah, an Abraham from a Nimrod, or it today’s world, a Muslim from a Zionist?

Because when the lines blur between sincere belief and hypocritical disbelief, it is this state that should terrify us.

When these lines blur, it is arguably this condition that leads to true political, moral and civilizational defeat.

After all, it was a freedwoman who snitched on the Muslim rebels of the Malě revolt of 1835. It was the Hashemites in Mecca, working with the British that led to fall of the Muslim caliphate. It was the “pragmatic” Sanussi colonial collaborators that led to the execution of the “Lion of the Desert” Umar al-Mukhtar in Libya, who wouldn’t bend the knee. It was after all “friends” who betrayed Malcolm, which ultimately led to his assassination.

After all, is the level-headed and “tactical” Palestinian Authority, with its treasonous security coordination with Zionist forces that kills young men in the West Bank daily. It is the “sober and strategic” Lebanese government putting daggers into the back of the resistance in the South as we speak.

So, it is not enough to look down on the unexamined souls of obvious enemies.

Lest we too neglect to introspect and look to the state of ourselves, who’s to say we are immune from going down with this Leviathan as it crashes too?

Muslims and indigenous people have perhaps been the primary group pummeled into a pulp by this system, and so long as we can still undergo self-examination, still show humility, still look at the past and heed its lessons, still shed fears and attachments to this dunya, the flip side to this carnage, is that we have not been defeated, yet.

Victory, like defeat, is conditional upon the quality of our introspection, and it must be commensurate with the sincerity of our faith.

What is important is locating our own positionality in relation to the inevitable reckoning this arch of the moral universe is bending towards.

Time and time again history and revelation prove this universal fact: true moral failure would have been if no Hussaini defiance at Karbala occurred at all—no rupture, no Zaynabi witness, no distinguishing criterion, no bitter tree planted for future generations and no baton of dignity to be passed to us.

For us in waiting, then, true failure is to lose the resolve to confront injustice.

And for the love of God, if you are too afraid to walk the path of Hussain or Zaynab, then at the very least, do not stand in their way, because whether you realize it or not, they are fighting a thankless fight on behalf of those cowardly actors playing it “safe”, the fence-sitters, cynics, naysayers and straddlers, too.

Between the two paths two there is no other way.

There can only be defeat.

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.” -Marcus Tullius Cicero

From the blood-soaked land of Karbala to Salahuddin’s recapture of Jerusalem, existential civilizational battles such as the one we are undergoing today point to this unavoidable reality: it is always the enemy within that impairs struggles for liberation the most.

Before he directly fought the Crusaders, Salahuddin made sure to clean up house first. He struggled to conscript and unite the hearts of the Muslims as one body. His biggest battle was not the one in Jerusalem: it was with fellow Muslims who had grown too accustomed to the humiliating taste of the mud of degradation in their mouths, whether in Damascus or Cairo.

Before going after the external enemy, he embarked on the hardest battle of all: the occulted, internal one. For the hypocrites, collaborators and defectors to be vanquished first.

Contemporary Libyan historian ‘Ali Sallābi’s comprehensive work on the topic, Salahuddin’s Efforts in Destroying the Fatimid Dynasty and Consequently Freeing Bayt al-Maqdis, confirms this: that victory did not begin on the battlefield of Hittin. Rather, it began in Cairo, where he worked to dismantle a political order that could not—and would not—align itself with the Islamically mandated demands of liberation from external subjugation, repression and invasion.

Today, the failure to understand that we reliving the exact same moment is Islam’s greatest existential internal battle yet.

Many Muslims still think that a free Palestine is a separate matter from the war in Iran, the past wars in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan and Sudan, forgetting that they are one body in reality. Some have thankfully begun to realize that colonially carved nationalisms are dangerous, but they have not been able to take this realization one step further: that our own leaders and countries are occupying Palestine, too. They are the Occulted Occupiers.

Every delay in realizing this fact is emboldening the ambitions of Zionist Crusaders, who subsist on our decimated consciousness, proving that there is nothing more dangerous than the cancer of mental and spiritual colonization.

When we say a free Palestine will not be achieved before a free Mecca, free Amman, free Cairo, etc. this is not hyperbolic. It is the only viable strategy for a ravaged ummah fighting its most critical fight yet.

What stands in the way of unity, dignity, and resistance is the total removal of the internal occupiers and renewal from the ground up, and nothing less. Yes, the Sykes-Picot world is being redrawn, and now the populations of these countries have a choice: will Arab states continue to be vassaled further and subsumed under the dominion of “Greater Israel” or will these lands rise up and unite against the colonially installed puppets, as they should have over a century ago?

Because each moment spent in sedation is a blood-bound time bomb attached to the false idols modern Muslims still bow down to, despite living through a live-streamed genocidal hellscape. Now that nuclear brinkmanship is here, awakening and clear articulation is no longer a choice, nor a luxury. The road to Jerusalem goes through inroads of the enemy within. It is the only way.

Just as Fatimid Egypt blocked the liberation of Palestine for being structurally too compromised, the Sykes Picot states that sustain the architecture of external control cannot plausibly claim to anchor any project of true emancipation.

In fact, today these states are arguably worse because they act as military basis, as Crusader hatchlings, poisoning a large swath of Muslim majority lands.

Some, like Majid al-Kilani in his popular book, This is How the Generation of Salahuddin Emerged, have pushed the narrative that it was primarily Islamic education, ijāzas and al-Ghazali’s teachings that led to the ecosystem that paved way for a generational shift that allowed someone to emerge.

But this romantic, neo-traditionalist reading of the past atones the ruling elite from their duties. It erases the fact that what made Salahuddin’s victory possible was not his ijazas not even military genius, but his crystal clear vision and his audacity to identify the hypocritical enemies within the ummah that collaborated and colluded with the Crusaders. It was his relentless recognition that no external occupier, however brutal, can endure without occulted, internal enablers.

When Salahuddin went after the Fatimid dynasty in Egypt, he did not simply go after it because it was Shi’a polity as many “Ahlul Sunnah bros” on the internet would have you believe. Yes, he surely diverged from it on creedal matters, but he mainly went after it because it was a weak system of rule that kept the ummah from achieving real unity.

By the time Crusaders made landfall and established their presence in Jerusalem, Fatimid Egypt was a corrupt, compromised corpse, a weak polity that was in no way equipped to face itself, let alone the ruthless Crusader army. It was hollowed from within. A politically fragmented, spiritually compromised, and strategically incoherent ailing body.

The corrupt ruling elite were no better: they presided over a society rife with ossified, fossilized, dogmatic Islamic authority, competing tribalist factions within the ranks of the ‘ulama’, replete with palace intrigues, and bureaucratic self-preservationists that worked against any meaningful commitment to the Islamic principles of governance and collective resistance.

Simply put, to free Jerusalem, Salahuddin challenged the occult occupiers: his fellow Muslims of Egypt first for their refusal to undertake the Islamic duty of acting as a resisting force to the Crusaders.

The Fatimids then, like the Arabs today, subsist on the pretense of belonging to the world of Islam as a mere cosmetic ornament. They both opt for the short-term lulling pacifier of safety, stability and the status quo. It is important to stress Fatimids were not fought because of mere intra-Muslim theological divergence only, rather, because they promoted a theology of impotence and subservience to Crusader presence. They became a cancer metastasized as an existential impediment for ummatic sovereignty, a key source of Islamic civilizational paralysis.

Then, like now, the very moment when the Crusader threat intensified, instead of fighting back, Fatimid Egypt became a theater of cowardice, capitulation and hesitation. Their modus operandi was to rule by tyranny and fear, not virtue nor ethics. They desperately negotiated shady political alliances with the Crusaders based on a fickle, immoral calculus of brute political survival, no matter the cost, no matter if Islam or Islam’s holiest sites survived or not. The result was a fractured front, a delayed response, and a prolonged occupation.

Sound familiar?

Salahuddin, then, understood what many in the Sunni world today refuse to confront: that unity requires the active surgical removal of the cancerous mass of straddlers, hypocrites and collaborators within. The chauvinism of some in Sunni circles who would rather live under compromised Arab Sunni Zionist hatchlings than ally with the Shi’a today, is simply put, putrid tribalism and betrayal.

Like the Bani Isra’il of contemporary Islam, Gulf Arabs act as if they have de facto supremacy over others for their Arabness, but the greatest defenders of Islam were not Arab. After all, Salahuddin was a Kurd, Mehmet II was a Turk, Salman al-Farsi, a Persian member of the Aal al-Bayt. In 1965, 20th century Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse of West Africa said that إن الإسلام بيقى ببقاء العرب، ويقوى بالمسلمين غير العرب. وهذه الحقيقة ظاهرة للعيان وليس بعد العيان بيان. “Islam is strengthened by non-Arab Muslims. This truth is evident to the eye—there is no clarification after direct witnessing.”

The uncomfortable question, becomes then, is whether today’s Sunni Arab states resemble Fatimid Egypt. On a surface, creedal level, they do not. Fatimid theology was based on an esoteric, Ismai’li Shi’i theology, which arguably made it easier to de-emphasize collective creedal duties such as jihad.

But one could say that Sunni states have replaced Fatimid esotericism with Madkhali state worship born out of the spread of Wahhabi petro-dollar Islam. It systematically buried the Islam of justice. A different kind of occultation.

Both are creedal aberrations, since both deform the message of Islam by making it more of a blunted, dunya-malleable dogma than a lived Prophetic path. Clearly, the most surefire way to desecrate Islam and make it fodder for tyrants is to de-emphasize its core duty of resistance to injustice.

The litmus test of Muslim sovereignty today, in the Prophet’s time, in the Crusader era was and always remains, the insistence to bite into the command of jihad with one’s molar teeth.

Symbolic desecrations aside, even though the obvious creedal and ideological postures of Fatimid Egypt and Sunni Arab states differ, what matters most here is that they undoubtedly resemble each other in function.

For what does it mean when contemporary Muslim lands that speak the external, symbolic language of Islam and house its holiest sites, while simultaneously cravenly host foreign military bases on their lands? What does it mean when sovereignty of Muslim-majority states is subcontracted to the expansionist interests of Greater Israel, those whom the Qur’an states are the fiercest enemies of Islam (Qur’an 5:82)? What does it mean when notions of security are outsourced, when the geography of the ummah becomes ravaged by cancerous domination?

In an undeniable parallel, late Fatimid Egypt, resembles the decaying structures of the colonially born contemporary Arab states. After all, they both stress survival of the state apparatus to supersede the interests of the Muslim ummah. They both leverage external alliances for mere survival, despite knowing that Crusaders/Zionists are coming for them next. Then and now, internal dissent is treated as a greater threat than external aggression

And most critically, the hallmark parallel is that the very idea of “jihad” as principled resistance to domination is approached in a Muslim Islamophobic lens: it is either neutralized, criminalized, or emptied of substance.

This is not meant to be a sectarian argument.

It is not about Sunni versus Shi‘i, nor about doctrinal purity or correctness.

After all, the lionhearted fighters of Gaza are Sunni, as was Salahuddin himself and most of the ummah’s greatest anti-colonial warrior scholars.

This isn’t an indictment of Sunnism’s inherent failure to live up to the challenges of this scale of unprecedented repression.

Rather, it is a call for introspection and a collective admission that Sunnism is under siege by the secular nation state apparatus. If Shi’i political theology emphasizes the occult Imam, then Sunni political theology today is based on occulted agency.

It is buried, waiting to be born anew.

Because history has already shown that betrayal and courage cut across all identities. They are in every community and both camps harbor capitulators. There are, after all, Safavid court Shi’is and Pahlavists, and there are also the Umayyad court Sunnis and fiercely loyalist Gulf monarchists.

But the painful truth remains, that this moment stands as a painful a hujjah (proof) against the majority of Sunnis: it is obvious for for even the most partial analysts to see that it is the ragtag, lone Shi’i wolves in Iran, Lebanon and Yemen who are the ones defending Jerusalem from the barbarians at the gates, reminding us this divide is ultimately between two Islams: an Islam of Hussain, and Islam of Yazid.

This is about capitulation versus resistance across sectarian lines.

Sunnis must decide whether they want to remain under the thumb of the most shameless collaborators with the neo-Crusaders of our times, or whether they will rejoin the caravan of honor, the convoy of al-Hussain and Salahuddin.

Related past articles:

Before Quietism: the Rebellious Roots of Sunni Orthodoxy

Axis of Compliance

The Abraham Accords and the Tunnels of State Treachery

“The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.”

―Thucydides

For the past two years, I have been in touch with Dr. Kamal Al-Hindi in Gaza, who, despite living through the holocaust of our times, has been magnanimously sharing daily dispatches of sharp wisdom and analytical defiance.

An Economics and Political Science Professor at the Islamic University of Gaza, he frequently provides astute insights on the situation on the ground despite living in unspeakably difficult conditions. He has been a firsthand observer of the ever-evolving global and regional scene and writes with piercing insight and moral clarity.

Nothing is more frightful to the oppressor than a survivor with a pen, and a heart full of persistent resistance.

In his latest post, he reflects on why intellectuals and scholars especially have been so woefully silent or worse, complicit in the injustices of our time.

Since it is a topic often discussed on this Substack, I thought I would translate and share his insights to my readers, as well as the link to his PayPal page if you’d like to support him and his family.

In this astute reflection, Dr. Kamal deploys a masterful Qur’anic lens to explain the cowardice of the intellectual class, exposing the deep paradox of how the most knowledgeable are not necessarily the most virtuous.

On the contrary, scholars/clerics/authors/writers with the most fame and renown often end up being the most self-preservationist, and thus, they are more willing to throw the oppressed under the bus.

Here is Dr. Kamal’s scathing indictment of the scholarly class:

“When ‘knowledge’ and ‘elitism’ become a veil from God.

Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the Qur’anic verse “And do not incline toward those who oppress, lest the Fire touch you” (Hud: 113) is not its obvious warning to the oppressor, but the way it points to those who “incline”: those who are silent, those who waver.

Inclining (rukūn) is that subtle inner leaning of the heart.

It is to feel more affinity or comfort in the shade of brute power, and estrangement or aversion toward the side of the strangulated breath of the truth.

But the greatest catastrophe—the calamity so grave it can devastate civilizations— does not come from the inclining, the rukūn, of simple, common people.

Rather, it comes when those who incline are the elite of society: the scholars, clerics, academics, technocrats, and intellectuals.

These are the very people who, if they sincerely sided with the truth, possess the power to create massive shifts in the balance of power.

If they used their knowledge and status to support the oppressed, they could break the back of oppression.

But, instead, they chose to incline. Why?

Here is a painful diagnosis of the “diseases of the intellectual elites” that lead to the Fire:

1) The arrogance of the scholar and contempt for the “masses”

The biggest psychological barrier preventing the scholarly class (religious or secular) from joining the side of truth is arrogance.

When a “professor,” “senior cleric,” or “strategic expert” looks at the camp of truth, they often find it filled with riffraff, with passionate youth, ordinary laypeople, or those they strived not to associate with; those without prestigious titles.

Then the devil of the spirit of arrogance stirs within them, and they echo—implicitly—the words of the chiefs of Noah’s people: “We see that none follow you except the lowest among us, at first glance.” (Hud: 27) (وما نراك اتَّبعك إلا الذين هم أراذلنا بادي الرأي)

They regard such people as beneath them. Incapable of attaining their status, degrees, and refined intelligence. How can they stand shoulder to shoulder with them, or be counted among them, when they are used to being followed, not following anyone else?

So they choose to incline toward the camp of the oppressors, because oppressors often possess “elegance,” “power,” and “prestige” that resemble their elite worldview. They prefer the fire of a polished oppressor over the garden of truth entered alongside those “radicals,” “unkempt and humble.”

2) The trap of “complexity” and the myth of “lack of understanding”

This is the favorite excuse of the scholars and intellectuals to evade the demands of standing for clear truth.

They say coolly: “The situation is extremely complex… you don’t understand the strategic dimensions… things aren’t as simplistic as the masses think.”

They attempt to philosophize falsehood and turn obvious crimes (spilled blood, stolen wealth, crushing injustice) into a “matter of perspective,” a “temporary necessity,” or “pragmatic balancing.”

They lie to themselves before lying to others. Of course, in facing major moral issues, the truth is clear and radiant like the midday sun — it doesn’t require a PhD or an ijaza to recognize.

But they use complex terminology as a smokescreen to hide their fear and justify their refusal to support the truth. They want a version of truth tailored to their formal suits and air-conditioned offices; if they don’t find it, they accuse the public of simpleton naivety.

3) Envy… and hatred of “clean mirrors”

This is the darkest abyss of the soul.

The scholarly elite resent sincere ordinary people. Not because they are wrong, but because their steadfastness and sacrifice expose the elite’s own falseness.

When a prominent scholar or intellectual sees a simple young person offering their life or wealth for truth, while they themselves tremble over the loss of their position or salary, they feel an inner pettiness and shame.

Instead of following that example, envy turns them into an enemy. They begin belittling sincere sacrifices, questioning intentions, and labeling them as reckless or foolish.

They hate to be challenged by pure examples that remind them of their own corruption, so they incline toward the oppressor and even hope for the defeat of truth, just to ease their conscience and say: “All these efforts are futile anyway; everyone will fall eventually.”

To conclude, O people of knowledge, degree-holders, and notables of society:

Know that knowledge that does not prevent you from inclining toward injustice becomes evidence against you, not for you.

Your status that prevents you from humbling yourselves before truth is an idol you worship besides God.

Do not be deceived by the glitter of your titles while your stance is disgraceful. By God, your inclining toward oppressors — and your justification of their crimes under the guise of “metaphysical 4D chess understanding” or “rising above the masses” — is precisely the betrayal that God warned would lead to the touch of Fire.

Truth does not recognize ranks. Whoever is arrogant toward truth, God lowers them; whoever humbles themselves to it, God raises them, even if, in your eyes, they are among the “lowly.”

Examine your hearts… for the Fire does not distinguish between the fine suit of an intellectual, the turban of a scholar, or the cloak of a ruler. All stand equal before the demands of truth.

O God, we seek refuge in You from inclining—even for the blink of an eye—toward the oppressors.”

Amin.

How many a fallen hero and celebrity shaykh you once placed on a pedestal have these times exposed?

Imagine an apartment building.

Families in carefully planned units, kids running up and down the hallways, the smell of home-cooked food wafting through the vents. People go to work, come home, pray their 5 daily prayers, watch the news, doom scroll on their phones.

Life, in all its ambient dysfunction and fragile normalcy, continues. Parents look at their small existence and think: this is a good life. A stable life.

But there is something wrong with this pristine picture.

Next door, just a wall away, there is a man.

At night, they hear the sounds. Scraping. Thudding. Screams that cut through the pipes and concrete like a crack in the world itself. The children hear it too. They ask questions. The parents tell them it’s nothing. Just a bad situation next door that they should ignore or pray away, “we are safe here”, “the landlords will protect us,” “it is none of our business,” “he can’t hurt us.”

Occasionally, Building management sends out notices:

There is no cause for concern. Your safety is our priority. Please continue your daily routines. Markets are well stocked, we take pride in the Building motto, we guarantee your “amn wa amaan” (safety and security).

And people do.

They are content just going to the market. Sending their kids to school. Traveling to Mecca and posting selfies with the Ka’ba.

They convince themselves that safety is the ability to simply eat, drink, pray and work, adhere by the rules and the clearly delineated confines of their units, even if the walls seem to tremble at night.

But an even more sinister truth loomed over the Building.

They notice that their binding leases are written by the axe murderer himself.

That he hired contractors to carefully isolate each unit from the next.

Not only that, the tenants would see their landlords assisting the axe murderer. They would help him carry his things. Packages, boxes. They provide him with clean, polished axes, delivered with quiet efficiency. Sometimes they would even let him use their own apartments. Their door opens. He steps inside. The door shuts. The carnage and debauchery ensues.

No one dares speak about this openly. Only few residents do.

They gather in hushed tones in stairwells and parking lots. They say what everyone knows but is afraid to articulate: This is not safe. This is madness. The man next door is killing people, and the very people responsible for our safety are protecting him!

Those who spell out the obvious are reported. Watched. Warned.

“You are causing panic,” they’re told.
“You are destabilizing the Building.”
“Why are you so obsessed with the man next door?”

Soon, the language towards those who see reality hardens. They are no longer “concerned residents.” They are labeled as threats. Extremists. Terrorists.

Some are evicted. Others disappear quietly. The rest learn the lesson. The landlords hire influencers to make polished reels about the motto of “safety” and “security” in the Building. The influencers paint a pristine picture of the Building, how, if everyone simply obeys the landlords, they and their children will live a “good,” “safe” life.

Do not speak about the axe murderer, nor the instigators who are trying to get rid of him, they are told.

You are a traitor to the peace and security of the Building, they are warned.

And so, with these efforts, the building returns to its “peaceful” routine.

To the lulling mirage of safety.

Children resume going to school. Parents go to work. The markets stay open. The notices of obeying the strict apartment codes keep coming. The landlords keep delivering the provisions and the axes.

But at night, behind the wall, the sounds continue.

Now, the sounds are louder, closer.

Until one day, the tenants that opted for the sweet sedative of “peace and safety” realize the obvious truth all too late:

The Building represents the condition of the Arab world today, where those who dare to articulate things as they truly are, and dare to say, this is not safe, this is not normal, are treated as pariahs, as instigators, as worthy of quick extermination. Somehow, they are seen as the source of danger, not the axe murderer next door.

The parable of the Building demonstrates that the most shocking feature of this age of genocidal warfare is not that the publicly declared, brutal aims of an expansionist, ethnostate are well underway. That is not surprising in the least by any political or historical standard.

Rather, the most atrocious feature of this time will be looked upon as time when Muslim states decided subservience to genociders is somehow a “safer” modus operandi, forgetting they are next on the menu.

This is delusional house of cards of the Sykes Picot world order. A cursed house. An insane asylum.

Arab states will soon realize that the price for abandoning Gaza is much higher than the price of standing with it.

In Jordan where I grew up, one such conscientious “tenant” of this Building was recently imprisoned by the security apparatus for simply naming reality as he saw it, declaring in a viral video, that “as a Jordanian, the true existential threat I sense is not from Iran, it is from Israel and Great Israel that has announced to me that I am the next target for them.” Instead of rewarding him for being protective over national interests, he is treated as a criminal.

Similarly, authorities in the UAE have arrested more than 100 of people for simply filming and posting about Iranian missile and drone strikes, in a widening crackdown on threats to the Gulf state’s image of “safety and stability.” Instead of rethinking their strategic partnership with Israel or the abnormalization treaty, the Abraham Accords, the silver-tongued, soothsaying apologist for Zionist crimes, Reem al-Hashimy, unrepentantly declared that “if anything, we are doubling down on our friends”.

In Qatar, prominent journalists were jailed on similar charges. Palestinian academic Bilal Nizar Rayan recently penned this scathing indictment of Gulf states as reaction to his brother’s arrest and expulsion from in Qatar:

“These Gulf entities are reaping what their own hands have sown. They were born as a negligible addendum to history under the shadow of British protection. And once Britain left, Washington inherited them by proxy. This began draining their wealth and capabilities, making these states as nothing but mere fuel for forever wars that burn no one but our own people.

These Gulf states remained sedated in illusions of obscene wealth and fake, fickle security, built upon the corpses of the ummah, wars waged against other Muslims by proxy, drowning our people in conflicts whose fruits only benefited the Great Israel project, as it expanded while our lands were stolen.

This obscene wealth, from its very beginning, became the primary curse for the destruction of the rest of the ummah, starting with the funding of the Iran–Iraq war under sectarian and political slogans, and ending with the total devastation of Iraq.

This bleeding did not stop at Iraq’s borders. It spread—feeding militias in Yemen, Libya, Syria, Sudan, and Iraq—while hundreds of billions were being poured into the coffers of the American military machine under the pretext of “buying protection.”

Among the ugliest byproducts of this wealth are the “lying witnesses” and “palace clerics”—those who degraded themselves to distort history and falsify consciousness, justifying submission to benefit the new crusaders, following the wretched path of their predecessors who issued fatwas permitting the hosting of American bases from which wars against Muslim lands are launched.

Today, this wretched wealth burns one Muslim land after another, in bitter irony. Gulf prosperity and security is curse. It was never a tool of construction, rather, a weapon of destruction—paving the way for Greater Israel to achieve even greater dominance and supremacy over the bodies and remnants of our lands.

Today, those deluded ones who forever believed that money would buy them safety will awaken to realize that the fires they ignited have begun to consume them—and that what they reap is nothing but the bitterness of what their own hands have sown.

It is true what Allah said in the Qur’an, “We did not wrong them—but they wronged themselves.””

Meanwhile in Gaza, Israeli soldiers reportedly subjected a one-year old to torture, burning one of his legs with cigarettes and inserting a nail into his leg, to pressure his father into making confessions during a torturous interrogation.

In the West Bank, the IOF forces killed the Bani Owda family while on their way back from shopping for Eid clothes point blank in their car, murdering the mother Waed Bani Owda, her husband Ali and two of their young children Othman, 7, and Mohammed, 5.

One of the two brothers who survived the massacre, Khaled, reportedly asked the soldier: “Do you love your mother and father?” he asked.

The soldier replied yes. Khaled then asked, ‘then why did you kill my father and mother?’

Khaled says the soldier responded to this question with a punch to his face.

The fact that the ruling class decided that for such daily, heinous crimes against to occur, for such rampant demonic acts to be treated as a normal, makes all of humanity dangerously unsafe, for everyone, for all our children.

Imagine if this child were white or Jewish, the whole world would stop.

In a “normal” world, all states would pick up arms and unite to protect and defend this defenseless toddler, and the crimes being committed daily against the children of Palestine, Iran, Sudan, Yemen and Lebanon. Alas, in their signature, historic brazen collusion, they are more interested in their own decrepit illusion of “safety”, decrying Iranian self defense, energy prices, and the closure of the Straight of Hormuz.

The Arab states run foolishly run atop the mountain like Prophet Nuh’s wayward son, thinking they will be “safe” from the flood, based on a bestial, survival first mentality, forgetting that the flood will ravage everyone who ran from the truth.

The flood of reckoning is coming for everyone. It is already here. It is better to meet it with heads held high, than cowering and craven.

Many Muslim communities today have also inherited this “survival first” mentality of keep your head down doing little about injustice, contrary to the Qur’anic and Prophetic commands.

Many are traumatized, and carry historical memories of political upheaval, colonialism, war, or economic collapse, sharpening a deep generational, survivalist instinct based on the primal fear security can disappear quickly.

But these are just that: fears. Colonially constructed notions of “security” were always borrowed, always a ruse. The rug millions of people suddenly feel being pulled from under their feet was never real. We've muddied the waters of our very existential understanding of security as Muslims, basing it on a fickle, temporary dunya lens, not an enduring, rooted akhira lens.

We are arguably precisely in this moment because we cannot keep running from the flood of responsibility in our role as vicegerents of God and thinking we can perpetually defer honor and dignity to the next generation.

According to this broken logic, by protecting our children from “danger” in this life, we are setting them up for failure in the next.

Here is an unpopular, painful truth: holding on to our false idols of insular, fake safety helps the daily killing of innocents continue unabated.

Our calculus is all mixed up.

Some of us think that becoming our “ancestor’s wildest dreams” is a seat Stanford or Harvard (overrated, trust me). Or being a big shot MD or a lawyer.

But the truth is, becoming our ancestor’s most actualized dream is to finally break the cycle of spiritual colonialism of fearing the system instead of fearing Allah.

Living up to our combined ancestral and faith mandate is to walk away from the comforts of the dunya, not towards it.

The most dangerous feature of Muslim modernity is that we ascribe to—by blind osmosis—the very concept of “safety and security,” so much so, that these concepts we hold on to so dearly actually risk becoming an idol we bow to, one we construct of our own hearts and minds.

Several wealthy companions sacrificed their worldly status after embracing Islam, either due to leaving their wealth behind during the hijrah (migration) to Medina, or being disowned by their powerful families. Prominent examples include Abdur Rahman ibn Awf and Mus’ab ibn Umayr.

By the metric of our time, someone might say that these are “losers.” The men who stood in Badr and Uhud, who are closest to the best of humankind, the Prophet ﷺ, “losers”? Who can ever be deemed a “winner,” then?

By the metric of our depraved age, is Prophet Ibrahim a “rabble rouser” for destroying the idols? Is Prophet Musa a “fool” for not choosing the path of least resistance and confronting the Pharaoh , the man in whose court he was raised? Is Prophet ‘Isa “reckless” for not sustaining the status quo and with the scribes, pharisees and the Romans? By the measure of the fence sitters and naysayers, did our beloved Prophet ﷺ act “unsafely” by antagonizing the power hungry, tribalist paganism of Quraysh?

Of course not.

These exemplars—and the living examples of those sacrificing their lives in Palestine, Iran, Lebanon, Sudan, and Yemen today—teach us that the path of faith was never paved with guarantees, of safety and security.

The path of faith demands radical trust and surrender, no matter the “cost.” Because if your worldly attachments cost your soul, they are far too expensive.

The companions of the Prophet ﷺ left their homes in Mecca, crossing the burning desert toward Medina, not because safety awaited them there, but because the truth did. They stood at Badr outnumbered and unarmored, knowing that victory and defeat both belonged to God alone, knowing that was enough.

Some gave their wealth, others their homes, and others their very blood, but none mistook this world for a fortress that could shield them from loss.

They knew at a deep, natural level what we so often and so easily forget: that prioritizing safety in this life is a house of cards, that the only enduring triumph is standing in the presence of God with a clean heart that has no other partners with Him: free of attachments to worldly mirages and false idols of status or safety in this fleeting dunya.

For them, for the shuhada’ that are currently sacrifice limb and life on our behalf so the very honor of Islam, the ummah can survive, success was never a question of survival, but one of true faith. Of standing firm till one’s soul is counted among those forever living, among those who did not trade their eternity for the temporary, illusory salves of comfort.

We ask Allah not to be like Noah’s son who fled to the mountain, but to be among those who will ride the ark of true safety: the ship of Prophetic, sincere, lived faith.

To dare to incite against the insane asylum that is Building of Delusions, to burn down the old script of polytheistic appeasement, to scorch the dunya-based, ruinous, limiting belief that survival depends on pleasing the machinery of materialist power.

We ask Allah not to be like those who naysay and ridicule the oppressed for walking in the lionhearted courageous footsteps of the Prophet ﷺ , the companions, Imam Hussein and the righteous predecessors.

We ask Allah to reorder our priorities such that we become the generational heroes of our lineage, the ones who are finally able to see the invisible chains telling us to play small, to play dangerously safe, and be those who finally decide to cut these illusory chains.

Instead, allow us to embody the type of faith that sees fear as the deepest prison for the believer.

That rising against the axe murderer and wicked landlords in charge of the ummah requires true sacrifice, it demands a cost. Of internalizing that missing, deep conviction that makes tyrants tremble: that a single, lone, courageous, activated believer has the power to subsume the millions of weak hearts who still believe the system is invincible.

Because when we truly abandon that fear, our primordial essence wakes up: that deep, innate knowledge that a human soul was never meant to live on its knees. That the only real safety is to stand upright, bowing before our Maker, not before the dwarf pygmies of our age, unencumbered by their ruses, and the false idols of this fleeting world.

We ask Allah to allow us to truly walk the truly safe path of sacrifice and surrender, not the more dangerous path of false comforts and the mirage of safety.

After she witnessed the massacre of her brother Imam Hussain in the blood-soaked land of Karbala, and after her thunderous sermon at the court of Yazid in Damascus, Sayyida Zaynab bint Ali—the inspiration for this Substack—found refuge in Egypt.

When she arrived in the Land of the Nile, the governor went out to receive her along with great crowds near the region of Bilbays in the eastern desert. Upon seeing the massive gathering, Sayyida Zaynab prayed for them, saying

There, she found a safe haven after witnessing much persecution and became a legendary fixture of Egyptian devotional lore.

Today, in the predominantly Sunni Egyptian society, the love of the Aal al Bayt still runs deep, even if it is private and dormant, away from the gaze of the security state. Just visit the shrine of Imam Hussain in Cairo and witness the pouring displays of devotion by seekers, lovers and wanderers. Sayyida Zaynab is still lovingly referred to as al-Sayyida ('the lady'), or al-Tahira ('the pure one') and Umm al-Yatāma ('mother of the orphans') for her wisdom, virtue and generosity.

Even the popular “patron saint” of Egypt, Shaykh ash-Sha’rāwī—whose videos explaining the Qur’an and hadith are still arguably the most widely circulated across the Arabic-speaking world—even penned a book entitled, “I am a Descendant of the Prophetic Household” in which he confirms his lineage based on a vision he had with Sayida Zaynab. In it, he goes on to write about the story of Karbala, and the various descendants of the Prophet’s family who are buried in Egypt, such as Sayyida Nafisa, who served as teacher and spiritual guide to Imam al-Shafi'i.

Before “Sunni” vs “Shi’i”, before the penning of ‘aqida books, before the legal school were institutionalized, Islamicate societies generally have always enjoyed braided histories of venerating both the Prophetic household and the Prophet’s companions. Because that is exactly what bound them: to love what the Prophet ﷺ loved is the essence of faith. Love is the true essence of what binds the ummah from Kashmir to Kuala Lumpur. It is not merely books and knowledge that sustain the Islamic tradition, it is/was always expressions of lived devotion, sacrifice and lamentation lore that gave Islam a dynamism that is imbibed in the diverse beauty of Muslim cultures across the world.

You see, the bombs falling on Gaza, Yemen, Lebanon or Syria, the acid rain in Iran, do not care for your sect, madhab or creed. Whether you are a Sufi or Salafi, or a Ash’ari or Maturidi.

The first martyrs of Islam, such as Sayida Sumayya or Yasir, weren’t Sunni or Shi’i. They didn’t know the difference between all the legal or sectarian debates. They didn’t even know the basic ritual practices of Islam, but their station is higher than even the most learned ‘ulamā’ today. Why? Because they were the earliest adopters of Islam’s full essence, and gave all in soul, word and deed—when the stakes were highest—their very selves, so that Islam, as a path of sincere, tawhidic love, could survive.

They acted as active witnesses, shuhada’, not arm chair voyeurs, out of perfected love for the Prophetic school of Islam: one of sincerity, guided upon love in action, oriented to truth and justice regardless of the idols of division and strife outwardly.

Tribalism, or ‘asabiyya, was referred to as “putrid” by the Prophet ﷺ. Because those make idols of their own loyalties and isms (Marxist/ikhwani/nationalist/Shi’i/what have you), will ultimately put those interests ahead of the ummah, thus placing partners alongside God in their heart.

But true dignity and freedom for the ummah will not come at the hands of those stubbornly committed to their constructed methodologies and ideological score-keeping.

Devotion to the ummah is the ultimate litmus test.

Before colonial division and puritanical, modernist strands became the predominant way of approaching Islam, the school of Prophetic love was imbibed in Muslim religious practice from West Africa to East Asia. Without it, it became easy to fall prey to self-serving, nationalist or sectarian divisions, because without love, Islam can easily become a cudgel for self-serving interests.

In truth, only those with a sincere love for all of this ummah will survive the turbulent days to come.

Ever since its inception, Sermons at the Court has proudly covered the topic of the Aal al Bayt and the universal Karbala ethic extensively. With Israel’s war on Iran and Lebanon now, it gives me no schadenfreude to be vindicated about the imperative of cultivating intra-Muslim unity.

I do not mean one must do this in a shallow, diluting, “let’s just hold hands” kind of way, but through integrity, careful study of intra-rooted histories and shared genealogies of knowledge and devotion.

After all, these histories are braided, interwoven.

Recall, Egypt has a Shi’i, Fatimid history.

Iran has a Sunni, Samanid one.

And if you look closely enough, you can find “Sufism” in the work of Ibn Taymiyyah, and “Salafism” in the work of ‘Abdul Qadir Jilānī.

If you are a serious scholar of intellectual history, you will find strands of “Shi’i rafidism” in the founders of the four legal schools, such as Imam Shafi‘i who said, “O Aal-Al-Bayt of the Holy Prophet of Allah! Love for you has been made obligatory for us by Allah, as revealed in the Holy Qur’an. It is sufficient for your stature that if one does not send salutations to you in the ritual prayers, their prayers will not be accepted.” You can likewise familiarize yourself with the Karbala story, and the fatwa by Ali Khamenei prohibiting insulting the companions. You can witness the lived realities of shared coexistence in places like Iraq or Lebanon today.

In his upcoming translation of ‘Aqidat al-'Awām (“The Masses’ Creed” by Shaykh Ahmad al-Marzuqi al-Maliki, Forthcoming), contemporary Muslim scholar masterfully shows that “no term has harmed Muslim discourse in the West as deeply, and as divisively, as Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jamāʿah. Across pulpits, pamphlets, and online spaces, the phrase is wielded as if it were revelation itself: a celestial password into orthodoxy. Yet the irony is profound: What was once descriptive has become decretive; what was human has been mistaken for the divine.”

He continues, “Allah did not reveal the term, the Prophet did not say it, nor did the predecessors employ it as many do today. It was a term crafted by people and its impact was never meant to be divine.”

Webb explains how contemporary jurists such as the Mauritanian Shaykh Muḥammad al-Ḥasan al-Daddū traces the genealogy of the term Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jamāʿah through language and power.

Daddū clarifies that neither the Qurʾān nor the authentic record of the Prophet’s sayings ever used the composite term Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l-Jamāʿah:

السنةُ في اصطلاح أهل العقيدة تُطلَق على ما كان عليه رسول الله ﷺ وأصحابُه الكرام، وهي بهذا المعنى تُقابل البدعة
“In the terminology of the scholars of creed, al-Sunnah applies to what the Messenger ﷺ and his noble Companions were upon; and with this meaning it stands opposite to innovation.”

And concerning the word, al-Jamāʿah:

وكانت الجماعة تُطلَق على الكثرة العظمى من المسلمين المتمسكين بالسنة، المجتمعين على إمام واحد
“Al-Jamāʿah used to refer to the great majority of Muslims who adhered to the Sunnah and were united under one Imām.”

But, he notes, politics soon altered theology, and this is a crucial point:

وقد حاول الأمويون توظيف مصطلح الجماعة توظيفًا سياسيًا، فجعلوا مَن معهم داخل الجماعة، ومَن خالفهم خارجها
“The Umayyads attempted to employ the term al-Jamāʿah politically, making those with them “within the community” and those against them “outside of it.”

This is why it is important to study early Islamic history, like I said in a prior post on the braided history of early Islam, Before Quietism: the Rebellious Roots of Sunni Orthodoxy:

Approaching the Islamic intellectual tradition through the lens of braided traditions and histories is the most important defense mechanism against the continuous colonially driven ‘divide and conquer’ strategies that seek to destroy all of Islam, not just “Hamas” and the “Ayatollahs.”

This braided heritage affects all of us.

Learning about Karbala and the evolution of the Sunni cannon for example, has dire relevance to the postcolonial Arab state political formations, because the divide is no longer about Sunni or Shi’a, it is about resistance vs. subservience across sectarian lines. Already, Israeli warmongers are warning that “Turkey is the new Iran.” The sooner unity is achieved, the lesser the carnage against innocents in the expansionist warpath.

As I wrote in a post from March 2025, about the Aal al Bayt braided history of the Palestinian resistance in, Reviving the Husseini Spirit:

The spirit of Aal al Bayt, then, is the spirit of lived Islam in action.

It is Prophetic Islam, hence, if you choose to ignore it, ignore at your own soul’s peril.

But if you choose to realize that the categories we have ossified ourselves into due to reactionary dogma or colonial plotting are just that, mere constructs, you may finally begin to restore the essence of Islam’s true, uniting spirit of justice, sacrifice, and resistance to oppression.

With the renewed ‘divide and conquer’ warpath ravaging Muslim-majority communities, with al-Aqsa at a critical risk of destruction, it is no longer merely optional to have these conversations. It is existential to take concrete actions towards closing the rifts.

To make tawba and repent from ‘asabiyya (tribalism), for it is putrid.

Intra-Muslim unity is not meant to be a childish, diluting, feel-good platitude. It is a dam of deterrence against bloodshed. It is the path towards re-establishing the true liberation, of what it means to be Muslim, to embody tawhid, away from in-group loyalties and childish score-keeping.

That is what it will take to authenticate your pact of surrender to the One: the pact of integrity, sincerity, honor, courage and justice.

Do you feel it?

The great sieve that the Gaza genocide began is still distilling into camps of sincere vs. pretenders. Those truly about ummatic liberation vs. those clutching hard to in-group loyalties.

The battle has reached its zenith, and the choice on which side you want to be on, is ultimately, yours.

Otherwise, remember the ones who directly benefits from your putrid tribalism:

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Paid subscribers gratefully sustain Sermons at the Court.

Your support will help sustain independent writing devoted to history, moral clarity, and the lived spiritual inheritance of our tradition. Otherwise, please remember me in your du’a on these holy nights.

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Muslim sovereignty is a myth.

It has not existed for over a century.

Since the early 20th century, even jihad campaigns have been sanctioned by—or coopted by—colonial powers.

In World War I, Germany prompted the Ottoman Empire to declare jihad by inciting rebellion among Muslim populations in British, French, and Russian territories. The November 1914 proclamation was labeled “jihad made in Germany.”

During the 1979–1989 Soviet-Afghan War, America supported a decade-long resistance campaign against Soviet forces invading by Afghan mujahidin. They provided extensive covert support to the Afghan mujahidin against "atheist" communist Soviets.

Today, this long tradition of colonially blessed jihads continue. The Wahhabi cleric Saleh al-Fawzan of Saudi Arabia has declared that “our soldiers who are guarding our borders [against Iran with the American soldiers] are performing a noble act of jihad for Allah’s sake.”

If sovereignty means the ability to act independently in defense of one’s people, territory, and moral convictions, then most of the Muslim world does not possess it.

The liberation struggles from direct colonization in the first half of the 20th century in places like Algeria were true and real. Their struggles did not go in vain. They provide lasting lessons and inspiration for the role of Islam in fighting injustice and tyranny. In fact, if anything, “the land of the two million martyrs” stands as a timeless historical witness on us not to let their valiant anti-colonial sacrifices go in vain.

But the painful truth is, as soon as the flags were designed, the anthems were composed, the national border lines were drawn, the colonial administrators only lowered their guns for the mentally colonized state overseers in tailored suits to take their place.

Ultimately, colonial architecture in Muslim societies persisted, but in increasingly ambiguous forms. Harder to detect. Reptilian. Islamophobic, secular, but coopts Muslim symbols to gain legitimacy and control.

As such, “post”colonial Muslim states were never truly free, because repression hid behind the facade of sovereignty that was never really there. Absent the Caliphate, even the concept of an “Arab nation state” will always remain an artificial, fickle construct.

We forget that we still inhabit a Sykes-Picot world. Since 1916, Britain and France partitioned Ottoman-controlled Arab lands into zones of influence that would shape the modern “Middle East” as know it. Carved from the remains of the Caliphate, balkanized Muslim states would eventually be ruled by Westernized puppet monarchs, secularists, butchers, and tyrants.

When they did try to preserve a modicum of sovereignty , like Mossadegh did when he attempted to seize control of the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (which is now BP) and rejecting Western control over Iranian resources, he was swiftly overthrown and a puppet monarch returned with greatly expanded autocratic powers.

When countries do attempt to preserve a semblance of sovereignty, as is the case of Libya, Syria, Yemen or Iran, they become ravaged by internal division, crippling sanctions and devastating internal and external repression. This is not to romanticize any of these governments. Each had their internal injustices, contradictions, and brutal excesses. But that is precisely the point. The global disorder never even allowed these countries the smallest latitude to internally reform, to breathe. They would rather see a failed, fractured, collapsed, weak repressive state than any hint of deviation from the prescribed limits of subservience, making even the idea of a Muslim sovereign state a pipe dream, an impossibility.

Now, arguably the last dam against the ambitions of Pax Judaica, the Islamic Republic of Iran is being brazenly attacked. Straight out of the Gaza playbook, Israel attacks the children first in a double tap killing 165 school girls. Yet another bloody, senseless blood orgy by the Epstein administration in Washington and Tel Aviv. Another chapter in the decades-long onslaught against Islam and Muslim populations.

But these tactics are not new. Israel’s modus operandi has always been the targeting and killing children. Many do not know of the Bahr el-Baqar primary school massacre in an Egyptian village south of Port Said. It was bombed by the Israeli Air Force on 8 April 1970. Of the 130 children who were attending the school, 46 were killed and over 50 wounded.

This “War on Terror,” aka. the war on Islam, has been so relentless, so polarizing, so effective in its spiritual colonization, that today, some diaspora Iranians are even celebrating Israel’s invasion and bloodshed of their fellow countrymen, women and children.

The war on Iran points to the hysteria over the mere existence of any form of a strong “Islamic government” and how pervasive internalized Islamophobia has become: this global dis-order will not tolerate any sovereign Muslim state that speaks in civilizational rather than secular-liberal terms without getting flogged immediately by demonization, sanctions, and now, indiscriminate bombardment and mass killings. And this is beyond Sunni-Shi’a at this point: Israel boasts that it is coming for the predominantly Sunni nation Turkey next.

Only Israel is allowed to invoke their status as “God’s chosen people” as they defile the laws of God. Only Israel can base its policies on biblical, messianic references and doomsday prophecies as it pillages and kills innocents. CNN casually reported that the timing of the attacks on Iran coincides with the period leading up to Purim, “which commemorates the Jewish people's deliverance from a genocidal plot in ancient Persia.”

Today, much like the “jihad made in Germany”, Arab and Gulf states now find themselves in a painfully poetic bare faced exposure of having to wage a jihad against Iran for the sole benefit of Greater Israel. They decry the Iranian attacks on their “sovereign” US military bases (an oxymoron if there ever was one) as “senseless,” “destabilizing.” But are they? If the Gaza genocide was not enough of a wake up call, what else will it take to break the veneer of false sovereignty and sedation that lulls Muslim masses?

If these “sovereign” Arab states truly cared about their safety, why did they allow themselves to become vassal states for foreign military bases in the first place?

Not only that, their armies were too busy crushing internal dissent, but not occupiers. The boots of their military police and mukhabarat gestapos descend not upon those who annex land and bomb hospitals, rather upon the necks of their own people: students, workers, mothers, and journalists who are criminalized for calling a spade a spade. Their batons fracture skulls at home, but protect European colonizers in bomb shelters in Jerusalem. Their rifles are aimed not at mercenaries invading al-Aqsa, but at the chests of their own countrymen. The Arab security state was never free. It sows ethnic, tribal, and class antagonisms, inflaming fault lines to prevent unity because it is perpetually afraid.

Now, they tried to delay the inevitable in the name of preserving their “stability,” but the sin of abandoning Gaza has ushered in an uncharted era of instability. The warpath will leave no one unscathed. The missiles flying over Arab capitals in the past few days have firmly broken the myth of Muslim sovereignty. They are a clarion call to end the double occupation of Muslim lands that do the bidding of external, foreign occupations, as well as the internal occupation that feeds on the stench of our fear, cowardice and total submission.

I’ve said it several times before: the Muslim armies that did not move for Palestine will move against their own people. We see this happening very clearly through the intercepted rockets that are now raining down on Jordanian citizens on behalf of the ambitions of Greater Israel.

An army that fails to defend its own people is not a national institution: it becomes merely a security subcontractor.

Similarly, military bases dot the Gulf in Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain and Qatar. The longstanding security coordination defines the treasonous, reptilian, political architecture of the region. Intelligence sharing flows more freely than solidarity. “Muslim resistance” is a concept more loathed more than Zionisim. Words like “jihadist” or “Islamic” have become criminal slurs, punishable by death.

Yet titles such as “His Majesty” and “His Supreme Eminence”—vestiges of European divine-right monarchies—are treated as sacred cows. Perfectly manicured royal portraits adorn ministries and schools. The state trains its citizens not merely to obey, but to revere, almost worship, as we have seen some literally do: this UAE general proudly boasted, “They should listen to Mohammed bin Zayed, he is our guidance, we worship him” (!)

News flash to loyal monarchists and diehard Arab nationalists: no matter how innocent you think your allegiances to king and country are, shirk (polytheism) is the greatest sin in the eyes of Allah. The twain loyalties cannot exist in the heart of a believer. After all, “Allah does not place two hearts in any person’s chest.” (Al-Ahzab: 4)

Those same colonially-constructed states which speak of “sovereignty” host foreign troops, align their strategic doctrine with Washington, and normalize relations with Tel Aviv.

This is nothing but Muslim vassalage. Make no mistake, however painfully this system breaks, the ummah only stands to benefit.

This century long vassalage system produced the endemic moral paralysis and genocidal stalemate we are now in. This system of vassalage has allowed itself to be controlled by the Epstein class of pedophiles and cannibalists who kill children for fun, whether in a school in Gaza or a school in Iran or Yemen.

We have reached the most humiliating point in the history of Islam and colonialism: now, Netanyahu and Trump’s Pax Judaica, is being enforced by Arab countries who prefer perpetual external vassalage and submission to sovereignty, dignity and honor.

Since 1948, there were moments—brief, fragile windows—when dignity and unity were made slightly more possible. There were moments when oil leverage could have been consolidated, when militaries could have united, when normalization treatises could have been annulled, when trade deals canceled.

But they chose neither of these redemptive windows. Now, Pax Judaica is already here. The window of dignity has firmly closed, not because Zionism was invincible, but because fear prevailed and became the status quo. It is because Muslims borrowed their narratives by colonial osmosis: “political Islam” = bad. “Shi’i Mullas” = existential threat.

It is because Arab leaders feared for their own self preservation more than the threat of external colonization. Because they feared their own populations more than expansionist ambitions that have come to ravage them all. They feared falling out of favor with the pedophilic elite more than the loss of the sacred sites in Mecca, Madina and Al-Quds.

Yet they always had a choice.

They were repeatedly given redemptive windows, but they chose to selfishly protect regime survival over true sovereignty. They chose subservience to Tel Aviv instead of the honor of being able to defend Islamic civilizational integrity. By doing so, they totally abdicated their moral legitimacy and the fickle myth of “sovereignty.”

After Gaza, it is all being laid bare for all to see: the Arab Emperors have no clothes.

The ultimate, painfully poetic irony and wretched ending is that that sons and daughters of military servicemen and women in Jordan, UAE, Bahrain and Qatar will die not for Palestine, but likely to advance the very pronounced and evident schemes of Greater Israel.

How will this end, you ask?

From the banks of the Jordan to the Nile, from the Euphrates to the Gulf, there is no longer any modicum of ambiguity that these security states are now doing the military, expansionist bidding of Greater Israel. Thankfully, the doublespeak is over and their populations cannot feign hiding behind the sedating excuses of ignorance or giving excuses. Now, everyone is culpable as the vision is crystal clear.

The end of the Sykes-Picot, ruse-based order is now firmly here: but there is a choice on what comes next. A restoration of true sovereignty, of Pax Islamica, or the triumph of Pax Judaica?

It behooves us to understand that we never left the colonial matrix. Thankfully, this is now more self-evident. We were forced to accept submission as “pragmatism,” betrayal as “diplomacy,” colonization as “peace-building” and resistance as “extremism”. Not any more. The era of pretending, of reptilian ambiguity is over. Now, we can see the full, reeking nakedness of this deceitful cadaver and it can no longer hide behind liberal, Orwellian buzzwords.

And we know why. Because it rests on a lie: postcolonial sovereignty never was. It is yet to be achieved.

The Gaza holocaust tried to warn everyone, but they ignored her children’s screams.

Palestinians told you repeatedly, that normalization would not bring anyone safety. That it harms all.

That housing foreign military bases and security coordination would not guarantee anyone stability.

That the abandonment of Palestine would not grant Arab states safety, immortality, nor would it protect its borders.

After all, the plague does not remain confined to one house. The fire does not stop at one fickle wall.

You see, Palestine has made it crystal clear that the Arab abandonment of Palestine was not merely a pragmatic, self-preservationist, tactical foreign policy decision on their part.

Rather, it signals total moral paralysis and a terminal spiritual fracture. It is self-amputation. And amputations, if untreated, poison the body.

Greater Israel is charge now, but this rise did not appear in a vacuum. It is criminal, yes, but it is also cumulative and collaborative. It is what Arab and Muslim colluding hands have sown over decades of compromise, fear, and repression.

Thankfully, a brief window is now revealing itself briefly once more.

The ummah, like each of us individually, stand before a final choice:

Painful truth, or sweet lies?

Sectarian score-keeping or true, ummah-oriented unity?

The pacifier of “stability and safety” or a prophetic Islam of lived sacrifice?

Auto-critique, or perpetual infantilization and victimhood?

Real sovereignty, or permanent subcontracting and vassalage?

Truth hurts. Truth incinerates. It exposes collaboration. It dismantle myths of eternal “safety and stability.” It demands existential loyalty shifts from tribalism and selfishness to uniting and affirming true Oneness.

No matter how painful it is, only truth can set a civilization free.

Muslim sovereignty has been a myth.

That illusion must die before anything living can be born.

90 Ramadans ago, at the old age of 81, Shaykh Farhan Sa’adi was executed in cold blood by British colonial forces in Palestine while fasting near the city of Nablus.

Before British bullets—at the behest of the Haganah and Irgun—ripped through his body, did he utter the Prophetic supplication, I wonder, as one usually does one one breaks their fast, “the thirst is gone, the veins are moistened, and the reward is confirmed, if Allah wills”?

Is shahada considered a form of fasting too, when one fasts from life itself, and feasts in the afterlife instead?

Like Imam Hussein, he was martyred thirsty and hungry.

In the Islamic tradition, the Prophet Muhammad said that “the smell of the mouth of a fasting person is better in the sight of God than the smell of musk.”

In Palestinian lamentation lore, when bidding farewell to a shahid, it is common to sing to them in their funerary procession before their burial: “Ma’ as-alameh ya misk fayeh, farewell o fragrant musk, go to your Lord now, to paradise, to the light. Ma’ issalameh ya ghālī ‘a gleibi, farewell, oh dear one to my heart.”

Fragrant starving breath, fragrant decimated bodies.

When did Ramadan become about fragrant, elaborate iftars and indulgent desserts when it was a time of revolt against evil and musk-scented sacrifice?

Shaykh Farhan, born in the village of Mazar in today’s West Bank, would probably be aghast that his homeland was abandoned by billions of Muslims, while they go on 5-star luxury hajj packages and listen to preachers who decry feminism and aqida wars, but are mealy mouthed about the fiqh of living under pervasive tyranny in this New Dark Age.

Shaykh Farhan was thought to have been the person who ignited the Great Palestinian Rebellion of 1936, the fiercest campaign of resistance against British and Zionist colonization led by Muslim clerics, scholars and youth, which largely began in mosques and lodges, such as that of Izzidin Qassam’s zawiya in Haifa. (Unsurprisingly, the recent film on this rebellion, Palestine 36 by Annemarie Jacir dilutes—if not wholly erases—the unique Islamic character of the revolts.)

Shaykh Farhan was among those who heralded, over a century ago, the native Palestinian struggle against ongoing Zionist oppression and colonization.

This 100-year battle has reached its zenith.

With the birth of a new crescent tonight, the battered people of Gaza will celebrate their 3rd Ramadan under the rubble of genocidal conditions.

Additionally, nearly 10,000 Palestinian political prisoners will observe the holy month in brutal captivity as they endure abuse, including torture, sexual assault, deliberate starvation, electrocution and beatings at the hand of their terroristic Israeli wardens.

Many Palestinians like the elder paramedic Hatem Ismail Rayyan, who was killed earlier this week, will not live to see this coming Ramadan. He was killed in the Negev Prison under torture.

Now, Israel is making bloodthirsty plans to execute in cold blood hundreds of Palestinian prisoners as official policy, reminiscent of the same racist British policies that killed Sheikh Farhan with wanton cruelty during Ramadan in the 1930s.

Only now, the diseased cancer of colonial campaigns has metastasized into astonishing levels of cruelty: Israel is reportedly allowing 3 volunteers to pull the trigger at once to execute abductees from Gaza point blank.

It for this reason and others why Jewish scholars like Norman Finklestein call Israeli society at large an “in bred society of lunatics” that is "incapable of guilt".

Despite all this decades long barefaced degeneracy, whether from the British colonial apparatus then, or this Epstein administration ruling the world today, these extended legacies are marked by shameless perversion, both as deliberate private and public mandates, to corrupt and desecrate humanity.

Now we understand why they stood by and watched as the Palestinian holocaust targeted children in particular:

It was a blood orgy.

A glorious ritual of mass sacrifice for them.

This moral rot has also reached its zenith, and it is overdue for incineration.

Ramadan in the Arabic language derives from the word al-ramad and al-ramdā’, meaning the earth which is scorched under intense heat, possibly due to the fact that before Islam, this month gained its name at the height of summer.

But scholars have commented on the fast’s ability to burn away sins and attachments.

Like a sword, Ramadan blazes the mundane and disrupts even the most autocratic secular state routines, reordering time itself. It tests the mettle of the believer.

In other words, Ramadan comes not only to sear stomachs and throats, it comes as an invitation to purify hearts and intentions. To baptize by fire. To sharpen the vision of inner sight. To intensify attributes of humanity—hunger, need, introspection, vulnerability—in the face of rampant and endemic inhumanity.

It cuts through base, bestial gluttonous attachments and releases one from the prison of physical bodies, to the boundless freedom of celestial souls.

This Ramadan comes with an acute, unprecedented urgency to resist and confront systematized inhumanity.

Because the Final Revelation to humanity descended in it, Ramadan’s greatest enemy, therefore, is malice. It is a blowtorch to pervasive evil. Its higher form of observance is to fast from the wickedness of the tongue and hearts. For the knower of God, the highest fast of all is to fast from perceiving anything other than God.

Well before the Palestinian Revolt of 1936, the tradition of fasting as resistance began of course, in the Battle of Badr, which marked Ramadan as the witness to a David and Goliath battle, when a small band of Muslims, 313 to be precise, met the beast not only with swords, but with emptied stomachs and a relentless unbroken reliance on the unyielding power of the Victor (an-Nasir).

This theme of the few confronting the many is present, but forgotten in Western civilizational mythology, too. In 480 BCE, a small Greek force led by Spartan King Leonidas held off King Xerxes I’s massive Persian army for three days at the narrow coastal pass of Thermopylae.

300 or so Spartans, alongside a few thousand Greek allies, faced the massive invading forces of Xerxes I. The resisting force was annihilated, yet in Western memory, Thermopylae became a story of defiance, sacrifice, and heroic death in the face of an overwhelming imperial force.

Though it was a military defeat in the short term, the delay provided crucial time for Greek city-states to prepare for further conflict, ultimately contributing to the Persian defeat.

Both the battle of Badr and Thermopylae center asymmetry: the few against the many, conviction against cold-hearted raw power. Thermopylae holds forgotten vestiges of sacrifice in the materialistic, satiated West.

This contrast becomes instructive when thinking about Palestine today. As many Americans begin to awaken to the Great Ruse, that the stoked fears of “a Muslim takeover of America,” hide the fact that a Zionist already has.

In this way, Gaza is serving as the world’s Thermopylae.

Like a century long Battle of Badr, Palestine has been valiantly staving off the Zionist Xerxes at the gate of humanity, while they are the ones being called the “barbarians.”

For many in the Global South, this Ramadan is marked by a living battle of Badr in the ongoing Palestinian struggle. Its exterior reality (thahir) looks like Thermopylae: a small, besieged population confronting a vastly superior military apparatus backed by empire, being singularly demonized and fought through displacement, blockade, bombardment, and now, a holocaust.

But its batin (interior reality) is, in fact, Badr: it reminds us that righteous resistance does not need to be commensurate with military might. In fact, it rarely does. It is precisely this jarring asymmetry between the oppressed in Palestine, Yemen or Sudan that often exposes the fragility of empires that often overplay their hand with brute force at the cusp of their downfall.

The Palestinian refusal to surrender, the refusal be erased is, in reality, humanity’s soul refusal to be euthanized.

The irony is that Western philosophers and scholars celebrate Thermopylae precisely because a small band dared to resist empire. But when a small band actually resists today—when Palestinians resist their brutal occupation—the same Western imagination that venerates Leonidas often denies Muslims and Palestinians their due honor and valor for their defiance. The myth of the few going against the beast is admired in antiquity but loathed in real-time. They draw the line at the perpetual “beast”—the Arab/Muslim “other”—no matter how noble or sacrificial.

In this sense, Palestine is as much the West’s Thermopylae as it is the modern day Badr of the Muslims. For the West, is it its mirror, forcing it to remember and reckon with its unrealized and abandoned foundational principles, as a martyr for humanity, even when it is villainized.

For Muslims, Palestine stands as its guilty conscience: that the plenty have reneged on their duties towards the ragtag few, the lone wolves upholding a resilient dam against theological and civilizational erasure. The small band that represents the true, lived, sacrificial Islam while their fellow brethren in the ummah opt for an Islam of opulence, laziness, docility and reactionary religiosity.

In fact, there were other modern Thermopylae across the 19th century led by Muslims, too. In 1857, the Naqshbandi Sufi Shaykh, who was the leader of the Muslim Dagestan and Chechen community, led a fierce resistance that delayed Russia’s conquest of the Caucasus for 25 years.

Enslaved Muslims in colonial-era America once had to observe their Ramadan in secret due to "slave codes" that banned assemblies, exposing them to punishment for fasting. The 1835 Malê Revolt, a significant uprising by enslaved African Muslims in Bahia, Brazil, also occurred during Ramadan. Mainly Yoruba and Hausa-speaking enslaved and free Muslims from West Africa resisted slavery and forced conversion to Catholicism. Despite its outward “failure,” the uprising is considered a major turning point that highlighted African resistance and influenced the long-term decline of slavery in Brazil and in the Americas generally.

Though they did not see the fruits of their victory in their lifetime, they fulfilled their covenant as to safeguard future generations from evil.

So you see, victories against tyranny, whether delayed or immediate, are inevitable. Many before us have sacrificed their musk-scented souls at the altar of the Divine in to honor the highest aims of humanity before us.

What base attachments can we scorch within us this Ramadan to scorch pervasive malice in the world?

For the ummah, for humanity, the exterior reality of Ramadan may appear as one of fragility, weakness and defeat, of being overpowered by evil, but never forget that history rarely honors the boastful plenty, rather, it remembers the sincere few.

Victory is not for the loudest, most powerful and most mighty. This is in reality, in the metric of cosmic principles, weakness.

True power—true light— is reserved for the humble. For the hungry, those with throats dry, hair disheveled, stomachs hollow. Victory is for the wretched of the earth, oppressed under the weight of godless arrogance, with bloodied stones in their hands and spears of light in their hearts.

Freedom belongs to righteous living souls, to those whose hearts are free, encircling the throne of God.

The enslaved ones are those who are chained in the mud of their malice and bestiality.

So this Ramadan, incinerate the malice within and walk the path of Prophetic sacrifice, to scorch the pervasive devilry that is running amok in this decisive battle for the soul of humanity.

The man that wrote these words was killed less than a decade later.

These are the words of Palestinian scholar Ismā’il al-Farūqī (d.1986), the figure who arguably laid down the foundations for the academic study of Islam in America.

If he were alive today, the contours of Islam in America would arguably look significantly different.

At a time when socialism and Arab nationalism were rampant in the 1960s, through his experience as a Palestinian refugee in America, he became more active in campus Muslim Students Associations at Temple University and UPenn. Through interacting with Muslims from all around the world, he shed layers of conditioning and attachments to inherited cultural constructs even, or especially, ones born out of the trauma of the Nakba of 1948.

According to Farūqī’s personal friend, sociologist Ilyas Ba-Yunus relays that the MSA allowed Farūqī to fundamentally change his “self concept.” While visiting Farūqī as a patient at the Johns Hopkins Ophthalmological Center in the spring of 1968, he told him:

“Until a few months ago, I was a Palestinian, an Arab and a Muslim. Now I am a Muslim who happens to be an Arab from Palestine.

From the 1960s onwards, al-Fārūqī became recognized—along with Professor Fazlur Rahman of the University of Chicago and Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University—as the prominent scholars of Islam in North America who founded the field of the study of Islam as a recognized discipline of study, research and discourse.

He co-founded the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT), and the Islamic Studies program in the Department of Religion at Temple University, where the likes of my former Georgetown advisor, Professor John Esposito trained under him.

Professor al-Fārūqī was a universal man of letters. A Palestinian man from Yafa who served briefly as governor of Galilee before the Israeli occupation, he wrote prolifically, and authored, along with his wife Dr. Lamya al Farūqī—a distinguished scholar of Islamic art in her own right—their seminal work titled The Cultural Atlas of Islam (1986). He also wrote other important books such as, Islam and the Problem of Israel (1980).

In his spiritual and intellectual transformation, I see affinities with my own. I grew up in a postcolonial Arab state, but had to thoroughly spiritually decolonize myself, too: to peel away the layers of secular and nationalist conditioning. To remember that the ummah is not the “Arab” one, but the Muslim one.

Professor al-Farūqī did so at a time when spiritual colonization was rampant: when miniskirts were a sign of progress in Arab capitals, when liberation was simply tied to the symbols of the kufiyyeh, and the rusty keys that promised the awaited return to the watan (the homeland).

He miraculously decolonized his approach to liberation through the imperative of holding on to an ummah-oriented consciousness, alongside a spiritual and ethical interior commitment to the civilizational role of the Islam at a time when the PLO and Arab nationalism offered much louder and much more popular frameworks.

In doing so, he shed decades of cultural and spiritual colonialism: meaning, he did not loathe himself, his unapologetic commitment to Islam, his creedal, essential, absolutist commitment to God. He desecularized his spirit. He did not shrink himself to become more likable to the dictates of respectable society or academia. He spoke freely and unapologetically. He, unlike Edward Said, spoke of the Palestinian cause through a creedal lens, seeing it through a lens rooted in pre-eternity, in revelation, not simply post-colonialism. As an eternal struggle between good and evil.

It was precisely this, his uncompromising vision of faith-based liberation is what made him arguably all the more powerful and more dangerous to the status quo.

Dr. Farūqī and Dr. Lamya were both stabbed, murdered in cold blood in their apartment in 1986 in dubious and mysterious circumstances that yet remain unsolved, but it doesn’t take a genius to surmise who might benefit from quashing such a powerful Palestinian and Muslim intellectual powerhouse.

He reportedly foresaw his own death according to a paper on him by Sudanese scholar Malik Badri:

In the concluding session of the conference in honor of al-Farūqī held at the IIUM in Kuala Lumpur, Anis Ahmad declared to the audience that al-Farūqī had confided to him that his father had made two special supplications for him: to become a great scholar and to die as a shahīd (martyr).

As quoted by Ahmad, al-Farūqī wondered: “Now I am a scholar, but how can I die a shahīd in the US?” Allah Ta‘ālā accepted both supplications.

Similarly, the 1960s produced another charismatic, visionary African American Muslim giant who transformed himself, and perfectly harmonized and fused Islamic consciousness with black liberation: Imam Jamil al-Amin (d.2025), who recently suffered a slow death in unjust imprisonment by the state’s carceral system under false charges.

If he too were allowed to resume teaching and leading as he did, I venture to say the contours of Islam in America would have looked very different than the suburban respectability Islam we have today.

Just compare this quotes by the late, great Imam al-Amin to that of Dr. Farūqī’s, above:

“I seek truth over a lie. I seek justice over injustice. I seek righteousness over the rewards of evil doers. And I love Allah more than I love the state.”

“When you understand your obligations to the Creator, only then can you understand your obligations to society.”

Like Malcolm, who, days before his death, he told his sister, “They are after me. They won’t rest until they get me”, Imam Jamil Al-Amin too presciently said,

“America, if it takes my death to organize my people to revolt against you,

Then, here is my Life!

But my Soul belongs to my people.

Lasima Tushinde Mbilashaka (We Shall Conquer Without a Doubt).”

It is incredible how the words of the righteous, sacrificial saints often come true and ring true.

What is America undergoing now if not its greatest unraveling after Imam al-Amin and so many shuhada’—from Gaza to Sudan—gave their life as qurban for us to wake up and see what they always saw, but what we were too mentally colonized and spiritually sedated to see: the crystal clear, painfully bare, truth?

It is important to emphasize that these unlikely men came of age in the 1960s, a time much like our present moment. The 60s were defined by moral upheaval and civilizational disorientation, a time when inherited constructs were collapsing right and left and every norm became suddenly contested. The 60s saw intense wars of independence across the global south, racial violence, imperial overreach, and generational shifts that converged to create a culture in which nothing felt stable and clarity was elusive precisely because, exactly like the moment when find ourselves, everything claims to be countercultural, counterintuitive, and hence, incoherent.

Much like today, liberation, revolution, and authenticity were spoken of in the same breath, yet often pointed to contradictory directions, leaving many searching not for novelty but for something more enduring: transcendental anchoring. This is why so many turned to non-traditional modes of authority, to psychedelics and New Age, “Eastern” spirituality. Then as now, the sheer onslaught on meaning makes discernment extremely difficult. But it needn’t be so, because others have tread this path of clarity despite chaos before us.

There is screaming, numbed outrage stifled in all of us, and coherence is the rarest, most elusive gift of all. In such moments, the challenge lies in not merely parroting revolutionary slogans to “resist tyrants,” but to resist the tyranny within: that of spiritual colonialism. The urge to dissociate. To succumb to numbing.

Because of this, in this essay, I invoke the combined example of the two vastly different, but similarly anchored, American Muslim visionaries—Professor al-Farūqī and Imam al-Amin—who were able to conquer themselves and accomplish the impossible: to retain coherence in an age of continuous counterculture and spiritual colonialism.

These ancestral American Muslim giants can serve as a principled anchor particularly for those living inside the imperial core. Inside Pharaoh’s court. Looking back at ancestral struggles, we must be able to stand on their shoulders to distinguish between reactionary gestures that shock the system vs. enduring transcendental commitments that can actually sustain justice over time.

Recently, I attended a talk about Imam Jamil at a local mosque by the Imam of the Oakland Islamic Community Center, Amir Abdulmalik, who knew Imam al-Amin, and summarized the larger-than-life contributions of “the great second shahid” after Hajj Malik/Malcolm. Amir Abdulmalik described al-Jamil’s internal revolution of going from “wearing the black beret of black nationalism, to the kufi/kuffiyeh of Islam.”

For Imam al-Amin, or Professor al-Farūqī—whose lives and contributions were arguably cut short by state repression—to be a true Muslim is about the radical reordering of priorities and going against the grain of societal or intellectual convention. I see too many well-meaning activists more committed to the edicts of Marxism or socialism than those of Islam today. I don’t mean to say that Arab socialist thought or black nationalism cannot teach us a thing. They are most often the only validating frames available to empower the oppressed, provide them with a vernacular of collectivist affinity building, and invite to deeper consciousness.

But the trick is for the conscientious Muslim is not to stay stuck in those constructs and frames as the be all end all. Because what Imam al-Amin taught in his Revolution by the Book is just that: revolution can only happen by THE book (the Qur’an). That only submission to the One, truly internalized and enacted upon, possesses the power emancipate the disempowered. Not to homogenize or erase cultural specificity or ethnic belonging, but towards the mutual goal of liberation through, not despite, the alignment under the power of the Creator.

Notice how it is always the visionaries who transcend the constructs of theories and ideologies and controlled-opposition dissent that get shot or killed: because they shed their own crutches—even their own liberationist frameworks and conditioning. Only through active surrender can the internally revolutionized posses true, “dangerous” activating power. Only those who truly succeed in transcending the state can gain the honor of being shielded and empowered through the singular, pervasive power of Allah, rather than simply reacting to, fighting or hating supremacist systems.

According to an 1967 FBI memo, the architects of COINTELPRO feared in Malcolm and others like Imam al-Amin the “prophecy” of a Black messiah. What they truly feared—and still fear— is the emergence of a fully activated moral consciousness rooted in the perfected trifecta history, faith, and collective memory.

What the state sought to preempt then is what power fears now: coherence of conscience. Coherence with the past, coherence between oppressed people, and the coherence of batin and zahir with the individual spirit.

This is why Islamic consciousness has long been treated as uniquely dangerous, because it refuses fragmentation, holds on to absolutes, and necessitates the inextricable bind between ethics and action. Like I said previously, they fear Islam/”the Messiah”, but Muslims do not act enough like“Messiahs” to realize said fear.

Whether it is the war on “old” native black and brown Muslim consciousness, or the “new” fight against the immigrant “Muslim Brotherhood”, these wars are actually one and the same: they are about the prevention of rooted faith that remembers indigenous pasts as an entryway to living political and moral futures.

That is why the war on coherence is so characteristic of dajallic forces who seek to delude, elude and confuse with a constant barrage of demonic carnage and distraction.

This the war on meaning in full throttled action today: it works overtime to produce perpetually distracted, constantly afraid, spiritually colonized, fragmented consciousness. "Or do you think that most of them hear or understand? They are only like cattle—no, more than that, they are astray from the Truth" (Qur’an, 25:44)

This is why the most radical thing anyone can do right now is to truly and wholly be Muslim. To counteract degeneracy by following the boogeyman they call shari’a, Divine code. Because Islam, when taken seriously, reconnects people to lineage, Divine covenant, Prophetic discipline, and ummatic responsibility—and it is precisely this consciousness threatens systems built on amnesia and chronically choked despair.

Imam Jamil Al-Amin stands as a bridge between the civil rights era and this present collapse of empire: he is both a central figure in Black liberation, and a Muslim leader whose commitment to tawḥīd and justice rendered him irreconcilable with state power. His continued imprisonment under false pretenses mirrors the present struggle for Palestine, where the criminalization of resistance is inseparable from the fear of a people who remember who they are. Across generations, the target remains the same. The onslaught against awakened conscience, unity, and moral clarity continues, but when these truly take root, they cannot be co-opted.

A Muslim needs to fight for dear life to hold on to exactly those things. To differentiate themselves drastically from the mainstream culture of their oppressor: not just the music they listen to, the holidays they celebrate, the intoxicants they inebriate themselves with (replace with dhikr), the food they consume, but through liberating oneself from the false gods they worship on a spiritual and intellectual level, and that includes most isms, however “emancipatory” they may seem. They too, aren’t God.

In other words, to lean in, not out of our ghuraba status, to be as strangers in this world. When this system of monstrous, immorality and mayhem--guided by the “Israel first” agenda— is done ravaging the world and this country, they will be looking to the lone wolves, the resilient Muslims, who, despite all, stood firm and withstood the war on coherence through the power of their faith.

As Amir Abdulmalik said in his talk, to truly change the world, you have to be prepared to end up in three places: 1) The hospital 2) The prison 3) The graveyard. Imam al-Amin ended up in all three.

He also said, those who were effective in fighting injustice understood the fight as primordial. That it is ultimately not about us vs. the system, or the rebel vs. the system, it is about Allah vs. the system. If you lose sight of that, you will always stumble and fall into the devilish ruse and web of fear. If you think the state is all-powerful, your faith is flawed. If you think the degenerate demonic spawn of Epstein and co. are simply too connected and too conniving to be defeated, your faith is still weak. If you think that Allah cannot destroy them in second, you need to seriously go inwards and spiritually decolonize yourself.

This is exactly what these dark forces are counting on: your weak faith. Your spiritual colonization. Your ignorance about the true ethic of Islam.

This spiritual colonization is why Emiratis and Saudis feature so heavily in the Epstein files: in one email, the “Muslim guy” is taking about what the Qur’an has to say about befriending Jews and Christians, and in the same email, he then talks about the “100% fresh Russian female” at his yacht.

This is why Epstein feels so comfortable inviting Peter Theil to Saudi Arabia, saying “I represent the Rothschilds, would you like to meet in Saudi?” and why he received a piece of the Ka’aba’s cloth as a gift from an Emirati businesswoman: there is no greater symbol for the rampant bastardization of Islam than this. They will literally sell Islam and its holiest sites for their lust, money and access.

How do we expect to be free if we don’t free Mecca and Madina from the dark occupation of Muslim Zionists?

The UAE and Saudi are perfect examples of Islam as divorced from ethics. When ones’ inward beliefs (batin) do not conform on one’s outer actions (thahir). In Islamic theology, nifaq (hypocrisy) is precisely defined as the lack of alignment between the outward appearance/actions and the batin (inner faith/intentions). It is the act of displaying faith, goodness, or obedience outwardly while concealing disbelief, fear, doubt, or evil inwardly.

In essence, these sewer-filled Epstein files do not exist in a vacuum, they have come out of an ecosystem of a general state of incoherence and spiritual colonization that has strategically subdued the power of faith and its mandate to resist injustice and evil.

Each of us must ask ourselves how we are working to restore Islam’s original mandate of truth-telling and resisting moral decay. For example, say might say you believe in Allah’s all-pervasive power and control, and say Allah gave you a platform and knowledge, but you wouldn’t dare to speak out against the UAE and its role in compromising American Islam for example. You might say that is reckless because it “upsets so and so Sidi at Zaytuna” or “I’ll lose an invite to this or that conference,” or, “I won’t get invited to RIS next year,” for example. I am sorry to say this plainly means you still favor dunya over Allah, because you will be asked about your flock. About what you did to lift the harm and nifaq that poisoned Muslim consciousness. To inch humanity closer to Prophetic justice.

From the Arab world to here in America in the Muslim community globally, we are at risk of harboring a theology mired by interior incoherence. Nifaq is endemic: our internal beliefs (batin) and the outward sayings and actions (thahir) are not in tune, nor in harmony. The beloved Prophet ﷺ said this about us in this time. He said, we will be inflicted with wahn, that we would be like the scum of the sea, numerous but useless. When he was asked the reason for that, and what wahn was, he said: “the love of the world and the hatred of death.”

In essence, when one loves the fickle, material, illusory world more than permanence, eternal life, and the reality of meeting the Creator at any given moment, this is a sign of rampant spiritual colonization. It means the heart one’s is in the grip of taghutic incoherence. It means that there is a wide gap between one’s inner and outer realities.

This state leads to the most dangerous outcome of all: the fragmentation of the soul. And we wonder why we are the way we are. The onslaught on coherence and meaning is so severe that we are in peril if we do not course correct and remember the initial dictum behind our very existence.

Ironically, the cabal of the ruling elite are spiritually more aligned than most people of faith, they are more focused than believers in their inward wretchedness—degeneracy, debauchery, child sacrifice and unspeakable crimes— conforms precisely onto the outward actions that result in genocide, land theft, torture coldblooded murder, usury, etc. They too are “spiritual,” only with much more conviction in the other direction. Their batin matches their thahir perfectly.

The heinous, despicable things they do to women and children in private manifest as crimes externally against humanity at large through domination and subjugation in politics, economics, education and culture.

Only once one has rectified their soul’s allegiance to the All Powerful through upright action, obedience, disciplining the bestial lower self, only then can be worthy of being deputized with leadership of true, lasting and just liberation. Because so long as one’s Islam is bogged down by theoretical study of leftist thought alone, or nationalistic allegiance alone, or identity alone, then one has truly not undertaken a tahqiq (actualization) of their soul’s honored purpose behind existence: becoming a warrior of love and truth-telling for God, by God.

Islam will never re-enter the vernacular of a civilizational force for good if it is still afraid of the materialist, supremacist, cadaver of this debased world.

We will never be seen as Prophetic inheritors if we are still shackled by incoherence and fear, devoid of laser sharp focus.

We can never counteract darkness with light if we don’t actualize the light we carry. This light is not from here. It is from the Kingdom of Malakut where darkness doesn’t exist and has no true power.

This is what our righteous ancestors before us sacrificed their very souls for us to realize: the biggest collateral of genocidal Islamophobia has been our souls.

Our consciousness.

Whether immigrants to America, like the shahid Professor al-Faruqi, or whether more native to it, like the shahid Imam Jamil al-Amin, both immigrant and native Muslims on Turtle Island need to unite around the locus of emancipatory tawhid that binds them.

Immigrant Muslims need to remember that their struggles are not new: that Muslim presence here was originally always about islah, internal revolution, eradicating false gods and unsettling tyranny rather than sedimenting it.

Islam in the Americas was always treated as a threat to be contained. As early as 1526, Spanish authorities issued royal decrees barring Wolof Muslims because they were seen as too resistant to domination to be safely incorporated into the colonial order. In the nineteenth century, Islam was similarly outlawed in Brazil after Muslims helped lead slave revolts in Haiti and Bahia.

This largely erased history—from early resistance to Spanish conquest, through the revolutionary legacy of enslaved Muslims, to the twentieth-century revival reveals a consistent truth: Islam in the Americas has never been passive or assimilationist. It has persistently unsettled power, insisting on justice and resistance in the face of oppression, echoing the Prophet’s ﷺ teaching that the most noble struggle is to speak a word of truth before a tyrant.

This is a fact essential to the nature of Islam, so, yes, they are right to fear a black or “Muslim Messiah,” because Divine promise cannot be erased, but those sustaining this status quo will be replaced, that is Qur’anic promise, too:

So whether you shed your wahn or not to join this tsunami of islah that is coming to break the false gods of injustice and incoherence, it is up to you.

You can choose to join the primordial reckoning to come, or be replaced.

The Trump administration’s heavy-handed attacks on academic freedom went relentlessly after universities like Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton.

But Stanford faced no significant federal ire or scrutiny.

And yet despite this, it has escaped the attention of many that Stanford is seeking to impose the harshest criminal sentence against student protestors across American universities.

If convicted, the Stanford 11, currently on trial, face the possibility of over three years in prison and over $300,000 in restitution to the University. These extreme punitive measures will no doubt impart lasting professional and personal damage and reputational harm against these students, even though no direct federal pressure is demanding of them to do so.

Why is that?

I know Stanford well. I used to work there.

Stanford’s federal compliance was never under scrutiny to begin with, because its proximity to Silicon Valley, surveillance technology, and hawkish U.S. foreign policy makes it the ideal MIGA (Make Israel Great) university.

It focuses less on the humanities and more on stone cold pragmatic techno-economic growth, while sustaining a long standing underlying institutional culture in which Palestine, Muslims, and Arabs are perpetually dehumanized, structurally marginalized, rendered peripheral, or better yet, wholly silent and absent.

Since Stanford does not possess a robust tradition of public-facing humanities, it is the ideal handmaid of both Silicon Valley and Washington.

Gaza has exposed just how much the modern research university increasingly functions as an operative of warmongering and mass violence. If Columbia and Harvard are cultural power centers for these campaigns of death, Stanford is an operational one. Its tech and defense mandate is strategically and materially useful to the state, and hence, it is readily more administratively compliant.

Stanford’s claim to institutional “neutrality” collapses on contact with its existing contracts and entanglements.Even though it presents itself as a passive observer of war and repression, it is, in reality, a steady and reliable conduit of it. For example, the university’s endorsement of Palantir through recruiting pipelines and academic programming speaks volumes about university’s true unequivocal support of Israel and its unconscionable crimes against the Palestinian people.

Therefore, without so much as a slap on the wrist or any pressure from the Trump administration, it is clear that Stanford’s severely harsh restitution demand against its own students, the Stanford 11, are not really aimed at recovering money for damaged property or restoring order, neither were the student expulsions, funding cuts or visa revocations.

Rather, these draconian measures and the overblown lawsuit against the students clearly functions as federally aligned, performative credibility theater; this heavy handed approach is aimed at pleasing their own constituents; government agencies, donors, trustees, and uniparty political powers that Stanford serves as a steady cultural and ideological pipeline for.

Institutional Erasure

Perhaps chief in this respect among elite universities, Stanford is not an ideological problem child for this anti-scholarly and anti-intellectual administration; it is arguably the poster child.

Unlike Harvard and Columbia, it has never made an effort to institute a historically powerful, visible, or politicized institutional home for Palestinian studies or serious Muslim intellectual life. At Stanford, I saw firsthand how the Palestine exception is encoded in the university’s ethos and institutional mission.

Unlike at Harvard—my alma mater, which has deceptively succeeded in gaining a reputation of resistance to Trump, when in fact, in capitulated on everything to do with Palestine—the leadership of the “Center for Middle East Studies” at Stanford could not be fired, and “Palestine programs” could not be suspended, well, because these don’t even exist, because Stanford intentionally chose not to build or fund them in the first place.

Through firsthand experience, I saw how this deliberate, structural erasure of serious academic programs related to the study of Islam, Muslims and Palestine is one of the key reasons why Stanford feels so emboldened in undertaking a singularly retributive, bad faith measure against the anti-genocide students on trial (who are neither Muslim nor Arab, by the way) and why they are so vulnerable to the firing squad of powerful actors like District Attorneys Jeff Rosen and Rob Baker.

Stanford is arguably the most structurally anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim elite university in the US. For one, the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, which I ran, is intentionally designed as a light weight, non–degree-granting program, marginal to the university’s academic core. An endowed chair in Islamic Studies has sat vacant for nearly two decades in the Religious Studies department. There is no Middle East Studies Center to speak of, save for a newly launched Palestine post-doc.

Ironically, programs housed alongside Islamic Studies under Global Studies, like the Iranian Studies Program, has a strong, hawkish Israel-bias. The “Center for Human Rights and International Justice” did not host a single event on Gaza or the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding there. In the middle of the genocide last year, the Koum family, the founders of Whatsapp, gave a gift to endow the Israel Studies Program under the Freeman Spogli Institute, which I used to see every day on my day to work. It is like founding a Hulu Militias Program during the Rwandan genocide. You cannot make this up.

Internally, the campus is extremely hostile to the basic idea that Palestinians should exist. Colleagues report that, “If you say the wrong thing, even if the wrong thing is ʻstop killing Palestiniansʼ that can very clearly and very quickly turn into a reason for blacklisting you.” And on, and on.

At Stanford, Palestine is the biggest elephant in the proverbial room.

Hoover as a Tool of Empire Expansion

Not only that, the Hoover Institution, housed on campus, has long served as the hawkish intellectual bastion of American militarism which is currently still on a destructive warpath in Iran and beyond.

Its leadership and fellows such as the vitriolic anti-Muslim Ayan Hirsi Ali and her husband, “finish the job in Iran” Niall Ferguson, have been deeply implicated in advocating for War on Terror-rhetoric which reaped the lives of millions—the same framework that rendered Muslim life perpetually dehumanized and Palestinian life endlessly disposable.

After all, the warmonger Condoleezza Rice is a Stanford fixture: the former U.S. Secretary of State who was a central architect of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is Director at Hoover and former Provost, and is part of the university’s governing elite.

In an Orwellian fashion mirroring Trump’s farcical “Board of Peace”, she recently warned against creating “another generation of Palestinians who believe that somehow the resistance is the way to peace and security.” Never mind that resistance to an illegal occupation is a legally protected right.

And nothing says “peace and security” like 69,000 dead and counting, right?

This is why when Stanford students speak on behalf of a steadfast, tortured refugee population undergoing ethnic cleansing and collective punishment, they are threatening an ideological and administrative consensus that the Stanford administration helped produce and sustain from Silicon Valley to Washington.

This is perhaps the ultimate example of the Palestine exception in action: where Palestine is singularly policed where other causes are permitted. That is why protest becomes “criminality,” and solidarity becomes “extremism.”

As we watch these students go on trial, we must remember that at Stanford, there was never an institutional home where Palestinian history, politics, or intellectual life might accumulate authority, continuity, or protection. Except for the ironic fact that the father of Palestinian studies, Edward Said, started working on his seminal work Orientalism at the Center for Advanced Behavioral Studies at Stanford in 1975. Said once wrote that the role of the intellectual is “to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations.”

Stanford Students as Revealers of the Moral Rot

This is precisely what the student protestors set out to do, but instead of being lauded as free speech heroes, they were first ignored, then harshly persecuted, labeled as mere “leftist agitators,” when in fact, they are the ones saving America from culture wars by taking a sledge-hammer to what the conservatives in power view as “the woke mind virus”: they are reminding us that no category and no state is above reproach, including the actions of the State of Israel, which top organizations unanimously agree has committed genocide.

Those who have previously labeled these students as “critical theory snowflakes” are mum about the alarming level of censorship and repression when it comes to discussing the porcelain dolls of Zionism and Israel.

Who are the snowflakes here really, perpetually wielding the victimhood card?

The poetic beauty of all this dystopian hellscape is that the institutional void on Palestine that Stanford tried so hard to silently sustain did not remain empty.

The students filled with their fearless sit-in, which lasted 120 days before being forcibly removed, and the People’s University, which I was honored to teach at.

In the absence of a dynamic Middle East Studies center, or a proper degree-granting Islamic Studies program, students assumed the work the university had abdicated.

They organized teach-ins, observed prayer, constructed syllabi, invited scholars, and sustained serious political and historical education about Palestine where none was officially permitted to exist.

During the student hunger strike—undertaken as Palestinians in Gaza were being subjected to forced famine by Israel—despite their growling, empty stomachs, they were acting as professors, departments, and centers of knowledge all at once as the university ignored their demands to meet.

The students put the higher back into higher education. The university punished them precisely for holding up a mirror to the hypocrisy.

The truth is, Stanford is not under scrutiny because Muslim and Arab students, and people of conscience who speak up for Palestinian lives, like the Stanford 11, have always been structurally isolated, lacking the faculty advocates, scholarly infrastructure, and donor-backed legitimacy.

These structural disadvantages make the work of my colleagues at Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) and the Muslim Arab and Palestinian (MAP) Communities Committee almost impossible.

At universities with robust humanities, Middle East studies programs or visible Palestinian scholarly communities, harsh discipline risks backlash—faculty revolt, donor counter-mobilization, reputational damage. At Stanford, where such counterweights are weak or nonexistent, the conscientious student, faculty or staff objector is left exposed and are rendered more vulnerable to disproportionate measures.

Appropriating the Anti Vietnam War Legacy

Stanford is often imagined as a paragon of innovation, progress and openness. It likes to imagine itself on the right side of history. It points proudly to the 1960s, when student protests against the Vietnam War are now appropriated into the university’s self-mythology: courageous youth who undertook principled dissent at great personal cost, guided by a brave, moral awakening.

What Stanford refuses to acknowledge is that, were those same students protesting today—if their cause were Palestine rather than Vietnam—they would be disciplined, charged, surveilled, and their demand for justice will be invoiced.

Stanford will likely also appropriate even the legacy of the Stanford 11 one day, and act like they were on the right side of history all along. But it will be too late. The Palestine Exception is tanking not just higher education, but the very core constitutional basis of this country. America would rather cannibalize itself than—God forbid—humanize Muslim and Palestinian lives.

We will never forget.

I, like many others, will make sure to never allow them to forget the complicit underbelly of Stanford and of academia in general, and their active role in covering for—and enabling—the genocidal dystopia of our present moment.

Stanford’s legacy will go down as the elite university that is Silicon Valley’s operational wingman of the destructive MIGA agenda.

That is why Stanford was spared Trump’s wrath.

And that is precisely why its discreetly egregious, but uniquely sinister example, should trouble us most.

Support the Stanford 11 by signing the petition to drop the charges against them, here, and following their case below:

The world in this moment feels like a snake-oil salesman in a fraying suit, knocking on our door again with the same measly cracked bottle, promising cure while hawking poison: only now, the salesman is not so subtle.

We will have them turn over 50 million barrels of oil! We are locked and loaded to save the protestors from the Ayatollahs!

Words so contrived, callous and cheap they’ve lost all meaning. We’ve heard this pitch before, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and watched it end in ruin, yet the crooked salesman returns, smugger, insulted that we didn’t buy his poison last time.

All the while, the streets of the imperial core bleed red—not from some distant foreign “regime” or tyrant, but from homegrown IDF-trained ICE raids that kill and maim mothers, from homelessness festering in plain sight, from a social fabric shredded by cold indifference and brute force. The moral sermon of saving another dangerous “foreign” country abroad from “tyranny” while unleashing bloodshed against their own people rings hollow. What’s that saying about chickens roosting and boomerangs.. boomeranging?

The student encampments constituted the last bastion of resistance to this boomerang, but they were dismissed as extremist, woke, Marxist agitators. Those who crushed their voices sided with genocide instead. This is why movements based on liberal hypocrisy like the “No Kings” movement fail and ring hollow. Those who did not draw the line at the collective punishment and annihilation of Gaza will not draw the line at coldblooded murder on their own doorstep.

Like I said in my previous post, the more one sees clearly the more painful it is.

It is a sick joke performed on loop, where the script never changes, only the target does, and we’re expected to pretend to accept this dysfunctional dystopia.

This C-Rated film ultimately keeps happening because, God forbid, Zionist-backed governments and interests leave Islam and Muslims alone.

The truth is, the Israeli state-sponsored rhetoric of eternal Jewish victimhood immunizes expansionist power-seeking from accountability, even when actual victims of a genocide still plead for their lives before our eyes. It is astounding. The bombs fall at the behest of victimhood tropes/culture/narrative on antisemitism vs. actual human lives, actual victims, actual semites get brutally exterminated.

The moral obscenity deepens when that rhetoric is paired with the increased stoking of anti-Muslim animus globally by Evangelical, Hindutva, far-right and Zionist instigators—casting Muslims as an existential threat—while Muslims are, in reality, among the primary victims of this century’s state terror, mass surveillance, bombardment, displacement, and collective punishment from Gaza to Kashmir to Guantánamo’s enduring afterlife.

But victims does not connote victimhood. Muslims have God as our ultimate victor. Muslims do not need to milk their victimhood status to assert a “chosen people” complex and use that as an excuse to suppress others. They are not our teachers, alhamdulilah.

Yet, to add insult to injury, it is an Arab government, the UAE, that funds much of this global Islamophobic campaign and has even pledged to back Israel’s genocide in Gaza “by all means necessary.” The UAE officially designated the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a terrorist organization in November 2014, ten years before Gov. Abbott in Texas moved to do so in November 2025.

According to Andreas Krieg, Abu Dhabi’s mode of statecraft is an attempt to mimic the burgeoning days of the British Empire, the same empire that handed over Palestine to the Zionists and carved up the Arab world. It so desperately wants to prove its “civility” to its masters by attempting to assert itself as the leader of the Arab world by castigating Islam and Muslims and unleashing the dogs of mass violence and surveillance upon them. Abu Dhabi insidiously focuses on building networks of private firms and proxies to project power to establish regional dominance and counter perceived threats from average Muslims who believe in the central edicts of Qur’an. Of course, banning the “Muslim Brotherhood” is just a stand-in for banning mainstream Islamic political and ethical consciousness.

But all these hysterical moves rest on fickle ground. The UAE, like the US and Israel, are overplaying their colonial hand. Abu Dhabi is increasingly isolating itself and its arrogance and hubris will be its downfall: it will go down in the dustbin of history as the shameless Arab Uncle Tom of Pax Judaica.

This pervasive war against Islam is not accidental. It is reaching its zenith. I wouldn’t be surprised if the UAE has already started to fund policies to ban the Qur’an, calling it an “antisemitic” book.

All this aligns with long-articulated strategic visions such as the Yinon Plan (1982), an Israeli strategic paper arguing that Israel’s security would be best ensured by the fragmentation of surrounding Arab states along sectarian and ethnic lines, Kurdish, Armenian, Druze, etc., producing weak, divided entities incapable of challenging regional dominance like its recent move to recognize Somaliland; and the Clean Break policy (1996), drafted for Netanyahu by U.S. neoconservatives, which urged abandoning land-for-peace, confronting Syria, weakening Iraq, and reshaping the region through force and regime change under the guise of “security” and “moderation.”

Some are holding their breath that a Muslim-style NATO might finally be formed to confront the UAE and what I call the Axis of Treason, but I fear that the door for collective moral action has long been shut by the inaction during the Sudan and Gaza genocides. Remember, whatever reaction these Muslims states take is based on fear, not virtue. Any reactive move built on fear is bound to fail. The armies that did not move for Gaza will likely end up moving against their own people. After all, the torture dungeons full of dissidents in Arab states don’t lie. These Muslim states still resemble the UAE domestically, even if they are trying to part with it on a foreign policy level. Across the Middle East and its peripheries, both state elites and explicitly anti-Muslim currents have increasingly mobilized pre-Islamic civilizations as symbols in a broader cultural reorientation meant to relativize or displace Islam’s role in national identity.

In Egypt, the heavy investment in pharaonic imagery—most visibly through the recent reopening of the Egyptian Museum, parades of mummies, and state rhetoric about “ancient greatness”—often functions less as historical appreciation than as a signal that Egypt’s true essence predates Islam, subtly recasting Islam as a late layer rather than a constitutive core. Symbolic moves like this are not ambiguous about the age of the return of Pharaoh.

In “Saudi Arabia”, this reorientation has taken a more concrete and programmatic form, most clearly in projects such as Al-Ula, where Nabataean and pre-Islamic sites like Hegra are elevated through lavish festivals, art installations, and global tourism campaigns that consciously frame the kingdom’s heritage as ancient, cosmopolitan, and pre-Islamic.

A parallel move appears in Iran, where appeals to ancient Persia and Zoroastrian symbolism are amplified by nationalist and secular actors to suggest that Islam was an external imposition that disrupted an authentic civilizational trajectory. In both cases, the past is selectively curated to construct a narrative in which Islamic civilization is framed as foreign, derivative, or accidental, while pre-Islamic antiquity is elevated as the “real” foundation of the nation—revealing how history is weaponized not to understand continuity, but to renegotiate legitimacy in the present.

Together, these frameworks help explain why “Pax Judaica” is sold as nostalgic distortion, a pre-Islamic world view, a world where the moral, deterrent force of Islam preferably never existed.

But every accusation they make against Islamic civilization is actually a confession, revealing the jealousy it harbors towards ummatic power and unity. “Greater Israel” invokes “stability” while requiring endless war, decries “terrorism” but sponsors it, speaks of “peace” but is on a bloody rampage.

The paradox of our moment is that Islam is demonized precisely as Muslim bodies continue to pile up.

The force-fed fear of a Muslim takeover is to distract from the fact that Zionism already has.

Darryl Li’s white paper, “Anti-Palestinian to the Core”connects the so-called War on Terror, and Zionist dreams of reshaping the Middle East by creating a Pax Judaica, and makes a blunt claim: Islamophobia in the U.S. did not begin with 9/11—it was incubated through hostility to Palestine. Long before the “War on Terror,” U.S. law learned to speak the language of terrorism by targeting Palestinian liberation, criminalizing solidarity, and treating Arab and Muslim political life as inherently suspect.

That legal architecture—material-support laws, surveillance regimes, immigration exclusions—was later expanded wholesale onto Muslims at large. In short, anti-Palestinian animus became the prototype for the intensified anti-Muslim policies we are seeing today.

Palestine is not merely the testing ground, it is the ground zero—the lab—where Muslims became the permanent suspect class globally.

Demonize Islam—> silence Palestine—> normalize anti-Muslim repression —> and then export that logic everywhere else.

This is why Palestine is the lynchpin. Not because Palestinians are morally superior or more important than the Sudanese, the Syrians, or the Iranians, but because Palestine is the nucleus of the dynamics that undergird global politics.

This much is clear: the 20th and 21st centuries have been a long war on Islam and the erasure of Islamic political sovereignty, and Palestine has been singularly at the forefront of defending the House of Islam.

This dis-order’s war on Islam has revealed the failure of the structures that claimed so hard to represent order, morality, and authority in Islam’s absence.

In other words, the campaign against Islam has not actually made it weaker, rather, the case for a world in need of the moral restraint of Islam is made stronger.

Absent of this analysis, we cannot have a productive debate on any issue related to Iran/Syria/Gaza/Sudan, etc. because whether we like it or not, these events are all interconnected to a geo-strategic crucible of wickedness that has been brewing for decades. It will be tempting to tack on Islam’s dormant civilizational power to Pax Sinica, or Pax Russica, but what if we dared instead to envision what a path towards a universal Pax Islamica or a Pax Palaestīna could look like?

For a Muslim, all humanity’s problems are our problems. It is no longer optional for us to view things through a narrow nationalistic lens while burying our heads in the sand of the greater picture of the ummah, of humanity. It is our mandate as Muslims to view things from the vantage point of being a khalifa (vicegerent) of God to humanity.

The truth is, to remedy our way out of this as Muslims rests in leaning into the Prophetic courage to be disliked. We cannot wait for anyone to save us, like us, accept us. We have to be the exemplars and heroes we are waiting for. Resist the urge to be “the good Muslim”, to fit back into the Sykes Picot order which has already been broken. To “have a seat at the table” which doesn’t even exist anymore.

Nobody likes to be the pariah, but we have to stick up for Islam even when the empire, tribalist nationalists, secularist leftists and colonized anti-Muslim enthusiasts from our diasporas throw it under the bus.

A final rumination: this upcoming Friday marks the anniversary of Isrā’ wal Mi’rāj, the miraculous journey the Prophet Muhammad undertook overnight from Mecca to Jerusalem, and from al-Aqsa to the heavens, where he lead all the former prophets in prayer.

It is precisely this moment of the prophetic group prayer in Palestine that signifies the leading role of the Prophet Muhammad and his community as trustees of all of humanity. Whether liked or not, whether they insult or stone us, or call us “radical jihadists,” so be it. Scorn is a small price to pay for the truth. We no longer have the option to cower, to feign our covenant to God, to betray the truth.

To be Muslim, then, is verb, it is a demanding mandate, even more so in times of trial and tribulation. It is the religion of the brave, the honorable, and the final revelation for the true and the just.

I’ve learned through firsthand experience that living by the truth is not at all lucrative or popular, but it is quite rewarding to unclasp yourself from fear. It is also not as dangerous as most people think it is. To be a fake and deceitful is much more dangerous for the soul in this neo-jahili age.

Preserving and speaking the truth is our Divinely commanded mandate, even if it feels thankless. Even if it feels useless. Allah thanks you. That is enough.

When the Prophet returned from the night journey, he was out of sorts from the gravity of what happened, and out of all people, at that moment, he encountered his arch enemy, Abu Jahl, who saw him in the state and said, ‘What is it?’

‎The Prophet Muhammad ﷺ could have chosen to evade him to avoid conflict, but did not lie. He spoke plainly and said, “I was taken on a Journey last night.”‎

Abu Jahl asked, ‘“Where to?”

‎“To Bayt Al-Maqdis (Palestine).”

‎He said, “Then this morning you were among us?”

The Prophet ﷺ said, “Yes”.

Abu Jahl relished in this and said, “Do you think that if I call your people, you will tell them about what happened?”

The Prophet called them and said, “yes!” He had nothing to hide nor fear. The truth is with him.

‎ Abu Jahl then said, “O people of Bani Kab bin Lu’ay!” People got up from where they were sitting and came to join them. Abu Jahl said, “Go on, tell your people what you told me.” And he did.

‎‎They began to clap their hands together and put their hands on their heads in astonishment at this “lie” – as they claimed it to be. They said, “Can you describe the Aqsa sanctuary to us?” Among them were some who had travelled to that land and seen the sanctuary, so the Prophet started to describe it, and then later reported,

‎ “Until I reached a point where I was not sure about some of the details, but then the Aqsa sanctuary was brought close and placed near the house of Uqayl – or Iqal – so I could look at it and there was nothing they asked me about but I told them about it i.e. described it in detail.”

That night, how many of us neglect to notice, not only did the Prophet sojourn to Jerusalem, the Sacred Sanctuary came back—in a clear vision—to Mecca the next day.

We forget that when day broke after the miraculous night, the first qibla ascended upon the second qibla, signifying the status of Palestine as a timeless confirmation for truth. It represents the true “Abrahamic accord” based on justice for all, not just the Palestinian people: the locus of unity between the message of Isaac and Ismael. Between the sanctity of the two qiblas lay what it truly means to be Muslim, to be human.

So whenever you are in doubt or fear in this moment of snake oil salesmen and silver-tongued soothsayers, do not waver. Speak the truth as you are mandated to do, as the Prophet before you did, even among his greatest enemies and persecutors. Do not feign the truth for temporary “safety,” for in that path is spiritual danger: it is a road paved with wretchedness and hypocrisy.

When you feel afraid, recall the confirmation of Bayt al-Maqdis: that to be a Muslim is to be a trustee for all the oppressed. For all former revelations. For all people.

Even when they fight you, imprison you, stone you or lynch you.

For that is not the worst outcome. The worst outcome is to meet your Creator as a coward.

Relevant past posts:

Give Up Your “Good Muslim Life”

The Abraham Accords the Tunnels of State Treachery

Returning to the First Qibla

Pharaoh said, mā urīkum illā mā arā: 'I show you only what I see’ - Qur’an 40:29

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” - Orwell, 1984

“There will come a time when the people of truth will think of themselves as majānīn (mad), witnessing the callous audacity of the people of falsehoods.” - Mustafa Mahmoud

This time will be looked back on as the era of the lowest bar.

It will be remembered as the time of the greatest paradox: the pinnacle of technological progress was achieved, but with the nadir of spiritual death and moral decay. Nothing feels normal, yet people are going about their days in rote, machine-like habituation.

We are living through a simulation of the fall of the Roman Empire, except in high resolution, live-streamed and on our phones, with heightened fascism, militarism and surveillance to boot. Before it fell, Rome was plagued with extreme wealth disparity, civil wars, weak rule, military overstretch, inflation, high taxes, and rampant poverty. It was also a time of rampant violence, godless degeneracy, and immorality.

The Gaza genocide has signaled the death knell of this (dis)order as we know it.

What we are witnessing now is this disorder’s slow, stubborn, agonizing refusal to be euthanized.

Witnessing such a profound slow motion death, such a terrible hinge moment in human history is not for the faint of heart. But it isn’t meant for passive voyeurism.

It feels like the darkest hour, and it hurts to look.

How can it not, when we are still seeing babies die in cold tents?

When we are still seeing genocidal conditions in Sudan and Gaza persist while the ruling class proceed and carry on with business as usual?

When we are still seeing the student hunger strikers—the resolute protestors the state has labeled as “terrorists”— whither away slowly in British dungeons, as their wardens look away from their conscientious plea?

When evangelicals and Zionist Christians claim to celebrate the birth of a prodigal baby born in Palestine two thousand years ago, who, if born today they would not even feed, clothe him or protect him from slaughter?

We see them desecrate the example of Christ by bowing at the godless altar of the Romans of our age.

We are still witnessing depraved neo-jahili Arab leaders, who shamelessly parade themselves in their delusional extravagance as they engorge at the lowly trough of treason. Those colonially-installed overlords who stood silent while a holocaust raged next door and even spent billions on fresh weapons deals with a genocidal, supremacist, ethnostate.

I borrow the profound words of a dear friend and wise teacher, Abu Omar, who perfectly captured the state of this wretched lot of sellout leaders and scholars the Muslim world has been cursed with:

We are still beholding the sedated, reactionary, consumerist masses, lulled by their neo-pagan flags and nationalist symbols, distracted by bread and circuses, drugged up by concerts and soccer matches.

More than ever, we are exposed to the rising bile of online vitriol directed against Islam and Muslims globally. Hateful hasbara is working overtime to spin the ruse that “Globalize the Intifada” is a danger to Western civilization, neglecting to see that a conscientious uprising is the remedy, not the malady.

In their hubris, they do not see that they are the ones digging their own grave, bringing their own house down with their lies, deceit and brazen coverup for murder, genocide and collective punishment.

It is a time where the leaders—those in power—are not the best of us, rather, they are the worst of us. Those in charge are the most depraved, immoral reprobates, who harbor close ties with pedophiles, degenerates and criminals, and yet we are supposed to turn a blind eye to their wanton debauchery.

We sit and watch reel after reel, listen to podcast after podcast, like sheepish, reactionary marionettes, glued like voyeurs to endless outrage and suffering, strung along by the nooses of the techno-crusader puppeteers that own each scroll, each click.

The algorithm lives off our glossed over gazes. Our despair.

It thrives off our jaded, addicted rage.

We cannot unsee the thousands of souls incinerated alive, and the callous, cold-hearted politicians who covered for the crimes, and dug their dead hearts and heads in the sand.

We cannot unsee the starving rib cages, the zip ties in mass graves, the cracked bones of Palestinian political prisoners, the tents that burned in fire then drowned in the freezing floods of abandonment, the cries of agony.

We can’t unsee the boy who slept on his mother’s grave at night.

We can’t unsee the faces of Saleh. Of Husam. Of Khaled Nabhan. Of Hind.

We can’t unsee the coldhearted Israeli settlers who burned olive groves, bludgeoned farmers, and blocked baby formula from entering the besieged and starved Gaza concentration camp. We can’t unsee their Jewish supremacist zealotry as they celebrated when thousand-pound bombs fell on tattered refugee camps.

We can’t unsee the cruel comments justifying mass murder: “Every baby will grow up to be a terrorist,” “And the children in Gaza – the children in Gaza have brought this upon themselves.”

We can’t unsee nor accept that this entire system is built on the perpetual otherization and dehumanization of the most wretched of the earth: those Muslim, brown, semitic, dejected souls, intentionally deemed less worthy of life than European Christian and Jewish lives.

As if on torturous loop, we still see—and cannot unsee—the disenchanting horrors of this age of mass sedation, when evil is so normalized and so ambient, it is as pervasive as air itself.

This shameless theater of the grotesque is not something they are trying to hide anymore. It is part of their calculated psychological warfare. They know we can see it all in the full spectrum of its vileness on display. Like Pharaoh, they relish in the fact that this is what they are allowing us to see: “I [only] show you only what I see.” (Qur’an 40:29)

This is the era of Pharaoh’s content. They want you to see it all, to normalize with it. The despair and paralysis is by design.

This is not plain gaslighting. It is scorched earth, leave-no-amalek-or-cattle-living, nuclear levels of gaslighting.

And remember, the seeing goes both ways. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, it is a giant eye that is the symbolic manifestation of the Dark Lord’s malice, unceasing vigilance.

It pierces through shadows of “cloud, and earth, and flesh” to observe Middle-earth.

Like the ghastly clock tower of Al-Sa’ud, it hovers over the Ka’ba, but does not see it.

These false idols over us and surveil us, to accept its brutal power as fact.

We are living in a time when the mere, simple act of seeing things as they truly are, is a radical act of worship.

The very act of seeing clearly feels so searingly painful. And it seems as though the more clearly one sees, the more painful it is.

Many of us are so grieved with the sorrow and treachery of our times that, like Yusuf’s father, Ya’qub, we seem to have lost our eyesight as a result of the compounded grief and the oceans of tears shed. Someone recently commented that Ya’qub lost his eyesight not simply for losing his son, but for the gravity of his other sons’ moral failures. This rings true.

But we forget that, through the painful physical seeing, something else is occurring within: our spiritual sight (basira) is being sharpened. Imam Ali said that going blind is better than losing one’s inner sight.

When Prophet Yusuf said, “go with this shirt of mine and cast it over my father’s face, and he will regain his sight. Then come back to me with your whole family,” (Qur’an 12:93) the shirt went from being a symbol of deceit, as a prop to fake Yusuf’s death, to becoming the instrument of his grieved father’s healing.

Prophet Yusuf’s bloody shirt became a symbol for the complete reversal from sorrow to joy, from injustice to justice.

While Prophet Ya’qub had lost physical sight, he still possessed that which mattered most: spiritual insight to sense Yusuf’s presence, and complete trust in Divine decree.

For those of us on the prophetic path today, it as though this world, this stage of late stage empire rot is Yusuf’s bloodied shirt.

It is drenched with the stench of betrayal. With the blood of innocents, from Gaza to Sudan to Lebanon to Yemen. It is not fake blood, by any measure. However, we must not let the sorrow of this moment blind us to despair. We must allow basira to wash over our eyes and restore the shirt back to its true essence: that it is ultimately a symbol of return to Him. To whom all dominion belongs.

True sight, then, turns from suffering to the act of godly witnessing.

This ruse-based-order is a cadaver, sitting cold and lifeless on the dissection table of human history.

Instead of incinerating it or conducting a post mortem on it, the powers-that-be want to keep resuscitating it in Frankenstein-like fashion, jolting it with more bloodshed, more wars, more greed and more deception.

They want to convince us that this simulation is normal life. That this zombie-like cancerous system is life-like, when in reality, it is dead, ugly, naked, foul and nasty. We can see this Emperor for what it truly is.

As such, to retain our humanity, we must strive to inculcate more childlike innocence, and yell back at the beast in glorious, courageous plain speak: “the status quo is vile! It is unsightly in its cruelty! Disgusting in its immorality! It cannot hold.”

When the boy called out the nakedness of the emperor, he did not posses any superpowers. He could clearly and plainly see, just like everyone else, but what gave him power was that had the courage to name what he could see.

Because otherwise, what is the alternative? Willful, sheep-like, obedient blindness? Numbing, growing accustomed to the lie and the dysfunction? Normalizing the abnormal?

Never. The believer must always choose arduous, painful truths over the serenade of sweet lies.

Because what is faith, if not the power to transform the act of seeing, from passive and painful, to powerful witnessing?

After all, the first pillar of Islam is the shahada. To witness.

And after all, the best way to die is to die as a shahid, as a witness for God.

And the best of form of worship, is ihsan, is to “worship God as if one sees Him.”

Thus, true witnessing, active seeing, is a pathway to God.

Recall the words of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him who said, “Beware of the intuition of the believer. Verily, he sees with the light of God.” Then, the Prophet recited the verse, “Verily, in that are signs for those of discernment.” (Qur’an 15:57)

Beware, he said. Why would he warn to beware of the power of one who sees, if not for the fact that power of the believer rests in witnessing through the light of God? Because those who see with light of God are able to witness with discernment. And being able distinguish between truth and falsehood is one of the rarest and greatest gifts of our time. Any time, really.

Behold discernment in action:

When the Emperor sees collateral damage, a cold body count, mere dead bodies, we see shuhada’, alive and well. We see stories. We see beautiful souls whose lives were stolen unjustly.

When the Emperor sees land grabs and real estate, we see Bayt al-Maqdis, a prophetic, hallowed land, a portal to the heavens. We see home.

When the Emperor deems resistance ugly and terroristic, we see the beauty and power of true faith. We reject their magic tricks and turn them on their head by simply calling a spade a spade: that state-sponsored mass murder is the true source of terror.

What the Emperor sees is lies. What the believer sees is Reality.

Pharaoh’s magicians ultimately lost because they drew their magic tricks from the shallow swamp of shadows, smoke, ruses and imitation. Their magic was not real. It was based on trickery, lies and drew from the lesser power of the demonic.

Because Moses saw the world through God’s true, supreme power, he eventually surpassed them and was even able to afflict the magicians, proving their inability to control or reverse divine acts, ultimately revealing the power of Divine might over their false and fickle gods. And the sea drowned them shortly thereafter.

Today, with all their power, those who control the algorithms, corporate media and bought-for politicians represent Pharaoh’s magicians of our time: money cannot actually buy the stopping of the flood. They cannot truly stop Divine power. They aren’t God.

They are merely minstrels in this devilish ruse.

Whether it be the Eye of Sauron, or the magicians of Pharaoh, they are both ultimately blind, because they are afraid. They are always directing their energies outward, fearing external threats. At creation. Never at the Creator. The Source of light. The One.

The eye of evil can never turn inward. It can only see without, not within.

In that is their blindness and their ultimate downfall.

For those on the prophetic path, to ward the magician’s trick then, is to reject the ruse of physical sight.

In realizing that it is not the eyes that truly see, but the hearts.

Indeed, it is not the eyes that are blind, but it is the hearts in the chests that grow blind. (Qur’an 22:46)

To preserve that child-like innocence as the pack of wolves encircle you and still call out with the raw unfiltered light of truth, “the Emperor has no true dominion.”

The Prophet Adam was taught the names of things by God. The ability to identify things is the essence of human experience. Thus, the ability to define falsehoods is the bulwark of humanity. So preserve your most guarded treasure in this dark age: your insight. Use it to actively reject the literal and figurative idols. Remember, the bar is rather low these days, so the rewards of this exercise will be great. Do not normalize the abnormal. Spell out the maladies that surround you, speak of them, describe them, for in the light of discernment is the remedy for spiritual ailments.

Discern through the light of God, and see things for what they truly are.

Tyrants: beware the Prophetic admonition, and fear the insight of those who truly see. For they see with a light that never dies. It always triumphs.

Turn your painful, searing seeing into active, Divine witnessing.

For the ugly and unsightly soulless demagogues can never behold the treasure in your chest: the priceless gift of seeing with light, basira.

Seeing clearly in this age of blood and deceit is holy. It is a column of light into the dark sky. It is untouchable. It is always within, awaiting your return home.

On this day, December 13th, two years ago, my friend and sister, lost contact with her four children, Yamen, Kinan, Orchida and Karmel. Israel bombed their house and buried her children alive underneath. Trapped and unable to reach them due to a communications’ blackout, she only found out about their demise months later.

Imagine the cruel, agonizing torture her heart must have endured and endures still.

My friendship with Alaa’ began after I translated her haunting, evocative viral letter to the Prophet Muhammad. We fast became soul sisters. We joke that we are both long, lost cousins, she a Hasani, and I, a Husseini, on the sorrowful, spiritual path of our ancestors. We talk of our joint great-grandmother Fatima-Zahra as a lived presence and pray she is proud of us.

We are physically oceans a part but we are tethered by Palestine, by blood, by revelation and eternal, metaphysical bonds.

Meeting her verified the Prophetic saying about souls being conscripted soldiers who recognize and know one another in the realm of malakut. Alaa’, a hopelessly poetic soul, paints haunting couplets from her bloody tears as a witness to the holocaust of our times, and I aspire to spill the type of ink that can slay the serpentine heads of treachery that poison our condition.

To prove just how much souls are truly conscripted soldiers, Alaa’ saw a poster for a recent event of mine on social media and messaged me, “Do you know the man in the poster, Ahmad Bamba? He saved me.”

I said, “Alaa’, you know I research Islam in West Africa, right? What do you mean he saved you?”

She said, “when I was at my lowest, after losing my children, I found some poetry lines of his and he pulled me out of a very low state. So, I wrote him a poem.”

I was amazed. Worlds collide.

Like love letters from the unseen, God sends us these unlikely confluences as verifications to persist, to gladden and soften our weary hearts.

Who would have thought that we would one day have a tribute to the Senegalese Shaykh Ahmadu Bamba from the heart of a grieving mother in Gaza?

These are the lines by the sage named Khadimoul Rasul Bamba, the servant of the Prophet ﷺ, that saved her:

The man who spent most of his life in exile as he resisted French colonization a hundred years ago in West Africa, threw an anchor to a mother in Palestine fighting the monstrous Zionist occupation, yanking her out of the pit of despair and saving her.

I think this is what we can safely call a karama— a miracle in this sterile modern age, and every age.

In response, these are some of the lines she wrote to him and his enigmatic, iconic face veil as a tribute, and they were published in her recent anthology Khayma fi as-Samaa’ (A Tent in the Sky):

Alaa’ is a marvel of our times. She writes despite living through unspeakable horror. Not only that, she published four books during the genocide as a tribute to her children, whom she is convinced, as per Qur’anic mirroring, that they indeed are alive. Through her faith and words, she obliterates the darkness and writes as devotion and resistance.

Like other poets and writers in Gaza, Alaa’ stands towering over the dwarfed oppressors that encircle the valiant people of Palestine, who represent a singular school of theology, ethics and philosophy in this godless age of cowards and demagogues, and endemic spiritual death.

Through that defiance, she reigns victorious over her children’s maniacal killers. She triumphed in her humanity, in her covenant with God, living, and embodying virtue in the highest manner humanely possible.

She invited me to write a foreword for one of her books, Kinan Yukallimni, a play in which she imagines herself conversing with her son Kinan, who asks her about God, love, human cruelty, the meaning of life and everything in between. This is what I wrote:

Alaa’ reminds me to view things are they truly are, in sharp and lived focus: that it is not her children that are dead, rather, it is their maniacal killers that are dead.

That the real mass casualties of this time are the souls of those who stayed silent during this genocide, those who make excuses for their treachery and those with depraved attachment to the fear and the lowly world of forms.

That the real victims of our time are the numb ones, those who betray and look away.

Alaa’ then, truly is victorious over her children’s killers. No amount of bombs or dollars can wash away the stain of their colossal moral failure.

She reminds us that this world is illusory, that the every child slain in Gaza will one day face his killers in the Court of God, that nothing, not a single drop of blood nor a drop of milk nor morsel of food used as a weapon of starvation, will have been in vain.

Alaa’ also teaches the Zaynabian ethos of seeing beauty whenever and wherever, to remember that, in her words, “God can only ever decree beauty,” and that real beauty is seeing the Divine light of God in everything: in a broken smile, in a martyr’s shroud, in a stale piece of bread. This is real faith, alive.

They call her Khansā’ Falastin, in reference to Tumadir bint ‘Amr, the 7th century celebrated Arab poetess who excelled in writing laments and elegies for her beloved brother and fallen tribal warriors, becoming one of the most influential female poets of her time, but she is much more than that.

Alaa’ is a marvel of Prophetic devotion. She is a thorn in the side of every callous, racist, supremacist anti-Muslim zealot, because she represents the most shining example of our time of what a bereaved Muslim women’s heart, firmly tethered to the throne of God can produce by way of wisdom, virtue and resistance to unspeakable evil.

This kind of power is the most powerful one of all, because it is one that can never be destroyed, even if the equivalent of 6 nuclear bombs fell on it.

Alaa’ is a walking Qur’an, a siddiqa of the highest order. Knowing her and so many valiant, shining teachers and heroes who still withstand the Palestinian holocaust has been the deepest honor of my life.

Thank you, my beloved sister, for your unyielding faithful heart, for being a Prophetic school of love, resistance and beauty. I am so proud of you, and I am so proud to know you, as I am sure our great-grandmother is, as your beautiful children are, in the unseen.

Thank you for your God-tethered heart, and for reminding us what it means to be human in the age of inhumanity.

I end this tribute to you, Alaa’, as as you always end your writings, by saying:

And peace be upon the Beloved ﷺ and his noble family.

• To read Alaa’s translated written work, click here.

For centuries, the story has been told in simple opposites: Sunnis obey, Shiʿis revolt.

Sunnism represents unfettered order and stability, even if it means overlooking egregious violations by the state; Shiʿism represents dissent, revolution and martyrdom.

This perceived binary has shaped modern Islamic polemics, politics, and even contemporary geopolitics.

But this view is historically inaccurate, and politically disastrous.

Return to the lives of the four Sunni imams, Abū Ḥanīfa, Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, and a different story emerges. A story of Islam’s most authoritative early jurists who defied rulers, endured imprisonment and torture, refused cooptation, and articulated political ethics grounded in the Islamic legal and moral imperative to resist injustice and transgression.

What emerges is a forgotten history, or rather, a story that is preferably unheard, because it unsettles all the colonially-constructed silos and neat binaries modern Muslims burrow themselves in as a salve for their fears and anxieties over intra-Muslim difference and political dissent.

But to those who venture away from the holes of childish pearl-clutching and sedating delusions, to those who study history with integrity and maturity, their Muslim identity is made stronger, not weaker. Because when one’s worldview is based in reality, not sweet lies and half-baked truths, it rings truer. It is more rooted and thus, more sober and effective in its approach to present struggles and future visions.

Beyond the field of reactionary dogma, lies a field. A field where the sunlight of truth shines to disinfect our reified, provincial, crystalized thinking. A plain of honest introspection, rooted integrity and resolute strength; collective qualities that can be antidotal to the poisonous fangs of external, sectarian, colonially-backed agendas.

A plain where the roots of Sunni dissent possesses striking parallels with the Shiʿi grammar of protest rooted in Karbalāʾ and the Qur’anic imperative to act, with principle and truth, in the face of pervasive tyranny.

Allow me to meet you there.

This forgotten convergence matters today, not merely for historical accuracy but because it reveals a shared Islamic legacy of justice beyond sectarian lines. It matters because resistance to mass slaughter—according to the logic of state-sponsored Islam—has become synonymous with “kharijite Muslim Brotherhood ideology” or “Iranian” agendas. This is the logic of Zionists, Homeland Security, Arab states and their dutiful religious agents. Undeterred and unchecked, this logic kills innocents daily.

This fictional construct runs the political status quo—the farce that “Islamism” is somehow worse than murderous, expansionist ideologies such as Zionism—is a kool-aid that state-adjacent Sunni scholars themselves have drunk and regurgitate.

The story of the roots of Sunni rebellion matters because an ummah that cannot bear to look at its past cannot properly plan for its future.

It matters, because the battle for the soul of Islam is at its most dangerous and juncture yet, in this age of live-streamed genocides and spiritual and moral death and decay. The more we dwell in half-truths, the more the ummah is fodder for the preying, menacing tentacles of the powers-that-be that would much rather we all quibble over madhab and ‘aqida wars online than unite against injustice as a collective.

The fact that the founders of the four Sunni schools of fiqh actively supported restoring Islamic rule to the aal al-bayt ethic and more principled rule, is not something most Sunnis are comfortable talking about out of fear of “Shiʿa alignment,” but judging by the state this ummah is in, we can no longer afford to malign or ignore these legacies and stories. No one benefits more from keeping our heads buried in the sand than the destructive powers-that-be.

Now that we have established the stakes, let us take a dive into the forgotten rebellious origins of the Sunni canon.

Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 767): The First Jurist of Conscience

Abū Ḥanīfa, founder of the earliest of the four Sunni schools, was no realpolitiking, bootlicking bureaucrat-'alim in the service of empire. He refused offers of judgeship under both the Umayyads and the Abbasids—a refusal so absolute that the caliph al-Manṣūr imprisoned him until his death (see: al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī, Tārīkh Baghdād).

Credible historic sources also record his sympathy for the aal al bayt revolt of Zayd bin ʿAlī (d. 740). Abū Ḥanīfa reportedly donated funds to the movement, praised Zayd’s character, and openly critiqued the legitimacy of unjust rulers (See: Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr, al-Intiqāʾ).

Wael Hallaq, in his The Origins and Evolution of Islamic Law and Christopher Melchert, in his The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law, note that Abū Ḥanīfa represents a model of legal autonomy where the ʿulamāʾ stood apart from the state, forming a “counter-elite” that could morally critique rulers. Abū Ḥanīfa’s life undermines the simplistic notion that early Sunnism was a quietist tradition. He was not beholden to building a canon or institution for its own sake, he strove towards the importance of having sound ethical foundations as being more important than the longevity of the “tradition.”

It would behoove contemporary Islamic institutions to remember today, that if the foundations are sound, then the institution is sound. If the foundations are shaky—built on weak leadership, betrayal and duplicitousness—then the institution will be shaky and will cause more harm and havoc to the Muslim community than benefit.

In many Muslim societies today, from the Arab world to Muslim institutions in the West, “stability” has become a fig leaf for the ugly underbelly of institutional or state abuse. Choosing “stability” over facing the reality of our brokenness and dysfunctionality is a gateway for greater, generational harm, because it is a false salvific whip to quiet legitimate criticism and concern.

Mālik ibn Anas (d. 795): The Medinan Scholar Who Defied the State

Mālik is often imagined as a quietist traditionalist sage, serenely transmitting hadith in Medina. Malikism, widespread today in politically quietist circles of North and West Africa, and as it were, the hills of Berkeley, California, but the historical roots of this Madinan school is a great deal more rebellious. (Rebellion is a dirty, Marxist word in most Maliki circles today, when if fact, it was a central classical concern to the earliest Maliki jurists.)

When the governor of Medina attempted to enforce the Abbasid political oath (bayʿa) through coercion, Mālik issued a legal opinion that coerced oaths are invalid (see: Ibn Saʿd, al-Ṭabaqāt).

He also reportedly supportedMuḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh b. al-Ḥasan known as al-Nafs al-Zakiyya (dubbed, “the Pure Soul” for his piety and gentleness), a descendant of the Prophet ﷺ, who launched a rebellion against the Abbasids.

For this, he was arrested and publicly flogged.

The image of Imam Mālik being carried home, his arms dislocated from beatings, reveals a courageous, morally upright scholar who bore the consequences of opposing state tyranny. Far from being a quietist court jurist, who called oppressed fellow Muslims “kharijites” for upholding their Qur’anic duties of enjoining the good and forbidding the wrong, he stood for the truth, even against his own self.

Mālik’s fatwa represents, as Sherman Jackson argues in Islam and the Problem of Black Suffering, a foundational Sunni articulation of conditional legitimacy: the fundamental understanding that a ruler’s authority collapses when coercion replaces free consent. This forgotten basic legal edict aligns deeply with classical Shiʿi political ethics around justice, legitimacy, and refusal of oppression.

Al-Shāfiʿī (d. 820): Between Madina, Yemen, and Revolution

Muḥammad ibn Idrīs ibn al-ʿAbbās al-Shāfiʿī al-Ḥijāzī al-Qurashī al-Hāshimī al-Muṭṭalibī, aka. Imam Al-Shāfiʿī, himself a descendent of the Prophet ﷺ and the architect of the discipline of uṣūl al-fiqh (the principles of Islamic law) was also entangled in the political upheavals of his time. He studied under the spiritual tutelage of Imam Yahya bin Abdullah, the son of al-Hasan bin al-Hasan, son of Ali bin Abi Talib, whose revolt he supported while serving in Yemen. He was accused of supporting Shiʿi rebels and brought in chains to Iraq before the caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (see: al-Bayhaqī, Manāqib al-Shāfiʿī). He was tortured, chained and narrowly escaped execution.

One of Imam Al-Shāfiʿī’s strongly held positions was that political opposition was any Muslim’s right. He stated that even if one were to pick up arms against the state to confront an injustice, the state must remedy that grievance, provide justice and abstain from fighting the rebel. Thus, it is no wonder he supported the rebellion of the Imam Yahya.

The charge of “Alid/Shiʿi sympathies” illustrates the complex political world in which the early founding jurists operated: that the struggle over the soul of Islam was as early as the formation of Islam itself. It is a perennial struggle that is ongoing.

This age-old struggle points to an often overlooked point in Muslim scholarly history: that the love for the Prophet’s family (the aal al-Bayt), which was typically synonymous with a critique of political injustice, was once not a sectarian marker, but rather, a widely shared, normative Muslim virtue.

As Kecia Ali in the Lives of Muhammad and Ahmed El Shamsy in The Canonization of Islamic Law argue, al-Shāfiʿī developed his legal theory in the crosswinds of competing claims to authority in a tumultuous milieu. He had to contend with the opinions of hadith scholars, ‘Alid rebels and the heavy handed fist of Abbasid rulers. Al-Shāfiʿī’s legacy demonstrates that the boundaries between Sunni legalism and moral protest were porous: in fact, protest was oftentimes necessary for protecting the sanctity of the foundation of the Sunni Islamic legal canon.

Shafi‘i’s protest did not undermine Sunni orthodoxy. He worked to strengthen it as he worked to lay its foundations. Working through difference and against abuses of authority safeguarded the Islamic intellectual tradition, and imbibed it with methodologies of verification, dignity and accountability.

His stance reverberated to his students. Imam al-Buwaiti, one of the foremost students of al-Shāfi’ī, was summoned in chains from Egypt to Iraq and then imprisoned until his death. Just before his death, he said:

“Allāh created using the word ‘kun’, so if it were itself created, then a created thing would have brought about the rest of creation. If I were to enter upon him (the ruler, al-Wāthiq), I will tell him the truth. By Allāh, I will die wearing iron (chains), such that the people after me know that people died in this matter wearing iron (chains).”

In other words, the very foundations of the Sunni legal canon came from a spirit of dissent, rather than a spirit of blind deference to the powers-that-be and the status quo.

It is bitterly ironic that in the Arab world today, the modern-day communities who identify most with the Shāfiʿī and Ḥanafi schools, are the ones most beholden to Yazid-like, Harun ar-Rashid like imperial Islam, one that is content with the bare minimum freedom to perform ritual practice but not the political and ethical imperative that Islam came with to free humanity.

One can easily see how the repression of such histories can easily lead to the weakening of Islamic law gradually over time. In the “post”-colonial era, state-assigned jurists who adjudicate under the all-controlling thumb of the state do not dare teach Sunni laws on rebellion, thus enabling the suppression and criminalization of dissent on a mass scale. The modern nation state is a thousand fold more controlling than a run-of-the-mill tyrannical, pre-colonial Muslim khalifa, thus, the ‘ulamā’ of today are infinitely more culpable and responsible for ensuring Islam withstands this anti-Muslim Leviathan.

This is all the more crucial now with sinister empire-backed efforts to punish those who do not conform to “Abraham-Accords Islam.” The same agendas that work to crush Muslim sovereignty in Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Lebanon, and beyond. The stakes for preserving Islamic integrity and legitimacy are only getting higher. The imperative to move away from anxious attachment to a single notion of “the Islamic tradition” into a more sober and honest reading of the past, coupled with an understanding of the cancerous constructs of our present-day is more urgent than ever.

Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal (d. 855): Tortured for Theology, Defiant in Politics

Perhaps no Sunni figure embodies principled resistance more than Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal. During the miḥna (inquisition), the Abbasid regime attempted to impose the doctrine of a “created Qur’an” on scholars as a test of loyalty. In other words, they unleashed ‘aqidah wars to distract the masses, much like the state would do today with soccer games or celebrity scandals. Aḥmad refused to be tested by coercion, and for this, he was imprisoned, and endured repeated beatings (Ibn al-Jawzī, Manāqib al-Imām Aḥmad).

Ahmad ibn Ḥanbal would also often deem narrations coming from narrators too close to the rulers as weak, considering them to have “compromised trustworthiness”. He would explicitly state that some narrators were ‘contaminated’ (tawassakh) by their ties to the ruler.

His defiance made him the symbol of scholarly resistance to state control over truth: a position deeply resonant with the Shiʿi concept that legitimate authority cannot contradict divine principle, even under threat of torture.

In his seminal work, The Venture of Islam, Marshall Hodgson emphasizes that the miḥna crystallized the Sunni idea that knowledge stands above the state, establishing a structural check on political power.

Conclusion

Each of the Sunni imams articulated, in different ways, the basic legal edict: that rulers are to be obeyed so long as they obey God. That obedience was not unconditional. That legitimacy and moral authority was no longer owed if the ruler breaks their own covenant with God. This parallels the Shiʿi insistence that legitimacy is tied to justice, not merely having political authority.

Imam Ḥusayn’s martyrdom established the Shiʿi archetype of truth-witnessing. The Sunni imams—flogged, imprisoned, and tortured—participated in an adjacent ethic where refusal to blindly obey becomes a proof of integrity. They too sacrificed in favor of conscientious aal al-bayt led rebellions that were historically at the helm of confronting transgressions against Islam and the Prophetic way.

Whether refusing state office in the case of Abū Ḥanīfa, invalidating coerced allegiance in the case of Imam Mālik, or standing by his principled support for Imam Yahya in the case of al-Shāfiʿī, or enduring torture as Imam Aḥmad did, the Sunni imams embodied amr bi’l-maʿrūf to the highest ideal: they enjoined the good as part of their juridical, moral and Islamic duty.

Arguably, it was their moral courage which cemented their legacies as courageous, canonical pioneers. They lay the blueprint for Sunni Islam to preserve it from maladies such as authoritarian control, abuses of power and unjust practices. In essence, their refusal to blindly obey was a bulwark against deforming revelation and emanated from the basic qualifications of being a scholar: having true taqwa, fearing God, not creation, in defense of the greater good.

In Khaled Abou El Fadl’s important monograph Rebellion and Violence in Islamic Law, he outlines how classical jurists approached resistance against oppression and tyranny as normatively lawful, even honorable. In his view, the shari'a is a moral-legal tradition in which justice, human dignity, and conscience have primacy. In other words, Muslims not have only a classically protected legal right, but a duty, to resist injustice when peaceful means or moral pressure are insufficient. In turn, he shows how it was a ruler’s Islamic duty to exercise leniency towards rebels, with jurists granting rebels the right of clemency or safe-conduct (amān) when they repented or sought peace. This demonstrates that the classical legal tradition allowed for dialogue and rehabilitation, not perpetual condemnation of “bad Muslims.”

Ultimately, early Sunni and Shiʿi communities shared more ideological space than their later medieval successors acknowledged. The idea that Sunnism is inherently authoritarian is both false and politically weaponized. The four imams’ lives show a Sunni intellectual heritage rooted in scrutiny of power, not submission to it. In turn, Sunnis can humbly learn a great deal from Shiʿi revolutionary thought, with its emphasis on justice, conscience, and moral resistance.

Granted, the spectrum of revolt against political tyranny and corruption was never static. Granted, it went from armed rebellion into the earliest centuries of Islam, to a more mixed approach between armed revolt and verbal opposition. It is true that by the third century, most scholars adopted the route of verbal condemnation and opposition. However, we need a revival of such debates for a radically different context than past societies.

What we are witnessing today is a complete erasure of a Muslim revolutionary ethic under the modern nation state context. Those who persist in this tradition are called “Islamists”—the most unforgivable sin according to the logic of the War of Terror. We cannot continue to throw “bad Islamists” under the bus who often times are the only ones carrying the baton of the classical Islamic tradition on such foundational challenges for Islamic law. It is ahistorical and antithetical for contemporary scholars to buckle completely to state logic and sectarian division in the name of “security “ and “maintaining order.” This can no longer hold. Worse still is doing such in the name of Islam or the salaf.

As reminds us in his excellent piece, What is the Role of Muslim Scholars in the Modern World? a response to my podcast appearance, “It was not colonialism, then, that defanged the ‘ulama: it was the very states they fought for that did the job.” Now, in the postcolonial/neocolonial context, “the ‘ulama are no longer given the dispensation (rukhsa of preservation of life) and a group from amongst them must fulfill their role as inheritors of prophets to guide towards right action and belief.”

I believe that a renewal will emerge from he ashes of this broken world. A new class of Muslim scholars will rise to remedy this fossilization and complicity by reviving and combining, without compromising their own unique beliefs and commitments, both the Sunnī and Shiʿi classical approaches to injustice, to draw from a shared genealogy of principled dissent that predates and transcends modern sectarian divisions.

Sectarianism, in other words, hardened much later. It did not define the earliest centuries of Islam.

Recovering this legacy is more than a mere historical correction. It is a form of potent political and spiritual resistance for this tumultuous time.

The stakes couldn’t be higher today because our spiritual technologies have been hijacked by materialist ideologies and disunity. The mass killing machine feeds off intra-Muslim sectarian narratives, sucking the soul and the honor of the ummah dry daily, bit by bit. This monster is sustained by our divisions.

It needs a steady supply of sedated masses and obedient scholars to obscure, erase and bury the revolutionary origins of the Islamic tradition.

But as soon as we shed the cloak of ignorance and fear, the moment we do the unthinkable: shed the War of Terror vernacular that we wield against one another, the moment we unite, we cut off the sacrilegious Leviathan’s supply, and it is rendered lifeless.

The Messenger has cried, “O my Lord! My people took this Qur’an as deserted.” (Al-Furqan: 30)

“We long for the clouds of dust and the neighing of the horses that your processions kicked up, your dignified smile is gone from our eyes, the smile that sheltered us with safety and life.”

- Hausa oral lore mourning the martyrdom of Emir Ahmadu Bello, killed in 1966.

Unearthing the “Yemeni Sword”

In the past year, I was able to track down two seemingly forgotten, out-of-print books: a text written by my great-uncle Kamel, and the other, a Sufi polemic written by a Mauritanian female scholar named Khadījah al-Qari’a (she earned the moniker the “Strike Force” for repeatedly “knocking” on God’s door with devotional longing).

She wrote “The Yemeni Sword” in the West African knowledge city of Kano in 1934, a few years before the arrival of the “flood” of Shaykh Ibrahīm Niāsse there, whose revolutionary teachings vastly transformed the landscape of Islam in West Africa in the 20th century.

Khadījah was warmly received in Nigeria by the local Hausa scholars who were elated when the blessed Shinqītiyya (Mauritanian woman) visited them on her way to hajj, as her saintly reputation preceded her. Nigerian biographers state that they lauded her as “the Shaykha of the West, a righteous saint, a knower of God, drowned in the ocean of love.”

Khadījah passed away near her Beloved’s mosque ﷺ in Madina in 1948. But she bore much scorn for this love and for honest speech. She was reportedly on the receiving end of attacks by the local Wahhabi ‘ulamā’ for what they saw as her “overt,” “excessive” Prophetic devotion.

An absurdity. Can anyone tell the waves in the ocean of love to stop thrashing, that they are “excessive” in their unceasing?

Khadījah’s “Yemeni Sword” was, among other things, a text in defense of the possibility of seeing the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ in a waking state. Ultimately, it is a work against subjectively rationalist, exoteric tyranny. She addressed those who deny such a possibility as unfair and deficient in their perception:

“Just as angels are invisible to people, upon them be peace, they [too] are alive in their forms. If God wills it with His grace, He can surely remove the veil for someone to have a waking vision of the Prophet ﷺ in the form he is in without restriction. You need not be among the elect to behold this manifestation, as Suyūtī narrated from his shaykh, and as [Moroccan scholar] Māʾ al-ʿAynayn said along these lines:

If you fail to see the crescent moon

Then trust those who have seen it with their naked eye.”

Khadījah was, of course, referring to the seminal work on this very topic by the late polymath Imam Suyūtī (d.1505), who wrote the treatise, “Shedding Light on the Possibility of Seeing Prophets and Angels” (Tanwir al-Halak fi Imkan Ru’yah al-Nabi wa al-Malak), a mainstream classical work of Islamic scholarship that views the figure of the Prophet ﷺ not as a legal or historical figure only, but as a continuous, lived presence in the lives of Muslims. Reflect on how far removed we are today from such scholarship, and why.

Khadījah’s text was in response to another Mauritanian scholar, Muhammad Ibn Mayāba, who gave bay‘a (pledged allegiance) to the Hashemites in their revolt against the Ottomans. Ibn Mayāba accompanied who would become the founder of modern Jordan and even became Transjordan’s first Chief Qadi. He was purportedly the King’s right-hand-man and closest advisor, while still maintaining close ties to the Wahhābi regime. Shaykh Ibrāhim Niāsse would later refer to Ibn Mayāba’s political alliances with the ruling households in Jordan and Saudi Arabia by linking that with his spiritual wretchedness, saying, “it is from his habit and his way to curry favor with tyrannical, deviant kings, which is a characteristic common to the people of denial (ahl al-inkār).”

I recently had the honor of translating Khadījah’s “Yemenite Sword” in full after retrieving it (more like jail-breaking it) from a Salafi bookstore in Amman, and in my commentary—which will be published soon—I describe her scathing polemical style as “saintly sass.” It is my hope that Khadījah accepts my translation as a gift for her soul and her memory. I feel honored to bring back to life the work of a righteous Shaykha who lived and loved ardently more than a century ago.

Ancestral Writings

Shortly after completing “the Yemeni Sword” translation, I unearthed another book by the grace of God: my beloved great uncle’s previously missing text, last printed in 1974 and out of circulation since. Entitled Al-Mughāmara al-Isrā’iliyya fī Ifrīqyā, it is about Zionist soft power incursion into Africa in the age of postcolonial independence. He was Ambassador to Nigeria and other surrounding countries in the late 60s, so he casually cites various encounters with towering 20th century African leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Ahmed Sékou Touré and Ahmadu Bello.

No big deal.

He also cites meeting Arnold Toynbee, who was apparently disinvited from giving a lecture in Western diplomatic and intellectual circles in Nigeria because he was apparently critical of Zionism. Go figure.

It dawned on me that both unearthed texts were written in Nigeria, home to close to 120 million Muslims—more than the number of Muslims in Egypt! Nigeria boasts a rich, scholarly Islamic history, and is also the motherland of one of West Africa’s greatest legends, the great warrior scholar, poet, revolutionary mujahid, mujaddid (renewer of Islam) Shaykh Usman Dan Fodio (d.1817), whose political, social and cultural structures of the Islamic Caliphate of Sokoto he founded, remain, to this day.

Sadly, today Nigeria is at the heart of aggressive U.S. foreign policy with President Donald Trump recently announcing that his government is “ready to strike at the heart of the Islamic militants if the Nigerian government does act to end attacks on Christians.”Trump said that the US government will stop all aid and assistance to Nigeria “and may very well go into that now disgraced country ‘guns-a-blazing’ to completely wipe out the Islamic Terrorists.” Adding, “I am hereby instructing the Department of War to prepare for possible action.”

Necolonialism in Africa Today

Presciently, my uncle’s book—written in the 70s—describes how, as early as the 40s, 50s and 60s, Israeli diplomats deployed racial, economic and religious neocolonial tactics to sow divisions between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria. He shows how Western academics drove wedges between the two faith communities by promoting the myth that Islam was a foreign presence, that it came to Africa by force, and hence, was not an indigenous religion to most African communities. This claim has, of course, been swiftly debunked by most serious Africanists, as Islam’s first hijra and most of the Qur’anic stories were set in Africa. The Fulani people themselves are thought to be descended from the Prophet’s companion ‘Uqba ibn Nafi’, who first came to Africa in the early stages of the Muslim expansion in 670 CE.

Shaykh Ibrahīm Niāsse too, wrote a harsh rejoinder such claims, in his well known treatise, Africa is for Africans, where he affirms that Islam entered African countries organically, “before the invasion of the Europeans.” He turns that argument on its head by stating that both “Communism and Christianity never entered [Africa] until the settlement of the Europeans in it,” and cites that the enslavement of people came with the “Christians-Europeans who invaded Africa and colonized it.”

As previously mentioned in this Substack, my great uncle knew Shaykh Niāsse well on the basis of their joint work with the Muslim World League and the World Islamic Congress for Palestine. They both worked in tandem to promote pan-Islamic, Afro-Arab unity against European and Zionist colonialism. In fact, I only found out about their special relationship during my PhD research trip to Madine Baye, Senegal in 2019, which involves a vision of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, but that is a story for another day.

To return to my uncle’s book, the Mughamara begins by explaining Israel’s initial weakness on the world stage. How it experienced a Naksa (“setback”) in its image across Africa: at first, it was associated with brutal British imperialism, an extension of colonial land theft and that African governments were historically unyielding supporters of the Palestinian cause. It was seen for what it was: a European-born, colonial, aparthied outpost in the heart of the Arab world, whose existence perpetually defied the illusion of a “post”-colonial world.

But through a broad strategy of furthering Israeli and Western political, economic and security interests, the positions of many African governments swayed, particularly due to the abuse of the “racial” outlier card, and the work of evangelical missionaries, which sought to foment the “Judeo-Christian” myth with Christian African leaders. It promoted anti-Muslim sentiment to cement the idea that African Christians are more naturally aligned with Western and Israeli “values” and interests.

In Nigeria today, we see this strategy take foot through neocolonial policies of interventionism under the pretext of fighting extremist militants such as Boko Haram and stoking Christian vs. Muslim sectarian strife. Divide and conquer. Meddle and intervene. These were and will always be one of the most tired, tried and tested colonial tricks in the book.

The Spirit of Sokoto in Jerusalem: the Shahid Ahmad Bello

The Mughamara book mentions that in 1969, my great uncle invited the Emir of Sokoto at the time, Sardauna Ahmadu Bello to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, to be a part of the the unveiling ceremony of the newly renovated dome of the Mosque of the Dome of the Rock.

Bello reportedly delivered a powerful speech in al-Aqsa compound that caused quite an uproar in African, Arab and international media. In it, he said:

If war breaks out again around this holy city, then I promise you, thousands of our Nigerian warriors will fight in it.

In that same speech, he sharply criticized Arab nationalism, even though it saw its peak at that time, because he considered it a distorted call that aims to tear apart the Islamic fabric of the ummah, and that Arabness only gained its morality, power, and history from Islam. He saw the Islamic unity framework as the only viable one in the struggle against Zionism and its expansive ambition.

This same sentiment was echoed with Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse, who reportedly told the Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser, “I am ready to amass an army from West Africa and mobilize them for jihad in Palestine,” to which Nasser allegedly replied, “leave this issue to the Arabs.”

Bello and Niāsse warned against drinking the kool-aid of Arab nationalism, which ultimately turned out to be a failed, flimsy bulwark against Zionist expansion. Their words were painfully clairvoyant. Only a year after this speech, the Arab forces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, lost the Six-Day War in the 1967 Naksa and almost a quarter million Palestinians were forcibly expelled.

The present-day Gaza genocide went on unabated precisely because Arab leaders have reneged on their Islamic commitments in exchange for their own in-group “Arab”, ethnic and nationalist interests only.

Bello—who represented the spirit of his valiant grandfather Usman Dan Fodio and his unequivocal Prophetic voice in the hallowed grounds of occupied Jerusalem—was assassinated shortly thereafter in the same year by Major Nzeogwu, a colonially-backed Nigerian coup leader who reportedly had close ties (and reportedly even received funding from) Israeli officials.

This history of political assassinations and interventionist control are not just prevalent in Nigeria. We see these same tricks being deployed in Sudan, Mali and Congo today.

The UAE as Neocolonial Handmaid

My great uncle also cites Kwame Nkruma’s 1965 work, Neo-Colonialism, the Last Stage of Imperialism. It is astonishing how relevant these words are to the situation in Sudan and the criminal UAE-backed genocide it is currently undergoing:

Neo-colonialism is the worst form of imperialism. For those who practise it, it means power without responsibility and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress. In the days of old-fashioned colonialism, the imperial power had at least to explain and justify at home the actions it was taking abroad. In the colony those who served the ruling imperial power could at least look to its protection against any violent move by their opponents. With neo-colonialism, neither is the case.

The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, “independent” and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.

According to Mawwada Eskandar in the Cradle, today, Tel Aviv maintains full diplomatic relations with some 44 out of 54 African countries and operates embassies in at least 11 of them, including Nigeria, Kenya, Ethiopia, Ghana, Angola, and South Africa – with non-resident ambassadors in the remaining 33 states. She adds, “while it continues to seek normalization with additional countries, the occupation state’s diplomatic footprint across Africa illustrates the strategic value it assigns to the continent.”

Sadly, this reality is exactly what my uncle’s book tried to warn against.

What we are seeing in Sudan today is inextricably linked to the genocide in Gaza: Both efforts are driven by an “Abraham Accords Islam,” on an Emirati–Israeli coordination driven by the carte blanche demonization of “Islamists” (ie. any Muslim who resists state tyranny and interventionism) and the desire to break the self-determination of Palestinian and Sudanese Muslim populations, as well as the sense of ummatic brotherhood that binds all oppressed people together.

According to UAE expert Andreas Krieg, the UAE has backed the ruthless and criminal RSF in Sudan to make sure “that Islamist movements viewed by the leadership as existential threats do not consolidate.” Further, the UAE has proven its role as a key Israeli partner in consolidating this new age of colonialism: it is not interested in asserting its dominance by planting “a flag atop the presidential palace in Khartoum.” It is interested in protecting revenue streams - both licit and illicit - that pass through Dubai’s markets.

Unearthing Missing Narratives

In thinking to myself: what does the Prophetic devotion of the Mauritanian Shaykha, my uncle’s book on Israeli neocolonialism in Africa and the tumultuous events in Sudan and Nigeria today point to?

They both represent warnings against spiritual and moral dangers.

In my mind, both texts were symbolically out of print because they represent voices that are preferably unheard. They were both buried to create blindspots in our vision of Islam as a living, dynamic force of deterrence to injustice and tyranny. An Islam that can clearly see, and identify pernicious, age-old, neocolonial strategies that seek to undermine the very foundations of the Qur’anic duty to fight oppression.

An Islam stripped of a scripturally-committed, activated, historically-rooted core.

Taken together, both these missing 20th century texts written by two Arabs—the Shaykha and my great uncle—during their sojourns in Nigeria point to missing Muslim discourses rooted not in ethnic chauvinism or narrow-vision dogma, but in ummatically-minded unity and faith-driven moral agency.

To remedy our collective consciousness crisis, unearthing similar unseen narratives is crucial.

Khadījah’s “Yemeni Sword” challenges an interpretation of Islam that is bereft of life, bereft of a living connection with the second part of the shahada.

The same path of prophetic Islam that mujahid scholar-warriors such as Usman Dan Fodio, Umar Tal, Ibrahim Niasse, Omar al-Mukhtar, Muhammad Abdil Hassan practiced. The same primordial way of truth-telling typical of prophetic African leaders from Prophet Musa alayhi salam to Malcolm X.

Wahhabi/madhkhali/co-opted Neo-trad “Sufi” Islam—stripped of an ethical core, and a living, verifiable connection—have now firmly proven themselves to be the perfect handmaids for Zionism. The danger is that this type of faux Islam is now holding siege the two holy sites of Mecca and Madina.

Mecca is under siege by a criminal who is more interested in Epstein island, accumulating power, bone sawing dissidents and feeding his gaming addiction than protecting or promoting Islam. The Ka’aba is held hostage by those who are actively seeking to deform and destroy the fundamentals of Islam as they persecute men and women whom—according to colonial logic— are “Muslim brotherhood,” and “terrorists,” and so they collude with the some of the most evil forces of blood shed and moral corruption on earth to maintain Pharaoh-like control.

Relatedly, the Mughamara book, written by my great uncle—a mujahid who led battalions and fought Zionist and British gangs in 1948 in Palestine—warns Muslims of the new scramble for Africa as one of the most decisive and interconnected sites of resistance to systemic injustice. He foreshadowed that Zionist soft power strategies forces would attempt to bury any trace of Afro-Arab, ummatic unity and solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Unfortunately, our collective vision has been fragmented away from such discussion due to watered down political and religious education, and colonially-constructed racial prejudice and sectarian divisions.

Preferably Unheard Speech

The only time Prophet Muhammad complains to God in the Qur’an about his people is in Surat al-Furqan, where he says, “Oh Lord, my people took this Qur’an as deserted.”

What does it mean to neglect, to desert the Qur’an, when there are millions of memorizers of the Qur’an in the Muslim world?

To desert Divine speech, is to neglect its activating power to pierce and animate hearts in a way that transcends the machinery of regulation and the idolatry of state control.

Just like we neglect Divine speech, there are many narratives and primordial ways of knowing and histories we collectively neglect and ignore because they are come from voices that are “preferably unheard.”

The verse of Qur’anic neglect is the Prophetic warning cry against epistemicide, that act of silencing transformational sacred knowledge through intentional erasure. It is about more than just forgotten knowledge or missing books; it is about actively dismissing, invalidating, or destroying intuitive, Qur’anic and Prophetic ways of knowing and moving in the world.

We are at a tipping point of pervasive moral decay due to decades of relentless neocolonial and colonial policies that destroy human life en masse in the most monstrous and brutal of ways.

The powers-that-be want to sustain a soulless, heartless status quo in which genocide is mere background noise. They are essentially waging a war on humanity itself. To redefine what it means to be human.

But ultimately, this is still an age-old story of savage greed for African and Arab land and resources: what feeds this demonic project is a steady stream of sedated masses and a decimated collective human consciousness.

The mid 20th century witnessed an era of seemingly laudatory Arab and African “independence”— but that illusion of sovereignty was short lived. Cancerous nationalisms and treacherous state collaboration with forces of imperial expansion have all worked together to achieve the ummah’s epistemicide: the erasure of core beliefs about ourselves, about our histories.

So perhaps the Mauritanian Shaykha, drowned in the ocean of Prophetic love, was warning us about the imperative of defending Islam against the occupation of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, where the rulers are reportedly “more Zionist than Netanyahu”—according to Saudi dissident Omar Abdul Aziz.

For me, my great uncle’s book tells a great deal about Muslim naïveté. In it, he mentions a report that a group of Muslim imams came to him to ask him if it is “halal” to receive Israeli funding to build their mosque. I kid you not. Through such an account, you can see these pernicious efforts to fund and sponsor a new kind of “Abraham Accords” type of Islam—the Islam of Yazid and Pharaoh—was decades, if not centuries, in the making.

These “unseen” narratives point to all the unseen ways Islam and Muslims were undermined from within. We cannot properly see the unseen because we cannot even see ourselves.

These narratives point to the triple occupation of Mecca, Madina and Jerusalem. They point to the fact that the forces oppressing Palestinians are the same ones subjugating the Sudanese and the Congolose. They are driven by the same ones stoking sectarianism in Mali and Nigeria.

They remind us that a “Free Palestine” is a freeing of the African continent from this new age of colonial scramble. That a “Free Palestine” is a guardrail to the honor of Islam, and to the sanctity of humanity against demonic, mass violence. That a return to a primordial, living understanding of a Prophetic Islam can fight the forces of darkness that currently govern the world.

We’ve reached the end of the ruse-based-order. Godless butchers, pedophiles, rapists and soulless orcs run the world. Spiritual death and moral decay is endemic. Live-streamed genocides are an assault on our very human core. Epsitemcide over generations has been working overtime, reaping our mind and souls. How long have we buried our heads and hearts in the quick sand of colonially muddied waters?

If the genocides in Palestine and Sudan will not wake us up to the unseen imperative beckoning us, nothing else will.

It is never too late to wake up from the effects of decades of generational trauma, soft power state-sponsored propaganda, spiritual decay, curriculum reform, and neocolonial policies to lull and dull us.

It is not too late to fight the tireless efforts of the hypocrites within, the native informants and sheep-in-wolves clothing, dressed as shaykhs, imams and leaders who sell the honor and dignity of the ummah, piece by piece, land by land, soul by soul.

It is never too late to unearth neglected narratives and reorient ourselves back to the Prophetic path. To Divine dictum.

This article was originally published in Newlines Magazine on February 21, 2022.

In the Middle Senegal River Valley, the start of the 19th century would witness the birth of two remarkable Omars.

One would become the enslaved Muslim who wrote the first autobiography of a slave in the Americas in Arabic; the other stands as one of the most influential and erudite Muslim scholarly warriors in West Africa.

The two Omars grew up in Futa Toro, a semi-arid region along the Senegal River, hence their teknonym of “al-Fūtī,” which is commonly attached to their names in Arabic. Coincidentally, they both died (or in the case of Shaykh Omar Tal, the erudite scholar-warrior, disappeared in a cave) in 1864.

But it is not their shared name that matters; it is rather what they have come to symbolize.

Knowledge production has remained a cornerstone in the spread of Islam in Africa, arguably since the 11th century. In his essay “Muslims in Early America,” Michael Gomez notes that:

“a consideration of the historical development of Islam in West Africa is essential in trying to formulate an idea of the size and character of the Muslim presence in early America.”

The scholarly project of the latter Omar, Shaykh Omar ibn Sa’id al-Futi Tal (whom we will refer to as Shaykh Omar Tal in this article to avoid confusion), would reshape the very landscape of Islam in 19th-century West Africa. He left Futa Toro sometime in his mid-20s on a knowledge-seeking mission that took him to Futa Jallon (now Guinea), Sokoto (northern Nigeria) and Masina (Mali). Like his homeland of Futa Toro, these were all polities that had undergone significant political transformations as kingdoms ruled by Muslim scholars called “almamis” and were known as important sites of scholarship at a time of political turmoil.

The 19th-century West Africa in which the two Omars came of age was a tumultuous milieu. The numbers of Muslims being sent into Atlantic and Saharan slavery in the Senegal River Valley was at an all-time high. Since the Futa Toro revolution in 1776, many new Muslim scholar-led imamates would seize power through a series of military campaigns.

Though the two Omars never met, their stories intertwine around the abolitionist figure of Almami Abdul Qadir Kan, the leader of the Futa Toro revolution and arguably the most important abolitionist figure in Islamic history. It is arguable that Kan’s Imamate of Futa Toro became the inspiration and the institutional model for the creation of Shaykh Omar Tal’s state, what the French called the “Toucouleur Empire,” which he founded in 1852.

Kan forbade the slave trade based on Islamic jurisprudential grounds and prevented slave ships from docking in Futa’s ports. In his seminal work, “The Walking Qur’an,” Bilal Ware states that:

“rather than learning abolitionism from Christian Europeans, [Kan] showed them how it was done … evidence suggests that in 1787, when the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade held its first meeting in London to discuss how to gradually end the trade … Kan had already abolished it in Senegambia.”

At a time when the French and the British were embroiled in the slave trade, the region of Futa Toro stood in vehement opposition to it and to both its local and colonial sponsors.

Though the legacy of Kan inspired Shaykh Omar Tal, his violent demise was calamitous for the less fortunate Omar ibn Said (pronounced “Sayyid ”).

In his autobiography written in the Carolinas, Omar ibn Said narrates that in 1807, there was a war between the Muslim state of Futa Toro and Kaarta, a non-Muslim Bambara kingdom. This war led to the death of the antislavery leader Kan as well as to the capture of Omar ibn Said.

He describes this harrowing moment:

“Then there came to our place a large army who killed many men and took me and brought me to the great sea and sold me into the hands of the Christians, who bound me and sent me on board a great ship. And we sailed upon the great sea a month and a half when we came to a place called Charleston in the Christian language.”

Obviously, the two Omars’ struggles and experiences were a world apart and cannot be compared.

One was taken as a slave to North America and died there, and the other was a ruler of a briefly existent empire, the largest ever seen in Senegambia.

One lived a life in chains, exiled among slave-owning “Christians” in the Americas, while the other had resources to undertake the Hajj and to visit other Islamic centers of knowledge.

While he is not remembered as an abolitionist, Shaykh Omar Tal was known to have freed other slaves in his homeland and had a following of thousands of “murids” (wayfarers) as well as leaving a legacy of being a fierce warrior of the pen and the sword, fighting “pagan” and French colonial forces in the last decade of his life.

While the two Omars can’t be compared, the sum of their lives, taken together, can tell us a great deal about trans-Atlantic slavery, Islam in West Africa and the onset of a new colonial world order.

Appropriately, their namesake is Omar ibn al-Khattab, the second Caliph of Islam, who reigned from 634 to 644 and was also known as the “faruq” (the distinguisher between falsehood and truth) for his no-nonsense fearlessness when it came to defending truth.

This trait reverberates in the legacies of both Omars.

The stories of the two can remedy blind spots not only in our understanding of America but of Islam as a whole. Muslim scholars of West Africa in general are the 'faruqs’ not only of American history but of our understanding of Islam in Africa.

The two Omars remind us that Arabic is both an African and an American language, and that Islam is both an African and American religion.

The little that is known about the history of Muslim slaves in the Americas is directly proportional to the lack of knowledge about the vast history of Islamic scholarship in West Africa—and the place of Africa generally—in the Muslim tradition.

Bilal Ware’s theory of embodiment of the Qur’an as being central to West African Muslims’ relation to the Islamic epistemology stands at the heart of this blind spot: If the likes of Omar ibn Said and other Muslim slaves,

“were understood as embodiments of the Qur’an, then enslaving them was akin to desecrating the Book of God. … If attempts to burn ink-and-paper copies of the Qur’an sparked emotional reactions from Muslims worldwide at the beginning of the 21st century, how would Senegambians respond to seeing the Walking Qurʾan carried away in chains?” asks Ware.

So long as this framework is sidelined, our understandings of both Islam and America will always fall short.

Despite the rampant transience and instability of this era in Futa Toro—what is today the region along the border of Senegal and Mauritania—Islamic education flourished. It was commonplace for young boys and girls to memorize the Qur’an with learned scholars and receive instruction in a range of subjects such as hadith, poetry, mathematics, astronomy and theology.

Before his capture by slave traders in 1807 and throughout his life in Futa, Omar ibn Said would have received his Islamic education from a minted scholar such as Shaykh Omar Tal. (Historical sources indicate he was under the tutelage of Sulayman Bal.) He would have studied the basics of the Maliki legal school and memorized the Quran from a young age. Recent commendable efforts have been taken to document his life and the autobiographical manuscript he wrote. His handwritten copy of some short chapters from the Quran are now part of the North Carolina Collection in the Wilson Library at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an opera about his life premiered last year in Charleston, South Carolina.

Thanks to works like that of [Carl Ernst, Mbaye Lo], Ala Alryyes and Sylviane Diouf, author of “Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas,” we know that “African Muslims like Omar were a familiar presence” in America since its earliest days.

“Among the 400,000 Africans who spent their lives enslaved in the United States,” Diouf wrote, “tens of thousands were Muslims.” We also know through various accounts that for other Muslim slaves, like Ayuba Sulayman Diallo and Yarrow Mamout, it was typical for them to be committed Muslims who prayed five times a day, regularly performed “dhikr” (remembrance of God) on their prayer beads and fasted during the month of Ramadan.

In his autobiography in Arabic, Omar ibn Said narrates how he landed in South Carolina on the plantation of a cruel master, only to escape to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where he was recaptured, sent to jail and later sold to James Owen, whom Omar ibn Said describes as a kinder owner than the previous one. Omar is described by his American contemporaries as “a scholar” and “a prince” for his “unlikely” erudition, but he was not, in fact, an advanced scholar, as there is little evidence to suggest he studied more than the fundamentals of Islamic belief and practice before his capture in West Africa.

Furthermore, there is nothing “unlikely” or unusual about his knowledge of Arabic and his literacy. They called him endearing names such as “Uncle Moreau” and “Prince Omeroh” to signify his status as a marvel. This is a sign of their exoticizing fascination with the literate Omar ibn Said and other Muslim slaves from West Africa as well as an indication of their ignorance about how normal it was for West African Muslims to know Arabic and be well educated.

Their knowledge of the Qur’an and Arabic while in chains, however, stood as a form of resistance in the face of their enslavers.

For Shaykh Omar Tal, on the other hand, to say that he was “well educated” is an understatement. Tal transmitted original knowledge and produced many written works whose reach and influence would reshape the landscape of West Africa itself. It can be argued that through his authority and scholarship, he single-handedly transformed what a Sufi order in West Africa, as we know it today, looks like.

He enjoyed a vast network of scholarly relations across West and North Africa, all the way to Cairo. In fact, primary and secondary sources document how he left the scholars of Al Azhar dumbfounded as they quizzed him in a famous “munathara” (debate) that became the subject of many a ballad sung by “griots” (traditional West African storytellers). In a thousand-page encyclopedic hagiography entitled “Rare Pearls on the Life of al-ḤājjʿUmar” by his descendant Muntaga Tal, a poem describes the Cairene scholars’s reaction to Tal’s erudition:

I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Tal’s magnum opus, “Kitab al-Rimaḥ” (“The Book of Spears”). Tal’s work is an integral part of an important corpus of West African Islamic scholarly literature in Arabic, but its most salient status is how it has come to serve as the blueprint for Tijani Sufi outlook and doctrine as well as how it helped in the enormous spread of Islam and Sufism in West Africa in the 19th century.

Because of its clear prescriptive narrative, its copious quotes and commentary, and the erudition of its masterful writer as well as his ability to weave varying sources and chapters with careful precision, “al-Rimah” can thus be seen as a microcosm of the corpus of the entirety of Sufi thought, with specific focus on the methodology of the Tariqa Muhammadiyya, the Sufi revival movement that arguably saw its apex in the 18th century.

The power of the work’s wide-ranging, persuasive rhetoric aided in this spread and empowered Tal to spread Sufism based on an intensified connection with the Prophet Muhammad as the ultimate path to God across large swaths of West Africa. By centering the authority of the Prophet as a living, palatable source of guidance, West African sages like Omar Tal are therefore not only “Walking Qur’ans” but walking “prophetic inheritors” too.

Historically in the Western academy, neither Islamicists nor Africanists paid enough attention to the likes of important figures such as the two Omars. This is understandable, though inexcusable. The academy has had longstanding shortcomings in taking seriously the study of African Muslims as being both Muslim scholars of Arabic as well as African transmitters of knowledge.

Western scholars tend to approach African and Islamic studies in separate lenses: “too Islamic” to be a legitimate subject of study for most anthropologists and Africanists, and “too African” to be of interest to Islamicists, thereby causing African-Muslim scholarly voices to fall through the cracks.

Historians of 19th-century Islamic intellectual history often tend to focus on Middle Eastern reformist thinkers in Egypt or Damascus, who were preoccupied with reacting to rising Western hegemony through reformist or revivalist lenses and approaches. It was all too common for later 20th-century scholars across the Muslim world to be preoccupied with decolonization.

At the same time in West Africa, it can be argued that black Muslim scholars were transcending that threat altogether through an epistemology of actualization (“tahqiq”), a paradigm that is often ignored in Islamic studies but lies at the heart of West African Muslims’ (and others’) experiential approach to Islam and its primary sources — the Qur’an and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad.

In his excellent article entitled “The Ultimate End of Decolonization,” boldly suggests that “African epistemic self-affirmation is the ultimate end of decolonization.” By highlighting the importance of a recently published work, which I contributed a chapter to, entitled “Islamic Scholarship in Africa: New Directions and Global Contexts,” Marsh points to a new “wave of academic work on the histories, cultures and meanings of Islamic thought in Africa” that does not yield to the long-held idea of Islam as “foreign” to Africa and defies the idea that autochthony (nativeness) is the only qualifier for what constitutes “African religion.”

The lives and works of Shaykh Omar Tal and other prolific West African sagely scholars like Usman dan Fodio, Ahmadu Bamba and Ibrahim Niasse are ripe areas for exploring the case for “ending decolonization” and centering a self-affirming approach of tahqiq (realization) at the center of new epistemic frontiers in Islamic thought and practice.

In Tijani West African lore, it is professed that one of the reasons for the rising recognition of Shaykh Omar Tal’s spiritual abilities was a litany he recited frequently entitled “ḥizb al-sayfi” (“the litany of the sword”). The warring imagery between his favored litany and the title of “The Book of Spears” is uncanny. Tal understood that the most difficult jihad he would undergo is the struggle against his own self.

Similarly, Omar ibn Said would begin his autobiography with the Qura’nic chapter al-Mulk (the Dominion), which Alryyes contends points to Omar ibn Said’s own private resistance using Qur’anic edicts and his refusal of bow down to the right of his owners over him “since only God has the ‘mulk’ (power and ownership)” over him.

For both Omars, their unyielding trust in God as the ultimate victor animates their status as “walking Qur’ans” and “prophetic inheritors.” It seals their status as warriors of the pen and as guiding faruqs in not only our understanding of America but of Islam itself.

Related reading:

The Forgotten Atlantic Revolution

Vanquisher of the Kingdom of Fear

From : Towards a New Future Identity of Islam in the Americas