Introduction
Over the last decade or so, we’ve seen the rise of those whose involvement in the community comes largely through social media and YouTube. It’s a new phenomenon and one that has been difficult for those of us from a different time to fully grasp. Content is being produced and consumed at unprecedented rates and has proliferated beyond any form of control. These online figures come in all manner of forms, some referred to pejoratively as dawah-bros, some as influencers, others as podcasters.
Online platforms are connecting us to issues that thirty years ago were just not possible in dawah or activist circles – the totality of Muslim life comes streamed directly to our hands, connecting us globally seemingly in ways impossible in the past. How we connect and feel a sense of connection has been reconfigured by the perception of contact. This is a very new world.
Some of us still extoll the virtues of an earlier generation from the 80s and 90s who fought in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya for the sake of those facing genocide or occupation, then came home and helped their communities as doctors, dentists, tech experts and so on. They were and continue to be of value to our people – but we would learn about their activities months or years after they left. Their action and aid work remained in the domain of the stories they shared with their community and the experiences of the oppressed informing their views of the world – transmitted to us in person. Those times have largely disappeared, with an infrastructure of legal violence that inhibits the aspirations of an ummah and criminalises support for resistance movements defending the lives and dignity of our people through the global War on Terror.
Part of this proliferation of Muslim content in the online space comes through proselytising efforts within the rubric of dawah as well as the marketing of products through proximity to Islam or Muslimness. We need to uncouple and protect the prophetic concept of dawah from influencer culture and Islam itself from a market economy that has produced its own unethical culture. It is the reason why this (admittedly long) article seeks to assess Muslim-influencer culture and some of the harms it might cause, but also some suggestions on ways forward.
There are three main concerns and critiques I have:
1. Muslim-influence exists within a neoliberal market, that by virtue of its very design, chases numbers.
2. To remain relevant, Muslim-influencers must continually curate their own image and create controversy to shift the dial for online communities desperate for salacious content.
3. The Muslim-influencer scene corrupts our sense and understanding of community, as it requires fissures to retain its relevance.
By considering these three areas, what I hope will emerge is a critique of how we all exist and engage in a modernity that is far from the ideal of organising ourselves communally, but actually harmful to the long-term interests of our ummah.
One might ask why I’m writing about this now. I think it’s because of the prison visits that I’ve been making to see some of the brothers and sisters from the Filton 24, such as Qesser Zuhrah, Kamran Ahmed, Zoe Rogers, Zahra Farooque and Fatema Zainab Rajwani. They allegedly broke into a weapons factory and smashed up drones for the sake of saving Palestinian lives. Some of these same brothers and sisters who have been on hunger strike for over 60 days, and yet there is almost nothing about them from Muslims with large platforms and ‘influence’ among the community. It seems quite a story to miss but also speaks to the careful curation of Muslim-influence – that there are some narratives that carry risk over others. It’s easier and perhaps more controversial (attention-grabbing) to criticise the lengths of a sister’s eyelashes or to call for a reinterpretation of the religion based on individual desires, than to speak about a sister whose body is cannibalising itself for the sake of trying to preserve Palestinian life.
Muslim-influencers exist in an ecosystem that chases numbers in a neoliberal online market
When some of these figures first emerged publicly over ten years ago, they had a swagger about them, giving themselves an online version of a nom-de-guerre to have a branded/curated image of themselves. I remember seeing one particularly egregious video of a UK Muslim influencer on a chat show in Pakistan, wearing sunglasses in a tv studio as he was speaking about his dawah. One of our main dawah organisations had involved him in their work, and so I called their head and asked why they were platforming someone who came across…quite frankly…as obnoxious. They explained that this young man had a large online platform, the youth were relating to him, so they felt it was better he be managed by their organisation.
Platforming individuals due to their follower count…this logic has become a bane of our community organising. This logic uncritically accepted that if individuals had a large following, they should be platformed to attract large crowds, even if their personas, their content, their behaviour was harmful. The sunglasses-wearing-Muslim-influencer became a monster, one who has produced wild videos where he screams with little knowledge about the goings on in the world, and often about Muslim women. This same person would later try and present himself as someone living a fast lifestyle, offering courses for eye-watering sums of money, to join him in his claimed seven-figure riches. Montages of luxury living and fast cars became an ideal he would encourage the youth to aspire to – but at a cost. You had to pay to join his brand of halal high-living – in other words – a grift.
The real issue isn’t so much that such individuals have a following, but in how our mainstream masajid and outlets platform them as a means of attracting a younger audience. This platforming is a Faustian pact – because it inevitably creates a market in the attention-economy. The value of a speaker is less in what they are saying, but much more about how they are able to put bums in seats…or at least on the mosque floor. One young man who has recently become popular speaks a great deal about his own youthful misadventures as a means of advising the youth, which makes sense and is needed, but how does that translate to being platformed on a range of issues that his relatively recent encounter with the deen does not open him up to? The answer I always receive: his following. Our community platforms based on perceived influence – because relevance is measured by attendance.
My social media is often punctuated by Muslim influencers who are selling one brand or another, sometimes the brand is even named after them. I’m uneasy about the ethics of this relationship. These influencers have entered the Muslim space as du’āt – which means they have an intention to present Islam to those who follow them as a form of education. Now they are contracted to, or curate themselves, products that the community can buy. You can get vitamins or supplements, or beard oil and perfume that are endorsed by the influencer or named after them. What has that influencer’s message got to do with the product? Why is their life experience, their knowledge, being leveraged in order to sell? Surely, if your reputation in our community relates to providing a message of truth, then your relationship with product placement is a conflicted one, because of the association that people make to your role as a religious figure.
I think of the billboards featuring influencers with followings that go into the tens of millions, encouraging us to invest in Muslim finance companies that will provide a halal return. What does it mean for that influencer though when those finance companies use ‘shariah-compliant’ trackers that invest in violent companies like Halliburton, or in companies such as Coca Cola that have been supporting the Zionist state? The so-called ‘shariah-compliant’ nature of these trackers relates to not being engaged in alcohol or gambling, but the manufacture of weapons, or the displacement of Muslims does not enter into that thinking – crimes that are far worse in many ways. If a Muslim influencer is lending their name to such a project, does that mean that it is religiously sanctified for the public? I think we can all see where the conflict of interest is.
Of course, this phenomenon is much wider, as we think of the ways new-age self-help is marketised by Muslims as a means of selling products, but ultimately also as a means of self-worship. Outside of the dawah, both Muslim male and female influencers instrumentalise Islam and their connection to the community as a means of selling products, creating an economy that goes well beyond initial intentions to help educate others. We’ve seen it so many times, that an influencer began by doing cute videos of praying publicly in parks or in the open, and talking to people about Islam – this content invariably led to likes and subscriptions. In a matter of years, those very people would have agents/managers who would be selling their presence at charities and Islamic functions for the sake of attracting audiences, and these same individuals would become part-time commentators on Islam itself as their popularity grew.
Finally, there is the element of the Muslim-influencers who market a feel-good approach to the religion to capitalise on the emptiness that we see plaguing the world. They provide all manner of curated soundbites about positivity, self-forgiveness and contentment, but when asked to stick their necks out for the sake of those most oppressed, provide excuses that their platform might become limited for speaking about such things. That to raise actual awareness about Gaza, the resistance, the protest movements, would impact their algorithms or their ability to travel. This isn’t just in relation to the dawah, but also Muslim-influencers who market products, but whose content on Palestine is limited by their branding deals. What is the value of such positivity talk in the face of this non-reflexive lack of self-awareness? Do these brothers and sisters not see the spiritual cognitive dissonance in taking such positions?
Without a doubt, social media has played a crucial role in democratising the mainstream media’s coverage of Gaza – and Muslim influencers have played an important role in that regard. They are often highlighting various charities that one can donate to, even getting involved with those charities themselves. They have helped to keep the narrative of supporting the Palestinian people alive in many ways, but there is often a ceiling to what they are willing to say, and my concern is that this ceiling is one that is self-imposed based on the size of their platform and the careful curation of their public presence.
The dawah is prophetic. It is a mission that was undertaken with grace and forbearance by the anbiyā. Their emphasis was two-fold, carrying the message of tawhid while simultaneously rectifying ills in society. The Qur’an largely presents this as a tradition rooted in endurance regardless of the outcomes – many of the Prophets being incapable of fully convincing their respective people – even their own family members at times. Yet, the dawah in the online space has become a numbers game, where large following becomes a proof of the importance of a message – a neoliberal economy of metric-based validation. The more such figures become popular, the more they are platformed, regardless of how their content creates fissures within the larger community.
Muslim-influencers continually move the dial on controversy to remain relevant, and have to centre themselves
I recall one morning when my wife asked me if I had seen the video or two dawah influencers reacting to a video of some sisters speaking on marriage issues. The main sister is someone very well known in our community – someone who has given a great deal to both Muslim men and women, a sister whose work is supported and loved by ulamā and former mujāhidīn alike. Yet these brothers spoke of her as if she was corrupting the religion itself, completely devoid of any context of how much she has given to us all. To see them tear into this sister, left me upset for her and what content was being consumed in large numbers by a younger Muslim audience. Who have we become when people who have given so much are torn down just because they expressed some personal feelings – not even giving fatawa?
Then of course, there are the clickbait titles to their videos – the completely disingenuous ways some seek to attract attention to themselves and their messaging. They have admitted as much openly, that how else can they court controversy and gain traction except by disingenuously manipulating their market, after all, exposure is their entire economy. One brother on a podcast publicly admitted that he changed the details of a story in order to provoke outrage, otherwise people wouldn’t follow and engage with his video. In particular he was trying to provoke Muslim women. What is it about the pain that our community feels, that triggering them through deception is considered to be a marketing tool, as opposed to what it is, lying to gain attention.
We then come on to the matter of when they speak on issues outside of their knowledge base. In this instance I’ll speak on the area I know best, which is national security, ‘terrorism’ and ‘extremism’. No doubt, they have made a few valuable contributions in this space, mostly aligned with the needs of the oppressed globally. However, they often veer into speaking on policy matters as if they have taken the time to research these issues, using words like ‘extremism’ as if they have understood the complexity of the word. I’ve been studying this area since the year 2001, and after almost a quarter of a century, still feel the need to review constantly my own positions as well as learn from others. And yet some of these brothers speak with a confidence unbefitting their limited knowledge.
Perhaps the most poignant example of this was a brother condemning 7 October 2023 on a large media platform, as if he had some locus to do so. When questioned about why the condemnation took place, the brother explained so that his other arguments could be heard – and he wasn’t alone among Muslim-influencers. In 22 years of our work, while we’ve held mujāhidīn groups to account where we needed to, CAGE International has never condemned those who resist their oppression, even at the cost of public and media denouncements – it is not befitting for us to throw resistance movements under the bus. Yet this was seemingly an easy thing to do for these brothers, an entirely calculated act which was more about scoring points in an argument, than an ethical standing with the dispossessed. Further, it could be argued that in such a moment, it is more important to stand with mujāhidīn than to belittle their efforts in any way – especially when the vast majority of the information we collectively had was coming from the enemies of Islam.
To be an influencer means to come into a symbiotic relationship with online communities. It means that your profile, your influence, is directly attached to the content that others want, or expect. This also means that you have influence, the ability to educate, shift, or indeed change perceptions on a range of issues. This also means burden – the burden that is placed on Muslim influencers to use their platforms according to what is pleasing to Allah ﷻ. I wonder the extent to which such burden is taken seriously, especially when the platform becomes linked to an economy of influence/reputation.
Then there is the element of the ‘uyub al-nafs, these diseases of the heart that we all come into with social media profiles, and further as a result having public profiles. I recall in 2005, when I conducted my first TV interview with Yvonne Ridley on Islam Channel, that I received praise from people in the community for being able to advocate on behalf of my clients eloquently. I felt uneasy about the praise, and so I called brother Moazzam Begg, who I knew had conducted hundreds of interviews already and is someone I consider to be extremely eloquent. I asked him how he dealt with the praise and stopping arrogance/pride entering the heart. Moazzam said some words which have remained with me until this day: “Asim, who told you I’m able to deal with it.” I think he said this out of humility, as having travelled, stayed with him and had of course worked alongside him, I am fully aware of his humble character – but since then I was struck by how much being in the public eye is a burden. I think of the hadith of the Prophet ﷺ being on the Night Journey, and witnessing a people whose lips were being cut off with shears made of fire, and when he asked Jibrail who they were, he was informed that they are the ones who deliver sermons commanding people, but forget themselves. I worry about the states of our hearts, especially as some have been willing to express the extent to which ego has played a role in their public demeanour – a spiritual harm that cannot simply be willed away, but requires constant work and attention.
In the last week of writing this article, I fell victim myself to the attention economy that social media excises from us all, as these platforms are designed to draw people into the creation of content through controversy. I joined brother Muhammad Jalal from the Thinking Muslim Podcast to speak on the proscription of Palestine Action, the Filton 24 and some of those currently on hunger strike in the UK. It was a great conversation and one that allowed me the space to advocate on behalf of the incredibly brave prisoners CAGE International is supporting. A couple of days after the podcast was released, the podcast team released a short clip of me calling some scholars cowards – a short clip that had a specific context, but that context was removed from the clip. Jalal had put it to me that a scholar he knew disagreed with young activists smashing drones in weapons factories because it was an invasion of private property and broke the aqd (treaty) they have with the UK. This question left me upset because of the fiqh of some scholars – those that consider private property ownership within the colonial metropoles of the UK and US as being more sanctified than the role these countries play in relation to an ongoing genocide (in itself a breaking of a peremptory norm of international law and treaties).
When the clip of my criticism of scholars as acting cowardly went live, I was tagged in the posts and shared them uncritically. I initially messaged Jalal to say that he was going to get me in trouble with ulamā by posting it. But there was something about the posting of the clip, outside of the original context of the question that just didn’t sit right with me. Jalal and I were already scheduled to have dinner together with another brother, and so I raised the use of the video with him – asking him to think it through with me. I explained that in my view the clip wasn’t even the most important part of the interview, and that what his team had done was to take a clip that would perhaps draw the most public attention. He readily agreed with me and said that he could see the problems with doing so, that the ire I was directing towards some ulamā was due to the original question which directly related to the rightness of taking direct action in the midst of a genocide. He asked his team to take the video down there and then and gave me permission to write on this moment as he agreed that the very phenomenon I am critiquing in this essay, is one that we had collectively fallen short of ourselves.
Don’t get me wrong, I said those words about a number of ulamā I’ve met and known over the last twenty-four years because I believe in them. There is a class of scholar who will regularly tell me that they cannot say certain things because they’ve been legally advised not to do so due to the constraints of the Charity Commission. Except, these are self-imposed constraints. These legal experts they rely on operate in the space of risk management, and care more for staying well below the limits of what is legally acceptable, than to ever place themselves in harm’s way – it’s why I have such little time for those who claim they are following legal advice. Our institutions and leaders have become so occupied by the post-9/11 need for self-preservation, that they have paid little attention to what an ethical voice in a system of injustice might look like – to actually use our platforms to present an alternative world unencumbered by a risk-analysis that curtails our imagination.
My problem isn’t with what I said, it was that a clip was used in a way to generate the kind of outrage-baiting that I want to fight against. I was so glad that Jalal took the video down, kindly encouraged this critique and said he would look into the wider culture of his own podcast.
If the platform and reach of any influencers is the key to their representation in our community spaces, then there should be a level of scrutiny that also accompanies such public attention. All too often, influencers are permitted to make a series of faux-pas online, only to then publicly apologise before they move on to the next faux-pas – we’re forced to watch their mistake-making real time as they comment on issues or engage in debates that they haven’t fully thought through. There is an ecosystem that perhaps exists uncritically in this space. It is an ecosystem that will provide further platforms and support to one another, without ever truly addressing the harms that are done. Questions about mistakes in the past are brushed off lightly, as if they didn’t leave the community reeling for months on end. That if feelings were hurt, that it is ok because everyone means well and has good intentions.
The Muslim-influencer eco-system disrupts our sense of community
I have been at pains to avoid naming names in this article, as I do want to think of these issues collectively, rather than personalising critique, but we must acknowledge the mainstreaming of Andrew Tate by large Muslim platforms and influencers. This man, who was disgusting in his public statements and positions around women prior to Islam, and then even after his conversion, was platformed heavily. Many at the time said that it was important to acknowledge that converts have their sins wiped clean and should be treated as such by the community – I accept this entirely. However, when we could all see how his persona was so tied to courting public controversy, there should have been an attempt to encourage his silence – to encourage him to learn his newfound faith quietly. Rather, the day of his conversion was met with a website launch where we were all encouraged to buy £100 t-shirt with Tate’s branding stating “the battle against shaytān begins.” At a mere £100, we could all enter into an economic relationship with Tate to fight against shaytān on the very day he announced his conversion. What might have happened had popular platforms withheld their hand, knowing full well the kind of person he was and the ego-centric view of the world that he held? Perhaps, our platforms might not have sanitised him to a youthful audience keen on hearing from his awful takes, except now from inside the House of Islam. It’s an attention economy – and these relationships, these platforms, are ultimately transactional.
What does the ‘community’ mean and who is included inside it? I was told a great deal by well-wishers not to be critical of Tate publicly, because he was new to Islam and should be accepted as his slate was wiped clean – except a great deal of harm had been done – and there seemed no relenting from a previous life. His Hustlers University was still in effect – a scam culture that promoted the idea that one could enrich themselves, even through indecency and degeneracy. His narrative content seemed to change very little in the course of his public output – he was being acknowledged as a truth-speaker relatable to younger male audiences. Except, his understanding of the world was being constructed through a bravado that is unbecoming of the character of the Prophet ﷺ and the sahābah – a bravado that is based on an understanding of what personal happiness looks like within modernity, not what building community looks like. His more recent interviews critiquing Muslim immigrants coming to the UK is perhaps most indicative of his own warped understandings of what he understands his own notion of community to be.
To think of community for Muslims, is to think of what it means to be part of various ecosystems, including the ummah. The men my brothers and I looked up to in our youth were mujāhidīn – those who literally sacrificed their lives for the sake of Islam and the oppressed. Our modern communities are looking for such examples, but the narratives and policies of the global War on Terror have constricted them into having lower ambition role models. Thus, bravado in the public space looks far more performative than the selfless and ethically-minded sacrifice that was modelled three decades ago. Now, manicured moments of public bravado, or organising exhibition fights with the far-right in a carefully crafted rules-based display, or scoring points against ‘feminists’ in a podcast is all seen as fighting back, or those claiming to subvert the expectations of a liberal order by acting well inside its confines by restating Islam in terms palatable to those who hate us – these are just some of the ways that Islam in the social media age has come to define a discourse of the community.
Except, the other world still exists. The world of true fighting, of resistance, of sacrifice for the sake of Allah ﷻ alone. I think of my good friend Tauqir ‘Tox’ Sharif and his entire family moving to Syria to stand with mujāhidīn and mustad’afīn – what of their example? What of the example of journalists reporting under fire? What of youngsters locked up in prisons across the world for the sake of trying to stop a genocide, or to end oppressive policies in their own countries? The examples of heroism are plenty, and yet they receive little attention compared to the podcast/social media sound bites. Yes, we can say they have amplified the message of Palestine a great deal, we need to be fair – but what were the restrictions they were operating with? We see the ceiling of their narrative, and it is a ceiling that they imposed on themselves to curate their public accounts – perhaps sometimes out of ignorance, but also sometimes out of cowardice.
We also need to ask ourselves why figures on the far-right are being platformed, ones whose private views are well documented to be racist, anti-Islam, misogynistic and yet are given airtime to espouse their views. I’m worried about this, because I don’t think these interviews take into account enough the history of the far-right in this country, but also the deep networks that these individuals and groups have with eugenicists, paleo-conservatives and an entire war-machine that keeps on violently harming our people. Well documented, is the chameleon-like positions that the far-right take when it comes to publicly manicuring their image, one only reads works such as The Liberal Roots of the Far-Right Activism by Lars Erik Berntzen or The Year of the Rat by Harry Shukman to see who these groups are when the cameras are off. Rather, what happens is that they are given a platform to air a version of their views they are able to curate – ones that have Muslims saying: well, some of what they say is quite reasonable. The podcast episodes are revealing in many ways for sure and often skilfully done, but is that enough to justify how that platforming is received by young people confused about their own politics? Is what we might glean from these interviews enough to offset the potential harm? Even if some of it is reasonable, these people hate us, and to platform that hate as a form of quiet, disruptive diplomacy, even if it is to ultimately attack Zionism, is to also do those who experience the violent end of their narratives a disservice.
Often, it is sisters who bear the brunt of public statements, reaction videos and critiques. It is liberalism and feminism that are destroying the family, that they are being educated, that they have employment, that they have their own money, etc. Except, no one wants to deal with the underlying issues of the way we as communities have organised ourselves. Yes, it’s easy to blame ideology – I’ve been fighting state narratives my whole life that blame ideology for problems we see in the world. But what of material conditions? What of infrastructure? What of organising ourselves in ways that fulfil our covenant to Allah ﷻ? So we come back to community, and how Muslim-influence actually inhibits our collective ability to build community, because of everything that has been said above. It is hardwired, through the platforms themselves, to the ways in which the platforms are instrumentalised, to spiritually harm our ability to truly connect.
To build community, means that we must first understand that we are all subject to a system and structure of violence that cannot find a solution in the Left or the Right of the political spectrum – both of them are unsafe ground because they detach the very idea of Allah’s control to the needs of the community. We need to understand that to truly decolonise, we cannot simply Islamify the ways in which modernity has organised us – so that an Islamic home life looks like modern self-care dressed up as Islamic spirituality. Some female and male Muslim-influencers regularly use their platforms to enter into discussions about Islam itself, and how ‘living their best lives’ is an ethic – except that ethic somehow seems to reify a self-worship that is as vacuous and colonial as the non-Muslim variety. Defeating modernity means all of us have to find ways to divest from the attention-economy that creates schisms which our algorithms love to promote – the entirety of the system is designed for that specific effect.
Not to be entirely gloomy about the future, I think there are good examples of some of this community building we can point to in the UK. There are positive case studies in Imam Shakeel Begg and his role in building Lewisham Islamic Centre, and a number of others that I am less personally aware of. They have built the kind of community that one can feel invested in, by being there for their community’s needs, but also not being disconnected from the issues of the ummah – understanding that inside the colonial metropole, the masjid has multiple roles it can and will play. That the masjid standing with the oppressed fully, is part of the role of the masjid, and not one that will kowtow to threats by regulatory bodies. This is the kind of work that can begin to recreate an ethical life for us all – one that might just give us a chance against the violence of modernity.
Ways forward for us all to combat the traps of modernity and its online bastard
The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman once wrote of how we are no longer a community of people but a network of individuals. Online spaces are the perfect petri dish for the culturing of this ‘disconnected’ world – where people are able to connect with one another with a speed and access that is unprecedented, but at the same time vacuous in its meaning.
The platforms we choose to use are not ours to begin with, they are the property of big tech and thus replicate the logic of those interests. A plethora of studies, from Safiya Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression to Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism inform us of the extent to which these platforms exist to reinforce the harmful capitalist distortions of what it means to connect – as ultimately, we have become the product. Adele Zeynup Walton in her book Logging Off, recommends to us that there are times we need to completely reconsider our relationship with social media and log off, especially after her sister was found dead during a period of its excessive use in the darker corners of the internet. These online platforms are not ours and are highly curated by people and algorithms we have no control over. By engaging in culture wars, we not only feed the system, we maintain the economy of controversy that maintains the stranglehold big tech has on us. There is no escaping this system, except to intentionally subvert our use of these platforms.
This is not to say that social media is fully evil and that we should boycott it entirely. It is first to acknowledge that these are not our platforms, and they are designed to perpetuate harms and schisms between us. It’s not simply a case of just our use of them, the platform itself plays a role in the way we communicate. But at the same time, we must also acknowledge how social media has permitted us to connect to this ummah in ways we might never have conceived before. That when violence takes place against Muslims in one part of the world or another, we see it within seconds – meaning we feel more connected temporally to their suffering. This also means burden though – we are burdened by the immediacy and that burden calls us to act, not waste our time by spending hours debating issues that do not equate in significance to the immediate harms we witness.
The dawah callers and thought leaders were once known for their manners and their intellectual production, not their ability to generate controversy and see how the community would become involved in public drama – a drama economy that harms us all. It may well be time that we collectively call on Muslim-influencers to take a break from the online world. I would highly recommend that they get in touch with organisations that represent the interests of the oppressed, both locally and abroad. What of the families in the UK who have been maligned by terrorism legislation and policy, how associating publicly with the most maligned can recalibrate their understanding of risk. That they take the time to understand the role of mujāhidīn groups who have sacrificed for the sake of Allah ﷻ. To travel across the ummah and spend time with the dispossessed and sit at the feet of scholars to recalibrate – they will not be harmed by this work in one way. Not as a tick box exercise, but to really centre the notion of the pain of others in how they understand themselves and their connection to the world. In-person transformative work with individuals and families is a panacea to the schismatic relationships of social media – in building a new notion of community beyond the gatekeeping of our limited structures.
In the West we have learnt to create a community that seeks to recreate a visage of Islamic practice within an economically extractivist modernity, without building any infrastructure to fight it. Thus, having a shariah-compliant life looks like replicating the sahābah, without creating the institutional community that the sahābah created. To change, it would mean that the masjid is no longer a musallah, it is a central part of the community’s life – not just a place to pray. It means having the resources to take care of the impoverished in the community, those who cannot afford to live in dignity, it means our sisters are not left to the mercy of a state that dehumanises the whole of society, as they are divorced and left without any resources by their husbands. It means that our children should be raised by the whole community, so that there is necessary involvement by more than just parents – as it is an aberration in human history for a mother and father to raise their children alone – we harm them by creating distance.
Modernity is violent and dehumanising. The project of Muslims, wherever they are, should be to create the kind of community that rejects modernity’s harm, not to try and Islamify it as best we can. To live a neoliberal Western lifestyle with a halal-approved stamp only reifies the harm that a modern society creates – it provides no actual Islamic rupture we can point to as a solution for society’s wider concerns – even at the level of a new economic imagination. We inevitably harm ourselves by entering into normalising and ‘best-fitting’ into economic disparity, or reproducing culture wars on the terms of enemies, instead of building the kind of community that centres care and compassion for all. My concern with Muslim-influence in particular within these violent structures, is that it will ultimately only be a project of normalisation of a culture war attention-economy, and never provide us a pathway to community building beyond limiting Islam to a very narrow and dehumanised private space.
Social media is the online bastard of modernity, and we must find ways to escape its stranglehold. One of the first books I read after the breaking free of Gaza by resistance groups on 7 October 2023, was Suhaiymah Manzoor Khan’s short reflective tract Seeing for Ourselves: And Even Stranger Possibilities. I recall having a phone call with my friend Dr Osman Latiff about the book, and explaining that I read Suhaiymah’s book as one on aqīdah, as it taught me how to recalibrate my connection to social media and work through my relationship to Allah ﷻ – it is work that every single person who has ever posted on social media should read – if we are brave enough to confront ourselves with it.
A process of tarbiya is necessary for our youth who are engaging with social media for the first time – they should learn sincerity and humility – but see it being practised by community elders and leaders. That they see knowledge is passed on directly from a teacher, who is not providing content, but passing on knowledge through akhlāq. That they see for themselves what a life of service looks like, and how a spiritual life is practised within systems of violence, not simply taught. Some accuse me of being too harsh on ulamā (especially in the context of the genocide), but my intention is the exact opposite, it is to recentre their relevance in everything we do as communities. Their recentring to our communities, and providing them resources to be independent, will move a power dynamic that focuses us all on an attention-economy, and shift us collectively to a spiritual connection and concern for one another. One that desires jannah for each one of us, rather than the horror that accompanies so many takes that we see online.
Source: Islam21c
