Strangers In The Dunyā

Industrialisation and the urbanisation that accompanies it necessarily weaken the family unit and discourage marriage and having children. In the past, it was within one’s economic interests to get married and have many children, as people worked on farmland in rural areas and more children meant more labour. The lack of age pensions and nursing homes also meant that old people needed their offspring to take care of them. The high population density in cities makes spacious homes more scarce, and since there’s a high demand for them, they’ve become expensive to rent or purchase. This discourages people from having too many children. Unlike in rural areas, family members usually don’t share businesses and work together in urban cities; rather, both parents in a nuclear family go to work in separate, often freemixed workplaces and the state takes care of their children. This weakens family bonds and causes conflict with families. This is why it’s no longer within people’s interests to get married and start families; it’s now much more economically efficient to just have temporary ḥarām relationships with no responsibilities and abandon the idea of raising children altogether.

Housewives are economic producers just like working women; they replace teachers, maids, nurses, etc. The problem is that the modern liberal state doesn’t consider housewives economic producers because don’t pay taxes. The state encourages women to be “productive” (by entering the formal workforce) because it needs to collect additional taxes to strengthen its control over society by increasing funding for its military and security apparatuses and implementing social security programs. Women who seek to join the formal workforce also need to attend state-controlled social engineering (educational) institutions and place their children under the care of the state.

The complete absence of a nation-state’s authority and the presence of an ungovernable environment is preferable to order and stability under a secular nation-state. Disunited militias with low-tech weapons and equipment are easier to fight than a standing national army with a centralised command structure. The absence of people’s dependence on the state to protect and provide for them, along with the absence of a security apparatus that keeps an eye on them, makes people more willing and able to support efforts to re-establish sharī`ah. In Islām, obedience is only due to the imām of the Muslims (the khalīfah), obedience to any other authority is limited and conditional on the presence of a genuine need to obey them. The absence of this need invalidates the obligation of obedience.

It’s important to recognise that the right to protest is used by ṭāghūt governments to promote the idea that we can resolve political disagreements through peaceful means rather than violence. It allows the government to make minor concessions to calm the people while preserving the fundamental power structures of the state. Muslims should not view protesting as a method of restoring Islāmic rule or bringing about fundamental changes to government policy; this mentality is a mere distraction from the true method of bringing change: jihād fī sabīlillāh. However, there’s no harm in protesting to reduce oppression and grant the Muslims some of their Islāmic rights, or to pave the way for jihād. The Damascus Spring of 1421 AH led to the release of some “Islāmist” prisoners, and the Arab Spring led to jihād in Libya and Syria. It also eased the situation of “Islāmists” in Egypt and Tunisia. Oppressive governments likely won’t heed the demands of protesters, but unheeded demands can lead to sit-ins that disrupt the functioning of day-to-day life, which leads to increasing frustration and resentment towards the government when left undealt. Protests and sit-ins can inspire the rest of the people to also protest, join sit-ins and release their frustration towards the state that they’ve been repressing for so long. This can have a chain effect where protests become transnational, which was what happened during the Arab Spring. This was made possible by protesters sharing their activities online as well as media coverage. “Islāmist” demonstrators can use online and media attention to spread their message. Even if an ongoing revolution doesn’t have an explicitly Islāmic character with a clear Islāmic goal, people can form groups of protesters that do have an Islāmic character and goal. One way of using protests as a form of da`wah Muslims should pay more attention to is organising our protests in a way that reflects the political order we wish to replace the secular state with. Many left-wing protesters in the past organised their demonstrations according to the principles of decentralisation and direct democracy. Muslims can organise their demonstrations following the principles of shūrā. If the state gives in to our demands for minor but still meaningful changes, such as the release of Muslim prisoners, it’ll reduce some of the oppression against the ummah. If it doesn’t and turns to violence to crack down on protesters instead, it could incite the people to take up arms and even perhaps wage jihād against the government. The other effect a violent crackdown on protesters has is increasing the people’s barā’ from the state. If a violent crackdown fails to incite jihād or armed conflict, it would still increase resentment towards the ṭawāghīt in power and fuel a future uprising.

Hard power is the ability to get others to do what you want through threats and coercion. Soft power is the ability to get others to do what you want through other means like attraction, persuasion, or shaping their mentality. Making people in Muslim countries obsessed with professional sports is one of the ways in which the US exercises soft power. Although many famous athletes are not American, many other famous ones are, especially basketball players. These celebrity athletes promote the so-called “American dream”. The US intentionally keeps Muslim countries drowning in socio-economic woes by destabilising them, installing and protecting corrupt and incompetent secularist dictators, exploiting their wealth, labour, and natural resources, pushing them into debt, attacking the value of their currencies, etc. While this is happening, celebrities share their luxurious and “free” lives on social media for millions of Muslims to watch. Furthermore, the US has a monopoly over the supply of sports movies in foreign markets, and getting people to watch these movies by first making them passionate about professional sports is another way of selling the “American dream”. This has the effect of stimulating the migration of wealthy and talented individuals from Muslim countries to the US, strengthening its economy and war effort while draining Muslim countries of the wealth and knowledge they need to compete with “developed” countries and opt out of the state of economic enslavement. This isn’t limited to professional sports, the kuffār also attract immigration through other types of movies, YouTube, music, etc. This is why many anti-Western countries ban Western movies and websites like YouTube, and it’s also why Western countries are so annoyed about it and consider it a violation of “human rights”.

The legitimacy of a democratically elected government is based on it fulfilling its obligation to uphold law and order; if it fails to do this, government officials can be impeached and the ruling party would quickly be voted out of power in the next election. This is why any democratic “Islāmist” party that forms a government would either have to wage war on Islām and its people or lose power and legitimacy. If an “Islāmist” government is formed and it allows other “Islāmists” to form gatherings and give da`wah, they would inspire enthusiastic Muslims to establish Islāmic emirates rule by sharī`ah in rural areas, attack the security and military apparatuses of the state, disrupt the functioning of secular universities, spill wine in bars and liquor stores, perform sit-ins, etc. These are all acts that are legitimate under sharī`ah but directly oppose the law of secular democratic states, which means that an “Islāmist” government of a secular democratic state is obligated to crack down on them. Failure to do so entails the delegitimisation of the government and its swift removal. The governments of Muḥammad Mursī in Egypt and an-Nahḍah in Tunisia faced a lot of legitimacy problems precisely because of their lack of action against “Islāmists” who were enjoining good and forbidding evil from an Islāmic perspective. The delegitimisation of these governments from a democratic perspective was a huge part of what led to them losing power.

Many Muslims have a problem with resistance and revolution because they are mainly associated with leftist ideologies and denote a cause to be “liberated” from established institutions, norms, and values. I can see where they’re coming from, but such an understanding of resistance and revolution has to be challenged because resistance and revolution are only tied to rebellion against established institutions, norms, and values in certain (mostly European) contexts. In the Islāmic world, resistance and revolution were and still are often tied to efforts to rebel against an authority that tries to impose institutions, norms, and values that are contrary to traditional institutions, norms, and values that have been established in society for centuries.

‎Ibn Qudāmah al-Maqdisī رحمه الله said: ‎“The responsibility of jihād rests on the discretion of the imām (i.e. leader of the Muslims). Thus his flock (i.e. the Muslims he is responsible for) should obey him in whatever his opinion is regarding this issue [of jihād] […]. However, if the imām is absent the jihād is not subject to delay, as its benefits will be lost with postponement. [In such an eventuality] if ghanīmah is taken, it should be distributed in accordance with the sharī`ah.” ‎📚 Al-Mughnī, 9/202

When you speak to liberals and secularists, it’s usual to hear them appeal to “common sense” in order to justify their positions. What it basically means is that the values they’re arguing for are almost unanimously accepted by secular liberal society and they can’t conceive the idea that someone could argue against them. Developing this sort of uniformity in values is ironically necessary in a democracy, which is supposedly based on political pluralism. A democratic government consists of different political parties with different ideologies, so passing laws and policies is often a long and difficult process that requires many compromises and creates a lot of social tension. If democracy was genuinely pluralistic, this process would be even more inefficient and unstable. To make things more efficient and stable, the democratic state has to build a level of ideological uniformity among politicians and the people of society at large while at the same time creating an illusion of political pluralism. This is done by state legislation and policies increasing state control over formal education, health services, and other institutions that can be used to ideologically influence the people. For example, government control over social welfare makes the people more likely to support the ruling party and its ideology. Once a government has influenced the vast majority of the people to accept certain ideological values, it can claim that these values are fundamental values of the society it governs that cannot be violated by even democratic decision-making. It justifies this by saying these values represent “the will of the people”. For example, the constitution of a democratic state may claim that democracy itself is a core value of the society it presides over and that any individual or party that opposes democracy needs to be excluded from the democratic process, as they violate this state-manufactured “will of the people”. In the United States, one of the “fundamental values” that cannot be opposed by any democratic decision-making is freedom of speech, which is enshrined in the US Constitution. The constitution of a democratic state is often the document that determines which values are to be considered fundamental values that cannot be opposed even by democratic choice.

Along with attacking the value of our currencies and imposing neocolonial policies on us, the kuffār prop up oppressive, corrupt, and incompetent dictators in Muslim countries so that they can keep us perpetually weak and dependent on them. The oppression of these dictators destabilises Muslim countries by increasing and radicalising political opposition, and their corruption and incompetence lead to economic hardship that encourages people to migrate to the West if have the opportunity to. The people who can afford to leave aren’t only rich people but also talented people recruited from schools by offering them scholarships. By the time they’ve finished their studies in the West, they can find employment opportunities there that they would take because life in their own countries has become so unbearable. This has a double effect: it 1) raises production and consumption in the West and increases government revenue by generating more taxes, and 2) drains Muslim countries of rich and talented people who could’ve benefited their own countries’ economies and people. Raising production and consumption levels in the West increases its ideological influence and soft power in Muslim countries, because people living under the liberal world order associate success and good governance with material prosperity and economic “development”. This is crucial for their war effort against Islām, Muslims, and the mujāhidīn, especially when an Islāmic insurgency relies on popular support for success. Western governments use the new taxes they’ve generated to increase their military spending and promote kufr Muslim lands. They also use them to implement more social welfare programs, which further increases their soft power and makes living in the West even more attractive to people from Muslim countries. Now I have two questions: 1. When propping up these dictators is so crucial to maintaining the neocolonial relationship Muslim countries have with the kuffār, can we really say obeying them is necessary to preserve the five things the sharī`ah has come to protect (dīn, life, `aql, lineage/honour, and wealth)? 2. When encouraging immigration to the West is so crucial to not only maintaining the aforementioned neocolonial relationship but also the war on Islām and Muslims, can we really say living there is permissible even if Muslims “can manifest their religion”?