بسم الله الرحمان الرحيم

What does ‘coddling’ mean? It means to be overprotective.

This article is a summary of some of my thoughts about the current state of the Western Muslim community. It is inspired by Jonathan Haidt’s book, the Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions & Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. While reading this book, I was surprised by how many of these ideas were manifest in the Muslim community too, albeit in more unique & particular ideas.

In the same vein, I contend that current trends in da’wah & Islamic education in the Western World – especially in North America – although well-intentioned, are setting up the community for failure. I will adjust the three main problems in the book into language & content more applicable for the Muslim community. At the end of each problem, I will suggest what we can do to improve.

‘Only God Can Judge Me’:
The Cult of Self-Esteem

I was recently in a masjid in Canada where I overheard an argument between a masjid administrator & an elderly Muslim uncle. The uncle was upset that the Imam had told him his prayer was likely invalid due to something he did. I heard the uncle say, “Who is he to tell me that my prayer is invalid? That is between me and God!”

Given how well-known it is in fiqh & hadith that certain actions invalidate our prayers (as a very basic example: losing your wudu in prayer), I was quite shocked by this absurd statement. The same fiqh & hadith that teach you how to pray also teach you what breaks your prayer.

It was easy for me to think at that moment that this was an isolated case of a grumpy elderly uncle. But if we are to observe Muslim culture in the West – online & offline today – it is anything but isolated to the elderly.

Many Muslims in the West have become overly sensitive to any criticism of their religious practice or interpretation of what it means to be a good Muslim. The Prophet SAW said, “The religion is sincere advice.” Encouraging others to do good and preventing them from doing evil is a core aspect of Islam, and abandoning it is mentioned in the Qur’an as a characteristic of past nations that were destroyed.

But to advise today is to incite antagonism & resentment. Advising a Muslim man to stop talking about issues of religious controversy they have insufficient knowledge of often invites outcry and complaints about curtailing the freedom to speak their mind. The status of students of knowledge & scholars – which is not just of practical but theological importance, is thrown out the window. The same goes for advising a Muslim woman about her dress or social conduct. The Muslim version of the accusation of ‘mansplaining’ arises, as if Muslim men have no responsibility or obligation to correct issues in society that pertain to women, even their own daughters. The most extreme version of this attitude is when you see homosexual ‘Muslims’ proclaiming the acceptability of their choices and the refusal to accept criticism of their beliefs that contradict the most basic tenets of Islam.

What are the reasons for this? I will discuss three.

The first is obviously the secular teachings & environments we are exposed to & live in. In secularism, religion is a private matter that does not extend to the world outside my house or mosque. Growing up in this environment, we end up believing that our practice of Islam is a personal matter between us and God. If you don’t know what secularism is, and have never lived in a Muslim country, this almost seems intuitive.

In Islamic law, ethics & spirituality though, this has little basis . Yes we will be answerable to Allah on our own for our deeds on the Last Day, but reminding each other, advising each other, correcting each other, and supporting each other to do good and avoid wrong actions is a fundamental part of how an Islamic society is supposed to function. Allah describes the People of the Book, i.e. the Jews & Christians as become cursed because, “They would not forbid each other from evil they used to do. Indeed how evil is what they used to do!” (5:79)

Islam doesn’t stop as soon as you step outside your house or masjid. We see this all the time in masjid parking lots. Stranger prays together, foot to foot, shoulder to shoulder inside, but as soon as the prayer is over we are aggressively cutting off each other in the parking lot and not giving each other space. We attend to our prayers when its time, but then go right back to watching the sinful content of Netflix.

The second is the cult of self-esteem. The culture of self-help books, life coaches, pop psychology and self-serving algorithm-driven social media advice of ‘believing in ourselves’ and ‘self-care’ have overridden the Islamic imperative to be wary of the nafs (self). Instead we have transformed from being wary of the nafs & how it deceives us into evil via our desires and human weaknesses, into celebrating the nafs and obeying it even if it goes against Allah, His Messenger & the consensus of Islamic scholarship. This is the equivalent of worshipping the nafs. The wife of Aziz, who fell prey to her own desires in her attempt to seduce & then false accuse Yusuf AS, when confronted, reproaches herself by saying, “Indeed the self is insistently & ever-commanding to do evil.”

Today we see Muslim men attaching their self-esteem to abhorrent views of women & self-serving interpretations of masculinity. They can’t find their self-worth in being servants of Allah or practical & useful endeavours in life, so they wallow in the shallow & self-destructive world of sectarianism, pointless argumentation, alpha-male/red-pill discourse, and attacking students of knowledge & scholars. This is in addition to video game addiction & the epidemic of pornography. Muslim women on the other hand have boiled down their entire self-worth into the hijab & feminist notions of males being the enemy. Apparently the hijab gives you superpowers, where you can suddenly now talk about Islam & give your opinion on Islamic issues of scholarly import with impunity on social media just because you wear a hijab and have a few thousand followers. Regardless of what the woman thinks, says or does, it is her husband, father or Imam who is the real perpetrator and she is always the victim.

Individualism is counter to the theological, legal & ethical imperative in Islam to be an ummah. Muslims are supposed to be a collective who give a foundation for each other to build on. Social media only amplifies this problem by giving a voice to the ego that we would have never dared to expose in public before the age of the internet.

Self-esteem is also confused with spirituality due to modern Western psychology, which is atheist in spirit. This is contradictory to Islamic spirituality, in which fighting the nafs & struggling on the path of righteousness are fundamentals in the path to Allah.

The third are the two polarized types of da’wah that have become manifest – especially online.

On the one hand we have popular celebrity Shaykhs and Imams whose content & talks are way too conciliatory, overly cautious so as not to invite dissent or criticism. From one angle I can’t blame them. We started with a da’wah in that 90s that was often way too harsh & oblivious to the difficulties of Muslims in the West. Speaking hard truths that upset your congregation can also get you fired in a heartbeat. The other angle however, is that even in spaces or situation where that risk is less present, or the danger of not being outspokenly vocal about the truth becomes too imminent, their da’wah remains overly ‘soft’ and ‘sensitive’. At some point we have to realize that being too lenient with the people is as destructive as being too harsh with them. I can’t remember that last time I saw a series of classes or talks describing Hell, the life of the grave, women being required to obey their husbands, riba being a major sin, or the need to learn Islam before speaking about it. It took way too long for religious leadership to act on ‘Muslim’ figures being advocates for LGBTQ+ views. And yes, there is a way to do all this without becoming a shill like Daniel Haqiqatjou.

On the other hand we have their antagonists, the da’wah warlords on Twitter & Youtube. Their discourse has become all about debates, angry shouting matches, condescending speech, and attacking Shaykhs and Imams from the previous categories, even scholars. For some reason these people thought that because the other group is too soft and lenient, the right approach is to be overly harsh and restrictive. What these guys have done is create a chaotic & savage world of Islamic discourse where the loudest, brashest and most arrogant preacher is the winner. These guys sought to correct the excesses of the first category but ended up creating their own culture of celebrity fandom & echo chambers, except that they usually have a much poorer level of Islamic knowledge than the first.

But let’s face it, these brothers are often addressing issues that celebrity shaykhs and Imams are unable to or afraid to touch. If the right people don’t speak up on issues within their purview, they should not be surprised when the wrong people take up the responsibility instead.

Da’wah & public preaching – the soft & the tough kind – both have their place. The Qur’an balances between reminders about Heaven & Hell. But they should never be two separate camps. Also, if people at this introductory level are not funnelled into more formal learning (not scholarly) that demonstrates the truth-in-between-the-noise in a common-sense & factual way, people will drown in the embattled shallows.

Solutions:

1. We must that thinking that no one can judge us is a judgment in itself on others, in that they are incapable, undeserving or unjustified in their judging of us.
2. We must learn to humble ourselves and accept advice. Its perfectly okay to be wrong, and its perfectly okay to be reminded that we’re wrong by other people, be they the same gender or another. All of us need external accountability. None of us can see or acknowledge all of our faults.
3. Get out of your comfort zone. Too many Muslims only spend time with people who agree with them. Your best friends are not those who agree with everything you say and cater to your ego, but who challenge you and bring you closer to Allah by giving you advice grounded in proper understanding of Islamic ethics & spirituality.
4. We must learn about the importance of encouraging good and forbidding evil in Islam and how Islam is not just a private religion but a public one.
5. We must appreciate the stark difference between ‘believing in ourselves’ vs. ‘believing in Allah’. The Muslim’s sense of self-worth should always be linked to their sense of ubudiyyah, or slavehood to Allah. If we do not ingrain in ourselves that we are slaves to the Creator and must submit to Him, then we will inevitably become slaves to another, even if it be our own nafs.
6. Da’wah needs a reform. Imam and Shaykhs must become more outspoken about uncomfortable truths. If they stay silent about them, then they should not be surprised when others arise to speak about the issues that they don’t address, and criticize them for their silence. Uncomfortable truths are still truths, and if the right people don’t address them, then others will feel the need to stand up for them.

‘Because I Feel Like It’:
The Islam of Emotionalism

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Solution:

1. We must seek Islamic knowledge. I don’t mean Youtube videos and Twitter posts. That is NOT knowledge. That is raw data. Structured knowledge is taken from teachers, well-designed courses and programs. There are many such programs nowadays designed for the public. Many are online. The excuses for not learning due to access or unavailability are not admissible anymore. Either study or acknowledge that you are choosing to remain ignorant and thus leaving your emotions to be the judge of what you believe.
2. Islamic institutions & religious leadership MUST provide fardh-ayn programs, i.e. comprehensive Islamic education programs for the public that provide them the foundations of Islamic theology, fiqh & spirituality that they need to function as Muslims on a daily basis. This has become fardh on these organizations and individuals themselves. Flowery talks with coffee served in the background are NOT a replacement for this. We need more educators, and less speakers. Learn how to educate the public and not just preach to them.
3. Learn to manage your emotions. Override them with the knowledge of right and wrong in Islam. Its easier said than done, but Emotional Intelligence is a concept that is extremely important for Muslims. Unfortunately today due to the political situation in the West this concept has almost been forgotten. As Muslims however we need to rise about this and learn from the emotional intelligence of the Prophet SAW.

‘It’s Them, Not Me’:
Western Muslim Tribalism

Lastly, we come to an ancient problem in the Muslim world, but exacerbated by our social and political circumstances. I remember when I used to naively believe that we Muslims in the West had moved beyond the sectarian squabbles of the majority of ummah back home, but truth be told, I believe we’ve made it much worse here.

We have all the typical sectarian & movement-based differences. We have the Sufi, Salafi, Ash’ari, Taymiyyi, Ikhwani, Tahriri, Deobandi, Barelwi etc issues. But then we have added onto them an entirely new layer unique to our milieu, such as liberal, conservative, feminist, red-pill, Republican, Democrat, pro-voting, anti-voting, male, female etc etc.

The problem is not that these differences exist. It is normal for us to disagree. The problem is that these differences have become tribal and a form of identity politics. We don’t just ‘agree’ with Salafi or Liberal viewpoints, we identify as being part of a community where only that is correct, where we will only ever listen to members of that community, and we will not sit with the others and try to understand their point of view with a blank slate.

We become overly suspicious, angry, skeptical & cynical about the motives & actions of those we disagree with and oppose, interpreting their words and actions in the worst possible way. Our mindset becomes: that our problems as an ummah or Western Muslim community are the fault of the other, not myself or my group.

Example: The celebrity shaykhs are all wrong if I’m on the side of the da’wah brothers on Twitter. OR: The da’wah brothers are all wrong if I’m on the side of the celebrity Shaykhs. What if we’re both wrong and we just need to be communicating better?

Likely the worst of these divisions is the male/female tribalism that has started, as that is not even an intellectual or theological construct, but a very biological and human one. You can live your entire life normally without Sufis or Salafis, but you can’t without a conciliatory perspective towards the opposite gender.

What is the result of this? Instead of identifying as one ummah around a uniting factor like Allah & His Messenger, the Qur’an & Sunnah, the fuqaha & scholars, Ahlus-Sunnah wal-Jama’ah (as understood by scholars, NOT random preachers on the internet), we instead unite on our opposition to a particular group. If we unite in our opposition to X cluster of ideas, what will end up happening then, is that we will abandon, censor or cancel anyone who advocates for or even expresses some sympathy for X. Allah says in the Qur’an, “And hold firmly to the rope of Allah and do not be divided.” Note the language: the rope of Allah, not the rope of the enemies of those you don’t like. If we unite around the Sunnah instead, we will appreciate more that people will differ in their interpretations & methods, and that if they go too far, the solution is NOT to oppose them, but to help them re-center and come back.

It is curious how the Sunnah alludes to this ‘coddling’ as well. The Prophet SAW said, “Let me not find any of your reclining on his bed, and a command or prohibition of mine comes to him, and he says, ‘I don’t know about this, whatever I found in the Qur’an I will follow [only].’”.

All of this is well-intentioned of course. It is all couched in religious language, scholarly terminology, and the quoting of texts. People in this type of thinking (often young people) legitimately think that they are on the truth, as their experiences with ideas & people are limited to whoever they started off with, and the zeal & emotion of youth can prevent them from branching off and speaking to others and sharing their points of view. The older ones doing all this are usually hardened by the harm they have received – whether in the form of losing their job or being slandered etc – from others into becoming more stubborn in their antagonism. The identity-politics environment of the West further fuels this chaotic division. Social media adds to it by reducing the people we disagree with to a picutre and text on a screen, not a real, living, breathing person.

Worst of all, is that this fixation on the problems of the other, and the mistakes of those we oppose blind us and mask us from our own problems & mistakes. The more we are focused on the mistakes of others, the less we are on our own.

I’ve written enough about the technical aspects of some of these conversations on this website, such as the defintion of Ahlus-Sunnah and nature of bid’ah. See them for more details.

Solutions:

1. We must unite around principles instead of opposition to a particular idea or group. Unite around Islam, around the love of Allah, around the Qur’an and Sunnah etc.
2. We must be willing to sit & discuss with those whose views we disagree with to understand their point of view, and if possible reconcile with them. This means we have to get off the internet and actually meet people who we disagree with to see the ‘human-ness’ of our opponents first.
3. Keep in mind that there are some viewpoints that do not deserve reconciliation and understanding, such as those that violate scholarly consensus and what is known in the religion by necessity.
4. If you check the articles I’ve written on Ahlus-Sunnah & Bid’ah, you will realize that knowledge once again is important in this issue. The more you learn about Islam, and the diversity of scholarly views in Islamic history, the more tolerant you will become of differences of opinion with the ummah, especially when you understand the process of ikhtilaf and how it occurs in the first place.

Conclusion

Most of these problems are byproducts of the local culture, gender wars and political division affecting us too. It is difficult to see how we could en-mass disassociate from such attitudes. But I think a lot of it is also stems from problems unique to the Muslim community.

At times I feel despair, in that the only way this will resolve is if some calamitous event(s) shake us so hard that we realize how badly we need each other. Sadly, this seems to have happened already with the genocide in Gaza. Allah will continue to rectify this ummah until the sun rises from East, even if it refuses to do it itself.

But should we need to be shaken and tossed around like this to wake up? Should we suffer to learn that we are too self-centered, that Islam is going to need much more from us than emotional placation, or that our deep divisions work against us? No. We can do better inshaAllah.