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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Solutions:

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

*To be contd. in Part 3…

[This article was first published here]

Related:

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

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