Minute with a Muslim #197 – Islam In Secular vs. Non-Secular Countries

Some people, you know, they wonder why sometimes you'll go to a Muslim majority country and you don't see many people practicing, but then you go to, quote unquote, secular country and then you see, you know, like there are Muslims there that are, you know, really holding on to the faith. And actually, some people who are secularists will try to rub this in our face and say, like, oh, look, you know, you can practice your religion freely here, like secularism is the best thing. First of all, I'm misunderstanding secularism, every country in the world right now is a secular country, right? Don't be fooled just that some countries instrumentalized the religion for their own

purposes, right. Like, there is no such thing as a place where, you know, Allah's guidance is the top and if the state needs to go away, you know, because we deem it illegitimate, then it's gone. Now, every single country in the world right now, on the face of the earth is a secular country, some of them use religion for their own purposes, for to a greater or lesser extent, or declare one religion to be the official religion, again, their version, their interpretation of that religion, right? That's actually a secular move. But what you are sensing and what you're observing is the role that culture has to play and the role of intentionality. Because when it comes to being a

Muslim, in a place where the culture is generally sort of a Muslim culture, it's something that's inherited, and it's not something that you take very seriously. But talking in generalities, of course, right. Whereas if you come to a place where the predominant culture is, has many features of it, that's against your faith or against the slab, then one of two things is going to happen, either you're going to be completely assimilated, and you're going to just become not recognizable anymore, as a Muslim, you're going to basically leave the religion, or you're going to rediscover the value of your faith, and you're going to now choose it as something that is yours, and you're going to

take ownership of it, and you're going to make it yours. And that's why sometimes, you know, despite all of our flaws and setbacks, and shortcomings in the West, we have some beautiful things that happen. You know, we have some people here, and there are Muslims that come from from abroad that say, you know, I felt like my faith was stronger, you know, in North America, or in the United States or in Europe. Why? Because they there was no event going on, they have to set their alarm, you know, they had to set the, you know, the app on their phone to tell them when the prayer time was and they had no one's telling them to go pray, they have to go pray themselves, they have to

choose it themselves. Right. And so yeah, for the for that small group of people who Allah has favorite with his guidance, you know, the faith is going to mean a lot more. But the overall message is not one about Muslim country, not Muslim country, secularism versus not secularism, that's a misinterpretation of what's going on. It's that you need to choose it and you need to sacrifice for it. That's how faith works, the more that you take ownership of it, and the more that you sacrifice for your faith, the more it's going to mean to you, right? If you make sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice, and then somebody wants you to compromise, you're gonna say no, I'm not going to

compromise. I've already made all these sacrifices, right, somebody who and this is why we see it with Congress, why did Congress have a completely different sort of orientation towards Islam and a lot of other people because a lot of times they have left jobs for Islam, they've left relationships for Islam, they have, you know, endured the insults or the harsh speech, or even abuse from family members because of this decision that they made. So then when somebody you know, tries to ask them to compromise on something within the religion, you think that they're going to compromise it? Of course not. They've already gone through so much and sacrifice so much just to be a Muslim, right?

And so that's what you're observing. You're observing the need to actually an actively sacrifice for your faith.