Yasir Qadhi – The Seven Crises that Muslims in the West Face
AI: Summary ©
The speakers discuss issues of culture and faith in the western world, including the rise of "igrappling" groups and the cultural clash between their culture and grandparents'. They emphasize the need to reestablish the legacy of the old school culture and acknowledge the complexity of modernity. The speakers also touch on issues of attrition rates among faith communities and the crisis of Muslims embracing othertheology. They emphasize the importance of personal identity and integrating one's identity into reality, as well as the need for a "monster" culture. The upcoming series of introductory lectures and discussions will focus on modern conversations and issues, including the "monster" culture.
AI: Summary ©
So now we get to the second brief
topic, and that is, what are these radical
changes that are impacting us, and what are
the areas that we as Muslims are having
to grapple with in light of all of
these changes?
Because we have a different set of changes,
not only are we grappling with the same
changes Catholics and Protestants and religious observant Jewish
folks are grappling with, we have our own
unique set of challenges living in the West
as well.
For Muslims living in the West, all of
these changes have come crashing onto our heads,
or to be more precise, you guys have
been born into the equivalent of tsunamis and
tidal waves and multiple whirlpools crashing all around
you, while your parents and your community expects
you to remain absolutely dry.
It's not your fault, there are so many
battles going on, tidal waves coming, and these
issues, it's not your fault, you weren't born,
you didn't choose to be born in this
era, but this is Allah's test on us,
that we have to deal with these changes
of a cataclysmic nature.
And so, what are some of the areas
that we are grappling with as a Muslim
community?
Today I'm going to demarcate seven large areas,
and this is not a comprehensive list, but
it is a template for where our class
is heading.
It's going to be a broad idea of
some of the concepts that we're going to
grapple with throughout the rest of these series
of classes.
So, I'm going to begin with two that
I call internal identity crises.
So, the first two are internal crises, not
necessarily dealing with external issues right now.
The first two are internal identity crises.
I'm going to list seven of them.
So, number one, one of the issues we
have to face with
being born and
raised in the West, is we are exposed
to almost 14 centuries of theological and legal
controversies the minute we walk into our mosques.
What I want you to realize is that
you all, by merely walking around this room
and talking to people, by merely logging onto
YouTube and listening to 5, 10, 20 Islamic
preachers and lecturers, by merely going mosque to
mosque and speaking to the people at those
mosques, you all are introduced to a more
diverse group of Muslims in a week or
in an hour on YouTube than your great
-grandfathers would have been exposed to in an
entire lifetime.
Let that sink in.
Your great-grandfathers, in all likelihood, had no
idea of the diversity of the faith internally.
They had no idea of the sheer spectrum
of ideas, controversies, theologies, madhhabs, firqahs, trends.
They were born, they were raised, they died
in one locality, and at max there were
two or three little different firqahs out there.
Each one of them is culturally, you know,
in its own little bubble, and that's about
it.
And yet, the average Muslim amongst you is
exposed to not just the current, but the
classical, and the ones all over the world.
As I said, you are exposed to a
greater diversity in a few hours online than
most of our great-grandfathers would have been
exposed to in an entire lifetime.
So you have to get up-to-date
as soon as possible.
You have to understand an entire myriad of
information, and that's not even beginning modernity.
We're talking about yesterday's controversies.
So, updating the old.
This is the first issue.
Navigating classical.
Navigating sectarianism.
Navigating the various trends of the ummah that
we're all familiar with in this part of
the world.
And also realize, here in the West as
well, we are exposed much more than in
the East, even though modernity has introduced us
to the East as well.
Yet still, by and large, in Muslim-majority
countries, by and large, the trends are a
little bit less.
Whereas in Muslim-minority countries, because we all
mix in the same mosque, because all of
us ethnically and socially and culturally and politically
all come together, we are exposed to a
vast array, a vast spectrum of Muslims from
around the globe following different interpretations, different shuyukhs,
different scholarships, different trends, much more than the
average cousin of ours back home.
And that's one of the ironies of living
in the West.
So this is the first issue that we
have to deal with.
The second issue, still internally, is that not
just theological, not just spiritual, not just legal,
but we are now grappling with cultural Islam.
The cultural Islam of our parents and the
cultural Islam of the land that we have
been born and raised in.
So not only do we have to deal
with the issue of the spectrum of theology,
the spectrum of law, the spectrum of spirituality,
we also have the reality that there is
a cultural clash that is infused with religion
as well.
Culture is not devoid of religion and religion
is not devoid of culture.
The two are intertwined.
Nowhere in the world does Islam exist except
within a culture.
That's just the reality.
Nowhere in the world is Islam in a
vacuum.
So in Indonesia, in Malaysia, in Nigeria, in
Pakistan, in Arabia, there are manifestations of Islam
that have taken centuries to evolve and are
conducive to their culture.
Our parents migrated here by and large, and
almost all of us are children of immigrants,
and we're born and raised attached to a
cultural milieu.
And yet at the same time, that culture
is not our culture.
It is the culture of our grandparents.
It is the culture even of our parents.
Yet we are very, very much traversing multiple
cultures.
Almost everybody sitting here is bilingual, trilingual.
Almost everybody sitting here is fully comfortable in
multiple cultures.
And automatically this raises the very awkward question,
what is the cultural Islam?
We don't have to necessarily follow.
What is the manifestation of the cultural Islam?
This isn't theology.
This isn't spirituality.
This isn't law.
This is now cultural Islam.
And we all understand that there's nothing wrong
with cultural manifestations of Islam, but the culture
that I find myself in, or my children's
culture, is not the culture of my parents.
So we have another set of issues to
deal with, and that is rediscovering, or I
should say uncovering, not rediscovering, uncovering what it
means to be a second generation hyphenated Muslim
in America.
Hyphenated Arab American, Desi American, Somali American, we're
all hyphenated American because the irony, as you're
all aware, is that an Arab American and
a Desi American share more in common, in
spite of the fact that their parents are
from opposite cultures, than they do with their
first cousins back home.
Egyptian American and a Pakistani American born and
raised here have a greater rapport.
They have a shared heritage.
They have a shared inside jokes.
They have a shared cultural understanding that is
more at home amongst each other than they
do with their biological cousins back home.
And that is because we have a unique
hyphenated Islamic culture that is being created as
we quite literally live in this generation.
So that's a second issue that we have
to grapple with.
And this is a live issue, but it
is still internal.
It is being created, it is happening, it
is a discourse, and we are the ones
in charge of it.
So we have to embrace it, but with
wisdom and knowledge.
So that is a second set of issues
we have to deal with.
So the first, as we said, is the
old school stuff, and that's internal.
The second is new school internal.
Is that clear, right?
The first is old school internal, the second
is new school internal, because that's what we're
dealing with right now.
Now we move on to the next seven
issues, right?
The next issues, number three and number four.
Number three and number four are external faith
-based, not internal.
Number one and two is internal.
I hope you're following, guys.
Number one and two is internal faith-based,
number three and four is external faith-based.
So the third set of issues, and remember,
all of these seven issues, we're going to
come back to them throughout the course of
this class, inshaAllah ta'ala, that's the whole
point of this class.
The third set of issues, and each one
of these issues has multiple areas underneath it,
is the reality of dealing with the loss
of religious identity in the modern world.
And this is something we share with every
other mainstream faith out there.
The Catholics, the Mormons, the Protestants, the Buddhists,
the Hindus, the Jewish, every single religion out
there, they are facing an attrition rate amongst
their youth, without exception.
There's not a single exception to this rule,
by the way.
Every single faith community in the Western world
is facing attrition.
Not a single one of them has more
youth embracing their faith than the elders.
Every one of them is facing a crisis.
Now, it is said, and I hope this
is true, that our rate of attrition is
less than other faiths.
InshaAllah, I hope it is true.
Anecdotally, it might be true, but we are
still facing an attrition.
We're still facing the loss of faith.
According to one survey done by a leading
institute, up to 20% of people born
to Muslim families in this country did not
identify as Muslim when they reached adulthood.
Now, this is a survey.
As you're all aware, surveys have their pros
and cons and their ups and downs and
whatnot, and perhaps that might be a little
bit skewed or exaggerated, but it is a
frightening statistic nonetheless.
One out of five, and also, anecdotally, I
don't think it might be too far from
the truth, because we, when we're within our
mosque communities, we feel validated, but when you
go to the outside world, when you work
in corporate America, when you teach in academia,
you actually come across a lot of cultural
Muslims.
You come across a lot more people who
were born into Muslim families and really, by
and large, don't identify or nominally identify as
Muslim, and so that is definitely a major
issue here, that we're having crises of faith.
This is the third issue out of the
seven.
Is religion real?
Does God exist?
Is my faith true?
Is my faith the one and true faith?
Or is there another faith out there?
Again, anecdotally, we as Muslims don't have a
problem, by and large, of losing our faith
for another faith, which is not the case
in other faith traditions.
We have a problem of simply losing faith,
i.e., in many other faith traditions, one
finds a good percentage of their youth leave
the faith, and another good percentage find another
faith, whereas for us, apparently, statistics seem to
indicate that, by and large, we do not
have any crises of people embracing other faiths
en masse.
Rather, we do have a crisis of Muslims
just abandoning the faith, becoming agnostic, or just
not believing.
And so, for us, it's not a question
of, is my religion the right one, or
is another religion the right one?
For us, meaning for us Muslims in the
Western world, the question is, does God exist,
meaning my God?
Is religion true, meaning my religion?
And that is a question that I'm sure
many of you are also familiar with people
who are grappling with the same issue.
So this is the third category of issues
that modernization and secularization has brought to our
table.
The fourth is not necessarily doubting the essence
of the faith, but doubting aspects of the
faith, which then leads to doubting the faith
itself.
In other words, the fourth issue, and we're
going to spend quite a lot of time
in this one over the course of, inshallah,
our classes eventually, the fourth issue is attempting
to reconcile modern notions of virtue, and modern
notions of ethics, and modern notions of morality,
with the notions that stem from our own
faith.
There seems to be irreconcilable differences between what
we are taught is virtue, what we are
taught is correct, what we are taught is
noble, versus interpretations of our faith.
And this leads to an entire spectrum of
activism, from rejecting the faith, to radically reinterpreting,
to claiming that the truth of the faith
has not yet been understood until this new
idea comes, to an embrace of fundamentalism.
And a whole bunch of spectrums in between.
And in fact, I've spoken about this in
quite a lot of detail, and I've categorized
like eight or nine different spectrums on this
issue of trying to reconcile something that is
perceived to be true, from a virtue standpoint,
from an ethical standpoint, with the faith.
How does one do so?
And this is where gender, gender issues, gender
roles, sexuality, jihad, war, peace, prophetic ideals, incidents
in the seerah, Qur'anic verses, Qur'anic
commandments, all of this comes under category number
four, where there are notions in the Qur
'an, there are verses in the Qur'an,
there are incidents in the seerah, there are
Islamic commandments, there are Islamic prescripts, there are
Islamic ideals, that at face value, prima facie,
appear to be completely at odds with modern
sensibilities, right?
What does one do with this?
Again, there's an entire spectrum, and so many
areas over here, but again, this is I
would say the fourth area, because again, so
the third is basically, is religion true?
Is God existing or not?
And the fourth is kind of sort of
similar, but you're not beginning with the premise
is God true or not?
It's like, well, if Islam is true, how
could Islam teach this, right?
So there's, you could put three and four
together, and that's technically okay to do, but
we're going to separate them because they really
are slightly different areas.
So the fourth, as we said, is external
faith based ethics issue.
The third is external faith based existential issue.
Does God exist?
Is religion true?
Do we need religion?
So that's the third and the fourth area.
Then the final three, fifth, sixth, and seventh
are sociopolitical arenas of dispute.
Number five, the fifth area where Muslims in
the West are grappling with is identity, integration,
and assimilation.
What does it mean to be a Muslim
in the modern world?
To what extent does my faith, my culture,
my value allow me to integrate?
And what does integration imply?
What does it mean?
To what extent am I even allowed to
assimilate?
Where do I draw the line?
What level of independence must I retain?
So these are aspects of personal identity vis
-a-vis the broader world that we live
in.
This is number five.
Number six, one of the issues that we
have to navigate in our generation is the
reality of Islamophobia.
And this is something that your generation in
particular, you have been born into.
You have to realize I wasn't born into
that generation at all.
I didn't understand.
There was no such thing by and large.
Islamophobia, I was born in the 70s.
Remember, Islamophobia by and large began post 9
-11.
Like, yeah, sure, there were some minor things
here and there, but Muslims, Islam was so
exotic.
It was, most people never heard of us.
They never knew who we were.
And we could act, talk, dress as exotic
as we wanted.
In my fundamentalist years, and I lived many
fundamentalist years, which I don't regret at all.
In my fundamentalist years, I would dress completely
in an Islamic garb in the airport and
whatnot, and not a single person even looked
at me as a second glance.
It was completely the norm, right?
Immediately after 9-11, everything changed.
You could do and talk and say and
get away with so much more because Islamophobia
as a concept really was not, it was
not something that I was ever exposed to.
Of course, there were minor incidents here and
there, but that's just common racism, if you
like, not quite Islamophobia.
But the Islamophobic industry, the rise of an
entire complex of Islamophobia as a political tactic
and tool, the very fact that presidential candidates
are both invoking our religion and mentioning Islam
and Muslims, and they're bringing Muslims on stage.
This is unprecedented, and it's not just in
America, across the Western globe as well.
And so, your identities in particular, you are
being shaped, whether you know it or not,
by reacting to Islamophobia.
And you have to be very careful that
your identities transcend reactionary stereotypes.
You can't afford to base your identity on
a reaction to Islamophobia.
It has to be more than that, right?
So, navigating the complex reality of Islamophobia and
how one does that, this is the sixth
category we're going to have to discuss as
well.
And the seventh and final one, and remember
this list is not exhaustive, the seventh and
final one is the one that is the
most pressing right now as we see what's
happening in the world.
And that is balancing our political and religious
loyalties, being a citizen of this country, while
being a part of the Ummah.
What does it mean to be an American,
born and raised here, carrying an American blue
passport, paying taxes, and frankly, enjoying the freedoms
of this country?
What does it mean to flout that passport
at every foreign airport?
What does it mean to puff up with
pride and anger when somebody dares disrespect you
in another country and say, I'm an American?
And yet, your country and my country is
engaged in a genocide.
We are doing in Gaza and across the
world what we are all aware of what
we are doing.
How does one balance those two identities?
That's a very difficult and complex topic as
well.
And this is not the first time we
had to do this multiple times.
I mean, this is reiteration, post 9-11,
multiple times this has happened, right?
So, you guys are like the third iteration
now, but this was, you know, right after
9-11 was one of the first topics
like this came, can you serve in the
military?
You know, that was the first fatwa that
Ghordawi and others had to answer post 9
-11, like an American serviceman asked the fiqh
councils of the world, what do I do?
I'm a conscripted serviceman.
Am I allowed to go?
Am I allowed to do that?
What not?
So, that began back then.
And we're still dealing with this reality to
this day.
So, these are topics that, again, inshaAllah ta
'ala, we will discuss.
So, given the changes that have taken place,
given the seven areas that are directly impacting
us, clearly, there is a need for a
place to discuss all of these ideas in
light of these changes, while we retain our
authentic Islamic identity, and hence this class and
the idea of lighthouse.
Just like a lighthouse warns you of dangers
and provides a safe passage, the goal here,
inshaAllah ta'ala, is that this class will
point out the dangers.
Sometimes we can't necessarily save you because you're
the ship, you're the one in charge.
We're just pointing out, hey, careful, beware of
this, right?
And this is where we come to the
awkward reality.
And I'm telling you from now, don't think
I have solved all of these problems.
If that is your attitude, if that is
your conception, then I will, you know, disavow
you of that from the get-go.
I am in this just as much as
you are.
I might be a little bit older than
you, okay, maybe a little bit more well
-read than you, okay.
But these are problems of our generation.
They haven't been solved.
They have not categorically been solved.
Sure, discussions have taken place.
Sure, there are a number of, you know,
various views out there.
But the discussions are too nascent.
They're too new to have formed definitive orthodoxies.
And we are battling with this as we
speak.
And so today's introductory talk was really meant
to introduce you to the concept, the need,
and the idea, and to underscore that this
series, insha'Allah ta'ala, will be a
series that focuses on modern issues for a
modern audience.
I am not interested in this particular series
in a traditional halaqah.
There's nothing wrong with traditional halaqah because that
has its place as well.
I've been through my seminary education and there
is a need and a time and a
place for seminary discussion.
However, me personally, for this series, I am
far more interested in the topics that are
being discussed in the cafes and in the
university lounges rather than in the seminaries around
the world.
I'm more interested in discussing what is of
actual relevance to the average Muslim who hasn't
gone through a trained program.
That is a different time and a place.
And so the goal of this series is
to tap into modern struggles, modern conversations, modern
controversies, so that insha'Allah ta'ala, collectively,
we can attempt to carve out a lighthouse,
attempt to carve out a safe passage, and
try insha'Allah ta'ala to at least
form a better understanding of the world that
we live in.
Now, the format of this series is going
to be somewhat different than other traditional halaqahs
or even classes that I've given.
My goal after today, actually, because today was
an exceptional introduction, and the goal will be
that we send out every single week the
topic, the broad topic of the upcoming week,
and I want you all to do your
own research.
I want you all to introduce to me
thinkers and ideas that I might not be
aware of, concepts and controversies, because, again, this
is a vast field.
We're all in this together, and I have
no doubt that some of you have read
much more than I have in every single
niche and area.
So, collectively, let's come together.
Every time the topic is announced, feel free
to do your own research, introduce your fellow
students to various ideas and figures and personas,
and we're going to come, have a discussion,
and then insha'Allah open the floor for
dialogue.
After I give a brief talk, maybe half
the time will be me speaking, the other
half is going to be collectively sharing our
wisdom.
Now, how we're going to share that wisdom,
Mustafa and others are going to figure out,
because we have, masha'Allah, a lot of
people here.
We have to figure out how to cull
all of that, insha'Allah ta'ala.