Ikram Hawramani's Blog, page 27

Hijabis, Niqabis, and Religious Liberties in the Secular State

When I was fourteen, my new geometry teacher paused while taking attendance on the first day of class to inform me that she didn’t allow hats in the classroom. “We’ll have to do something about that,” she added, referring to my headscarf.

Sitting at my desk in the back, I gaped like she’d slapped me, while she easily moved onto the next student. “Did you hear her?” I asked my seatmates indignantly, but I guess they chose not to hear me either, because none of them reacted, and class went on that day like math was all that mattered. The teacher ultimately decided to make me write an essay about why I wear the hijab to prove my commitment. Apparently dressing like a nun every day at my public high school wasn’t commitment enough.

I’ve been wearing the hijab since age eleven, a personal decision that took me a lot of pleading my parents to get permission to make at such a young age, and since age eleven, I have been exposed to the overwhelming extent of misunderstanding folks in the West have about the hijab. For the past fourteen years, I’ve had friends express their disapproval of the way I dress, men yell at me on the streets of Boston at night, and somehow worst of all, fellow Muslims completely miss the point of the hijab as they speak out or strive against it in a misguided attempt to assimilate into the West.

Still, my experiences as a hijabi in America have been largely positive, alhamdulillah; for every unpleasant confrontation, I’ve been blessed with so many supportive friends, strangers, and fellow sisters and brothers in Islam. I have also been afforded that great Islamic privilege that is the purpose of the hijab: control over my body and image, the reclaiming of my worth from the objectifying gaze of entitled men, that essential empowerment that modesty offers women. And as grateful as I am for my hijab, I am grateful I live in a place where people are open-minded enough to accept my uncommon attire, where I can talk about it and be met with respect and even enthusiasm. As problematic as the American government’s treatment of Muslims has been, there could be more hostile places for a Muslim to call home.

Places like Quebec.

As the daughter of Iraqi immigrants and as a Muslim woman who has grown up in America during the War on Terror, I believe pressuring minorities to assimilate is a form of cultural oppression, and in light of Quebec’s recent ruling to ban various public servants from wearing “religious symbols,” I feel compelled to attempt yet again, as has been my life’s work, to fight for the beautiful philosophy that is the hijab.

*

Let’s examine the ruling in question, the so-called “religious symbols” ban that clearly targets hijabis, of whom there are many in Quebec. Bill 21 was passed on June 17 in an effort to “respect the secularity of the state,” and it applies to a variety of government employees from teachers to police officers. The separation of church and state is meant to prevent the government from enforcing religious laws within a population of diverse beliefs; ironically, preventing citizens employed by the state from practicing their own faith achieves essentially the opposite, as it is literally the forceful imposition of legislators’ beliefs on their citizens. Of course, secularism is in itself a belief, and any stance, when imposed on individuals, becomes an authoritarian one. Since the bill impacts the ability of individuals to practice their religion, it would seem that the interpretation of a secular state according to the government of Quebec is not merely a state that is not associated with any religion, but rather a state whose employees are not associated with any religion. This refusal to distinguish between the state and the people who work for it is at the heart of the controversy. It’s the source of the human rights violation.

Beyond the flawed premise of the bill, it’s also important to push back against its categorization of the hijab as a religious symbol on par with a cross. I sometimes like to wear a pendant around my neck that has an Arabic inscription of God’s name. This piece of religious jewelry could be considered the Muslim version of wearing a Christian cross; the hijab, however, is not. For legislators to place the hijab into the same category as a cross necklace is unacceptably ignorant or else dismissive of the hijab, which Islam requires every woman to wear.

Though I think even banning a cross necklace is too restrictive on an individual’s personal freedoms, I would remove my pendant, a mere accessory, with no issue if I really had to, but my hijab? I’d sooner die. Since the hijab is part of a Muslim woman’s modesty, asking her to take it off is not unlike asking a woman to disrobe; in fact, it is exactly that. While the hijab is indeed a visible indicator of a woman’s Islam, classifying it as a religious symbol is as reductive as referring to a five-star meal as edible. The hijab is the essence of many Muslim women’s approach to life, and to not allow them to wear one at work is to put them out of a job.

But horrifyingly enough, we have yet to discuss an even more loathsome aspect of Bill 21: the denial of public services for people wearing face coverings. Under this increasingly appalling new ruling, Muslim women wearing the niqab are no longer entitled to receive health care or use public transportation. The inability to regard women as worthy of such basic human rights unless they can be seen has a disturbing implication: they are only worth as much as their appearance. Admittedly, a covered face makes a person harder to identify, and the government justifies the niqab ban for security purposes, but I’ve witnessed niqabis at the airport lifting up their face covering for officers with no problem. The manner and extent to which they are singled out in this bill is an evident display of French Canadian officials’ distaste for the cloth. No doubt many supporters of the bill, owing to their ignorance of a widely misunderstood topic, consider the niqab to be an affront to feminism. But legislation enforcing a dress code upon a woman’s life is about as anti-feminist as a law can get, and it’s a delusional man who believes that threatening to withhold a woman’s rights and quarantining from society any woman who doesn’t dress to his approval could ever be framed as feminist.

The part of the bill about niqabis is additionally disturbing because it extends the application of its extremist secular policies from public servants to civilians, so the already paper thin argument that the bill is simply enacting the separation of church and state falls apart altogether, as civilians by no stretch of the imagination represent the state. The concept of the separation of church and state exists not to make practicing one’s faith illegal or impossible, but to prevent faith from getting involved in legislation, which citizens are compelled to follow. Well, the legislators of Quebec clearly have a belief system of their own, one they have no qualms about threading through their laws to suppress the civilians with whom they disagree. If the ban of “religious symbols” wasn’t obvious enough, the face covering rule speaks louder than diplomatic wording ever could: Bill 21 is nothing short of a big “screw you” from the Canadian government to its Muslim citizens.

*

We shouldn’t have to explain ourselves or justify what we wear to get “permission” for doing so, yet here we are. It’s a familiar disappointment, but to Muslims reading these words and to minorities in general and those who stand with us, I say: don’t mind the hateful. Aim for the ignorant, and let peaceful, informative outreach be your weapon. Recently, I found the letter I’d written over ten years ago for my geometry teacher, simply titled “My Reasons”:

“[Teacher], I don’t wear my head covering to be cool or rebellious. I don’t wear it because somebody ordered me to. I don’t wear it to be different or to stand out. I wear my veil because God asks this of me…

I would like to be valued for more than just my beauty. I’ve found that [when I cover up], the part of me that people remember and enjoy is my talkativeness (sometimes that bothers them, though), my sense of humor, my intelligence, my kindness, and other positive assets I possess…

Please understand that I don’t mean to be rude when I say that I will take my veil off for no one. And my intentions are pure. It’s not like I wear it because it’s the latest fashion. I used to have nightmares of showing up at school naked… But soon after the start of sixth grade I began to have nightmares of being at school without my veil. Those silly bad dreams actually mean a lot to me now, since they are a sign that wearing a hijab has become a part of me.”

After I turned in my essay, my teacher didn’t give me any more trouble. I realize the government of Quebec is a steeper mountain to summit. My sisters, I ask Allah to grant you the strength to overcome the bullies who wield temporary authority over you. May you never have to compromise, or choose between your faith and your livelihood. But if you do, then above all else, I pray you never feel compelled to remove your hijab, that you wear it proudly, and that more of you put it on as a result of this ruling, just as the Christchurch shooter whose goal was to spread hate lead so many to convert to Islam. I write these words lovingly, from a Muslim woman to the West, the only world I’ve known as home: stop telling us how to dress. Don’t waste your breath.

On fearing loss of faith in a non-Muslim country

Assalamualaykum. I’m a bit worried now. I’m applying for an internship in a non-muslim country. Even I already lived there for a year, but the worries still there. It’s all about how can I survive as a Muslim in a secular society who tend to think logically about everything. I used to hear a question like, why you and your friend have a different way to practice Islam? She doesn’t wear hijab but you do. Etc I lost my words to explain. I also don’t want to judge anyone tho. Do u have any advice?

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

Throughout life we get thousands of chances to become misguided, and thousands of chances to go back to Islam and hold firm to it. So if your heart is pure and if you constantly ask God for guidance, then He will guide you. There is no need to worry about suddenly becoming cut off from Islam. That does not happen. When someone is distanced from Islam, it is because they chose that again and again for years on end.

If you have trouble answering some questions about Islam, simply increase your knowledge by reading more. Research the topics people ask you about so that you can answer them next time.

There is nothing dangerous to Islam about people thinking logically. I am an extreme rationalist, empiricist and skeptic myself, I constantly question things, and since my childhood I have never had a servile respect for figures of authority. If Islam is truly from God then it must stand up to all criticisms and all challenges. And that is why I continue to hold on to Islam. I have read more science books than most atheists. My favorite novelist is Terry Pratchett, an atheist, and I have read 40 novels by him, and I continue to be completely devoted to Islam.

So increase your knowledge, and realize that God does not abandon the believer. Whenever something troubles you, ask God for guidance and He will guide you one way or another.

And when My servants ask you about Me, I Am near; I answer the call of the caller when he calls on Me. So let them answer Me, and have faith in Me, that they may be rightly guided. (The Quran, verse 2:186)

And your Lord has said, “Call on Me, and I will respond to you.” (From the Quran, verse 40:60)

Best wishes.

Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy (Book Review)

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Jonathan A. C. Brown is a well-known American scholar of Islamic Studies, who is currently an associate professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

He has written several books, related to Islam: Slavery in Islam, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World, Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction, The Canonization of al-Bukhari and Muslim, and Misquoting Muhammad: The Challenge and Choices of Interpreting the Prophet’s Legacy (Oneworld Publications, 2014), which is the subject of the present article.

The book tries to explain in a simple way the rich intellectual legacy of Islam. Although he focuses more in the Sunni tradition, as being an Islamic majority that possesses a wide variety of sources and explanations for those interested to study it, he was still able to mention the view from other groups like Shias and Sufis.

Brown recounts history: from traditional scholars scattered throughout the Muslims shortly after the demise of the Prophet Muhammad PBUH, to recent events, like the coup d’etat that took place in Egypt in 2011.
He also focuses on the main controversial aspects of Islam by discussing how they originated and providing enough material to ponder their doubted or criticized validity:

MartyrdomWomen as rulers of statesThe sources of knowledge on which laws are basedHadiths, their importance for interpreting the Quran and their chains of narratorsThe origin of the madhabs or schools of thoughtReason as a source of knowledgeThe Quran as a revelation from God compared with other monotheistic scripturesThe relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, including the often cited and controversial verse of the Quran that supposedly allows the killing of unbelieversJihadMarriage with small girlsThe conflict between Sunni and Shiite IslamHonor killingsThe death penalty for apostasyFabrications by people and the manipulation of scripture to attain personal goals that are in no way related to the true objective of the religion.

The author explores these controversies from many points of view without leaving a school of thought aside, and even includes a Western perspective in each of them.

The comparison and contrast between the Quran and the Bible gives a hint to the reader of the manipulations involved with this issue; religion is subjected to the interests of those in power, who can change, add, or hide things if needed to make “legal” their actions. The Ottoman empire is an example of this, where certain rules pretended to legalize things explicitly forbidden in Islam like drinking alcohol, and even promiscuous behavior. In Christianity, this has been evidenced as well, when the Roman Catholic Church removed books from the Old Testament, and the surprising fact that the concept of the Trinity was not mentioned in the original versions of the Books of the Bible.

The most controversial section is in chapter 4, “Sex with little girls: interpreting scripture amid changing norms,” that deals with one of the most difficult topic in Islam to deal with, even for Muslim scholars: the marriage of the Prophet Muhammad SAWS when he was 50 years old to Aisha, who was said to be approximately 10 years old. The author, to explain this issue, mentions that economic difficulties inflict this type of marriage, taking into account, at the same time, that it is not widely accepted in Muslim countries. Sometimes this type of marriages can also be found around the world without having the same harsh media coverage that has existed regarding the Muslim case. Countries like India, the United Kingdom, and even in the USA, “in some US states, such as Georgia, the legal age of consent for woman was as low as ten well into the twentieth century.”

It should be noted that respected scholars have challenged the traditionally accepted age of Aisha based on a re-analysis of the sources, as detailed in our essay: A Hadith Scholar Presents New Evidence that Aisha was Near 18 the Day of Her Marriage to the Prophet Muhammad.

Brown mentions the dilemma experienced by scholars regarding these controversial issues. He asserts that the case of this controversial marriage, which may have been acceptable according to the norms of 1400 years ago, should not be judged according to the views and beliefs of the 19th and 20th centuries.

But the objective of the author is by no means to increase the controversy: rather he seems to try to reconcile the misinformation that we have in the West towards Islam, thus he uses comparisons in order to help the reader understand the background of these issues, the misunderstandings to which it has been victim (in some cases due to our own scholars) and the complexity of language that can bring wrong translations of the original texts in Arabic.

The book, after analyzing all these aspects in the light of the Quran, the Sunna, the opinions of scholars and other views, ends by talking about the issue of lying for noble causes, especially as it related to the use of unauthentic narrations by preachers who believe that the noble teachings present in this narrations outweigh the fact that may have been entirely fabricated. Brown discusses the ethical issues surrounding changing sayings or statements in order to accommodate them to a specific reality or to avoid aversion from people that lack the knowledge needed to understand it. Brown states,

A population that believes stories merely because they are useful or warm the heart places expedience toward an end above a commitment to demonstrable truth as a common reference meaningful to all individuals regardless of their religious beliefs. A community that accepts Noble Lying wholeheartedly is likely to drift into gullibility, uncritical of what it is told and vulnerable to manipulation.

Misquoting Muhammad is a good resource for understanding the historical background of issues that can be subjected to misunderstandings and tergiversations. Without telling the reader what to think, it provides them with the necessary tools to see the two sides of the issue and then leaves the conclusion to the reader.

Brown strives to make the concepts clear: the comparison of both worlds; Eastern and Western, enables wider understanding. As such, this book is a good present to those who try to understand the essence of Islam and the potential misunderstandings that surround it.

Can a Muslim woman leave her house without the permission of her husband?

Assalumalaikum Can a woman leave her house without the permission of her husband? Is the Hadith forbidding this authentic?

The Islamic family functions according to the principle of qiwāma, which refers to the fact that the husband is the ultimate authority in the household. Women are free to seek divorce or threaten divorce, but while remaining married to a man, they are required to respect the fact he is the chief of the household. If her husband is a tyrant and refuses to let her leave the house, she should seek the help of her family, his family, religious authorities, or should threaten divorce. In Islam the man and the woman are equal as humans and have equal human rights. Neither is allowed to oppress the other. The husband’s higher authority is similar to a CEO’s authority over his employees. He does not consider him employees lesser humans, he knows they are his equals when it comes to their human rights, but he is given a higher authority so that the business can function more effectively.

This is merely the theoretical framework. In the real world, Muslim husbands and wives, just like Western couples, agree with each other on what is acceptable behavior and what is not. So regarding your specific question, the husband’s permission does not mean that she should ask him whether she can go out every time she wants to (like a school child in a classroom). It means that her activities should be with the general knowledge and approval of her husband. So if the husband accepts the fact that she usually goes out for grocery shopping, or for work, or for medical appointments, then his acceptance is the “permission” that is meant.

So in the real world things are just like any other marriage. Needing her husband’s permission simply means that she should not do things that he finds unacceptable. She should not randomly go to a concert without first finding out whether her husband agrees with her going to that concert. But when it comes to ordinary daily activities, then she can do whatever is normal without requiring her husband’s specific approval, since he knows about these activities and approves of them.

References:

Fatwa from the European Council for Fatwa and Research (Arabic PDF)

Is it permissible for a woman to be the head of state in Islam?

Assalamualaikum I wanted to know if it is permissible for a Muslim woman to be the head of an Islamic state. Many people quote a Hadith from Abu Bakrah, one of the companions of the Prophet (PBUH) ,that indicates it is not permissible.Is that Hadith authentic?

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

There are different opinions on this question. The highly respected scholars Muhammad al-Ghazali and Yusuf al-Qaradawi believe that it is permissible for women to be leaders of state and consider the evidence of the Quran (which portrays the Queen of Sheba as a good leader) to be more important than the evidence of hadith.

The hadith of Abu Bakra that you referred to is the following:

During the battle of Al-Jamal, Allah benefited me with a Word (I heard from the Prophet). When the Prophet heard the news that the people of the Persia had made the daughter of Khosrau their Queen (ruler), he said, "Never will succeed such a nation as makes a woman their ruler."

Sahih al-Bukhari 7099

I decided to conduct a study of all existing chains of this hadith to find out its level of authenticity based on my hadith verification methodology. Below is a diagram of the result:

The result of my computations is that this hadith has a 24.3% authenticity score, which makes it fall below the 30% needed for ṣaḥīḥ. This means that this is a relatively low-quality hadith whose authenticity is inherently doubtful (even without this computation, all hadiths that come from a single companion, such as this one, are inherently doubtful). Therefore this hadith has no power to form the basis of judgment on such an important issue.

The opinions of al-Ghazali and al-Qaradawi is therefore to be preferred. Since we do not have any strong evidence against the leadership of women as heads of state in the Quran or Sunna, the matter is left to the judgment of the people themselves.

References:

Article that mentions al-Qaradawi’s opinion (Arabic PDF)

Is it forbidden to sleep after the asr prayer?

Assalamualaikum brother. Is it forbidden to sleep after salat al ‘asr صلاة العصر ? Is there any hadits?

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

There is no authentic evidence that sleeping after the asr prayer is forbidden or disliked. Some of the early scholars disliked it, but they explained it based on their own reasoning, not based on Quranic or hadith evidence.

References:

Fatwa from the Qatari Fatwa Authority (Arabic PDF)

Can a woman take off the hijab for an online suitor?

Salam alaikum. Brother, what are your thoughts on a man who found a woman in an online dating site, whom wants to get to know of her, felt good connection after few conversations because they have lots in common, but asks her to take off her hijab before any agreements for marriage? He didn't force her, but he asked if she might consider his request. This happens to me and I don't know what to do, except sending you this question. Thank you for your time.

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

It is permissible for a woman to take off the hijab for a suitor. However, to protect her dignity this should be done with the permission and involvement of her family, although according to a fatwa by the Qatari Fatwa Authority the permission of her family is not technically required, while Ibn Baz (representing a Salafi opinion) says that it should not be done in private, meaning that a family member must be present. The taking off of the hijab should only be done once, and when the man has seen her, she must continue to wear the hijab before him afterwards.

As for how much of the body she can show, there is some disagreement among the scholars, but the common opinion appears to be that she can show him what she can show to her own family members (maḥrams).

References:

Fatwa from the Qatari Fatwa Authority (Arabic PDF)Fatwa from Ibn Baz (Arabic PDF)

Is it permissible for Syeds to marry non-Syeds?

Assalamualaikum There are many people in South Asia who claim to be Syeds. Whether this claim is true or not is a different thing, but some of them say that it is haraam for a female Syed to marry a non-Syed boy. They say that Syed girls have the status of mothers (and according to some, sisters) of non-Syeds. I believe that Islam doesn't accept caste-based discrimination, but I want proofs from the Quran and Sahih Hadith to correct them.

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

That has no basis in Islam. Syeds claim descent from the grandsons of the Prophet PBUH, and we know that the daughters of these grandsons married people unrelated to the Prophet’s family PBUH. If that was acceptable for them, it should be acceptable for all descendants of the Prophet PBUH. There is nothing in the Quran or Sunna that prevents the descendants of the Prophet PBUH from marrying non-descendants.

The Uniqueness of Western Civilization by Ricardo Duchesne

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There are times when you read a book that completely change your understanding of the world, answering questions you have had for most of your life, and even better, answering questions you did not know you had. This is such a book. Duchesne unites economic analysis, anthropology, history and philosophy in order to make a compelling argument for why Western civilization is truly unique and unlike any other civilization.

Since writing this book, Duchesne has been influenced by white nationalist writers into seeking genetic answers for the uniqueness of the West. But the current book is free from genetic explanations. Duchesne also has a very negative view of Muslims, considering them unassimilable and inherently opposed to Western civilization. But that shouldn’t stop us from benefiting from his work. One of the most hateful fashions in the media and academia today is discarding a person’s valuable work because of their beliefs and motives.

Duchesne’s greatest contribution is his theory that the uniqueness of the West comes from the fact that the ancient Indo-Europeans who took over Europe had a very special feature: their elite was made up of individually sovereign aristocrats. While all societies throughout the world have had aristocratic elites, what was unique about the West was the fact that its aristocrats were individualized and free. This is extremely unusual and as far as I know it was something that never existed anywhere else.

The ancient Middle East never enjoyed the existence of individually sovereign aristocrats. The elite under the pharaohs had no right to compete with each other for renown and prestige because all renown and prestige belonged solely to the pharaoh. The same was true in ancient Mesopotamia and Persia. The king was the only person who had the right to claim personal worth and glory.

But among the Europeans, the Greeks, Romans and the Indo-European barbarians around them, the entire arrangement of society revolved around the competition of its sovereign aristocrats for personal prestige and glory. They had no toleration for kings who reduced the aristocracy to mere minions and slaves as happened throughout the world. They demanded equality and free competition.

Thus in the Greek epic the Iliad, the warrior aristocracy is made up of free individuals who recognized no master above them. Achilles, Ajax and Odysseus were all sovereign individuals. The Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, on the other hand, is an illustration of the situation outside the European realm. There is only one hero, who is, naturally, a despotic king. There is no room in this epic for other heroes since these societies were organized around the recognition of a single individual in the entire state who could claim personal prestige and glory.

The theory of the presence of a sovereign aristocracy in the West and its absence elsewhere also explains why the Indo-Europeans of Persia and India failed to create civilizations equal to those of Europe. The Indo-Europeans who took over Persia and India quickly embraced the Oriental despotic form of rule that has always existed in these areas. The sovereign aristocracy disappeared to be replaced by all-powerful rulers. The reason for this change appears to be different natural environments. The European climate could support individual farmers who could sustain themselves without any need for complex irrigation systems that required centralization. In the East, however, civilizations were extremely dependent on irrigation systems that made farmers desperately dependent on their chiefs and kings. The king could easily cause the farmers to starve by refusing to provide them with the irrigation systems they were so desperately dependent on.

The Westernization of the World

If we take the ideas in Uniqueness seriously and ignore Duchesne’s recent writings about the genetic uniqueness of Europeans, the conclusion is that the great accomplishments of the West are a matter of culture. The door is open for any culture in the world to embrace the Western system, leading to a similar flowering of creativity and accomplishment. The key is individualism. The culture must recognize the equal dignity, mastery and right to prestige of all citizens, rather than recognizing only one despotic ruler who monopolizes mastery and prestige.

Thus any culture that embraces the Western ideal of the equality of citizens before the law will create a system that will lead to a similar restless drive among citizens for accomplishment. According to the social scientists Santos, Varnum and Grossmann, there has been a significant increase in individualism throughout the world. The world is increasingly adopting the Western ideal of sovereign individuality.

I was surprised to discover that one of the most popular Arabic songs on YouTube (with 154 million views) is a song that preaches strict individualism, titled “Be You”.

The Israeli social scientists Licht, Goldschmid and Schwartz have discovered that there is a very strong correlation between individualism and the rule of law, non-corruption and democratic accountability. As individualism increases throughout the world, we can expect more and more functional democracies to come into existence.

The “Wickedness” of the West

According to the currently fashionable ideology at the sociology departments of Western universities, the West is uniquely evil. It doesn’t matter that the Chinese colonized the lands of ethnic minorities and sometimes massacred them; it is the Western colonization of other lands that is unforgivable. It doesn’t matter that the native Americans slaughtered and enslaved each other, or that the Aztecs practiced mass human sacrifice; it is the intrusion of the West into this utterly evil and inhuman social system that is unforgivable. It doesn’t matter that Africans used to enslave each other by the millions; it is the fact of Westerners buying these slaves that is unforgivable. It doesn’t matter that India has an utterly racist and dehumanizing cast system or that Israel is an apartheid state; it is the racial inequalities in the West that is unforgivable.

The action of the Europeans on the world scene over the past few centuries were clearly motivated by much greed for wealth and power. But a person who does have an ax to grind against Westerners will see them and their actions as no worse than those of the rest of the peoples of the world. And not just that, but such a person will also appreciate the uniquely positive and humane contributions that the West has made to make the lot of non-Westerners better. It was the British who spent vast amounts of wealth, and large numbers of the lives of their own, to police the seas in the 19th century to put an end to the slave trade. Yes, the British engaged in it before, like almost all other peoples. But it was they, and not the Chinese, Indians, Muslims or Africans who developed an anti-slavery ideology that ensured that slavery would be abolished throughout the world. But to those who are moved by hate against the West, this is irrelevant. The West is evil, and the facts do not matter.

China as the West’s Equal

There is a concerted academic effort aimed at showing that China was equal to the West until the 1800’s when the West discovered the use of coal and gained access to the colonized Americas. The point is to show that Western civilization has nothing to be proud of in being responsible for the intellectual and industrial revolutions that made it the supreme world power by the 19th century. The West simply enjoyed “windfalls” in its easy access to coal and in its access to colonial markets.

We are supposed to believe that the West was stuck in the same position as China in the 19th century, with the population quickly approaching its ecological limits. This truly was the case in China, where a lack of innovation coupled with maximized land use meant that the population could no longer expand beyond its 350 million citizens. It was already producing food at the maximum rate it could, and the only solution for keeping their population under control was widespread female infanticide (something that is supposed to be morally neutral since it wasn’t Westerners doing it).

Britain is supposed to have enjoyed a “windfall” in its acquisition of the Americas, but the historian Kenneth Pomerantz shows no interest in China’s bloody colonization of vast swathes of non-Chinese lands to the west over the centuries. In his distorted worldview “colonization” is something that only Europeans do. Pomerantz also shows no interest in the “windfall” that China enjoyed in possessing lands capable of growing rice; a crop that produces two harvests per year. He also shows no interest in the fact that China greatly benefited from the use of potatoes–a “windfall” crop acquired from the Americas.

The first part of Duchesne’s book is dedicated to refuting the current academic narrative of a China that was a counterpart to the West until the 19th century. He shows that the West was improving its technology and capacity to support its population at a rate that enabled it to continue to support growing populations. This was something China was incapable of due to its lack of innovation.

“Eurocentrics” like Duchesne have been characterized as believing that the West achieved its supremacy without any debts to other cultures. But Duchesne clearly opposes such a view:

By 1200, Europe had recovered much of the scientific and philosophical accomplishment produced within the rest of the world. Persian, Byzantine, Chinese, Indian, African, and Islamic cultures were essential ingredients in Europe’s ascendancy. Affirming the uniqueness of Western civilization in no way implies the idea that Europe can be viewed as a self-contained civilization. A major secret of European creativeness was precisely its multicultural inheritance and its wider geographical linkages with the peoples of the world.

Humans as Passive Animals

One of Duchesne’s major efforts is to refute the popular academic conception of humans as passive actors in world history, controlled by circumstances and environments that made them what they are. Duchesne argues that Westerners were active agents who sought wealth and prestige, not passive agents who couldn’t help doing what they did due to economic circumstances.

The view of humans as passive animals stuck in their circumstances is often associated with Marx, although I believe that we can detect the same strains of thought in many other highly influential 19th and 20th century intellectual movements, almost all of them led by Jewish thinkers.

Marx: Humans are passive animals controlled by economic class conflict.Freud: Humans are passive animals controlled by sexuality-based conflict within families.The Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse): Humans are passive animals controlled by social pathologies peculiar to the Western-Christian mentality.Betty Friedan aka Bettye Naomi Goldstein: Humans are passive animals controlled by sex-based class conflict (Marxism translated into feminism).Louis Brandeis and Ronald Dworkin: Humans are passive animals who do not know what is good for them; the elite must gain control of the legal system to force upon them what is good for them.Leo Strauss: Humans (meaning ordinary Christians) are passive animals to be controlled by an atheistic philosophical elite behind the scenes.Jacques Derrida: Humans are passive animals controlled by dominant discourses that maintain power structures.Immanuel Wallerstein and Andre Gunder Frank: Humans are passive animals controlled by dominant “world systems”.Jared Diamond: Humans are passive animals controlled by environmental forces.

The only major non-Jewish intellectual who espoused similar ideas is Michel Foucault.

What unites all of these thinkers is their elitism. This elite can see where others are blind. They stand above the masses. They are outsiders who can see how the game works while the average Westerner is stuck inside the game not even realizing it is a game.

Another thing that unites them is their hatred and disgust for gentile, Western, Christian society.

It should go without saying that this view of humans as passive animals in need of being led by the elite is wholly alien to Western aristocratic egalitarianism, or its modern equivalent: Western individualism. All of the Jewish-led movements above are characterized by their authoritarianism. Freud, for example, maintained a very close inner circle of psychoanalysts (almost all of whom were Jewish, which led a rabbi to calling psychoanalysis a Jewish religious cult). Disagreement with Freud’s ideas was strictly forbidden. He was the messiah from whom all truth came.

These radical intellectual movements are all opposed to the Western ideal of free, democratic debate. In the Western mind, scientists and scholars are all equal, involved in the same search for truth. But these radical intellectual movements have no interest in truth; truth is what comes out of the mouth of the leader. Thus all of these radical intellectual movements can be thought of as an importation of Oriental despotism (only the leader has the right to a free intellect) into the Western intellectual atmosphere.

The harms of these intellectual movements cannot be understated. The Jewish Marxist evolutionist Stephen J. Gould, for example, ushered in 30 years of persecution against evolutionary scientists who studied the influence of genes on human behavior. The science journalist Robert Wright writes:

I argued, basically, that Gould is a fraud. He has convinced the public that he is not merely a great writer, but a great theorist of evolution. Yet, among top-flight evolutionary biologists, Gould is considered a pest–not just a lightweight, but an actively muddled man who has warped the public’s understanding of Darwinism.

Despite his low scientific standing and his recognition by serious scholars as a fraud, Gould’s influence continues, supported by a circle of disciples who continue embellish his name and treat his words as the unquestionable words of a messiah. The influence of people like Gould means that to this day the most scientifically-supported field of psychology (psychometrics, i.e. the study of intelligence or IQ) continues to be looked at as unscientific.

All of the above radical movements (the most important today being the mix of cultural Marxism and postmodernism that rules in academia) are pests on intellectual development and scholarship and will ultimately be squashed by the constant, restless, innocent search for truth that continues to characterize many Westerners, and today, non-Westerners. I have high hopes in the increase of Muslim participation in intellectual fields. Muslims who follow Islamic morality will reject the relativization of truth and will continue the Western tradition of the innocent search for truth.

The Islamic Doctorate



Get it on Amazon.

One minor criticism I have is Duchesne’s lack of knowledge of George Makdisi’s work. Thus Duchesne thinks that the crucial development of doctorates and the “the license to teach” (professorship) were uniquely Western, when Makdisi’s work strongly suggests that these were borrowed from Islam (as I discuss here). Islam did have a doctorate (the taʿliqa) that granted the person professorship. Islam also invented the idea of academic freedom. What Islam failed to do was extend this concept to other fields of inquiry. The doctorate and professorship were strictly limited to Islamic law. This was borrowed by the West, but crucially, the West extended it to all fields of inquiry.

The West learned a great deal from Islam. But its culture of aristocratic egalitarianism meant that Westerners were far more motivated to take these ideas further in competition with each other.

History and Philosophy

Duchesne dedicates a great deal of writing to discussing Hegel’s views on the development of human consciousness out of the conflict between individuals. Duchesne believes that Hegel’s views on history actually only apply to Europeans rather than all humans. Hegel believed that human self-consciousness developed out of a “struggle to the death” with other humans. Hegel believed that a struggle to the death between two humans would end up in one of them enslaving the other. This is an unsatisfactory end because the master cannot accomplish true self-consciousness unless another master recognizes him. Therefore the true development of history requires the presence of multiple masters recognizing each other.

Duchesne rejects common interpretations of Hegel to suggest that this struggle is not just an abstract concept, but a description of the reality of the struggle to the death between barbarian European aristocrats, who accomplished self-consciousness through struggling with each other for prestige. Europeans accomplished self-consciousness before all other peoples because only they had a culture of sovereign aristocrats rather than omnipotent, despotic lords.

Duchesne says that there is an “unbroken link” between the earliest European Indo-Europeans who came out of the Pontic steppe north of the Black Sea, the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the various Germanic and Scandinavian barbarians, and the culture of medieval Europe to the present day. The process of the struggle to the death between aristocrats led to the development of the concept of equal citizens before the law. Only Europeans could have developed such a concept because only they had a social system defined by the existence of multiple, equal masters, rather than a system defined by the existence of a single master (a Pharaoh, a Persian “king of kings” or a Chinese emperor).

The End of Western Uniqueness

As I mentioned earlier, if we accept the theory that the West’s uniqueness comes from its recognition of the dignity and rights of the individual, then the spread of these ideas throughout the world means that the entire world is now part of the same Western system. Gone are the days when only Westerners competed with each other for individual prestige through innovation.

The Westernization of Islamic Studies

A very interesting aspect of the spread of Western aristocratic egalitarianism is the way Muslim intellectuals and scholars today have started to challenge the scholarly tradition of Oriental despotism that characterized Islamic studies in the past. What we have today are thousands of intellectuals and scholars throughout the world who are bravely challenging long-held beliefs in their individualist search for truth. They have, for example, defended women’s right to divorce and the right of Muslims to leave Islam without being molested, not by discarding Islamic teachings out of a desire to live up to Western standards, but by recognizing that Islam actually supports these views.

In the case of Christianity, the individualist search for truth meant that it suffered persistent attacks on its foundations as philologists in the 19th and 20th centuries subjected its texts and beliefs to rigorous scholarly study and debate. The view of many Westerners unfamiliar with Islam is that Islam too will have its foundations weakened as its study becomes more scientific. But the reality as I see it is quite the opposite. If Islam is really “true”, then it will survive the process intact.

And that is what I see all around me. Having benefited from the latest Western studies of Islam, my view of Islam’s validity has only strengthened. Those who look forward to the secularization of the world may take comfort in the history of the weakening of Christianity, believing that Islam will go through a similar process. But my view is that those hopes will never materialize. Western students of Islamic studies such as Jonathan Brown and Umar Wymann-Landgraf, who have subjected the Islamic scriptures (in their case the Hadith literature) to rigorous Western-style analysis have actually ended up converting to Islam.

Joram van Klaveren

We are also seeing a possible trend of anti-Islam activists converting. Joram van Klaveren, a close ally of anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders, in the middle of writing an anti-Islam book, ended up converting. What other religion in the world has such a power? Another far-right convert is Arthur Wagner. Yet another is Arnoud van Doorn.

Why are these lovers and defenders of Western civilization converting to Islam if Islam is inherently opposed to Western values?

It is my view that these activists, feeling embattled by the constant attacks on Western values, and recognizing that Christianity offers no hope, realized the Islam is actually the best hope for the survival of their civilization.

Is dawah obligatory on every Muslim?

Salaam. Is dawah obligatory for every Muslim?

It depends on what is meant by dawah. If what is meant is spreading brochures and pamphlets and intruding into people’s lives to talk to them about Islam (as Jehovah’s Witnesses do for Christianity), then that is not obligatory. What is obligatory is being a good example and calling those who are closest to you to be better. This shouldn’t be done in a harassing way, but as a genuine effort to make them better people and show them what is better. For more on this please see this previous answer.