Blaming Allah (t) for the world's misery

 I recorded a podcast episode on this topic, covering issues such as looking at causes of misery in the world, mainly looking at famine and poverty, what causes these things to happen, how much of a hand human beings actions have in causing it and why so many people blame Allah (swt).  InshaAllah if/when I feel well enough, I need to post it on youtube as well as share the link here.

I ran out of space on my device so didn't have time to include the following talking points:

- How Umar (ra) dealt with a famine by promptly sending supplies and refused to eat anything other than famine relief rations himself until the crisis was over

- How Mutasim (may Allah be pleased with him) sent an army to fight the Romans in order to defend one oppressed Muslima

- Climate change: how modern consumerism in Capitalist societies has led to destruction of habitats, wastefulness in food production AND malnutrition related diseases even in the world's wealthiest economies

- We've been ideologically duped to think there's a "wealth creation" problem when in fact the problem is "wealth distribution" which will never be solved under Capitalism

Maybe I should do a part 2 recording? Cos' part of me feels it is incomplete without these talking points.

Is Zionism a negator of iman?

Serious question: Does Zionism negate iman? Or is it even possible for someone to be both a Muslim and a Zionist? I ask cos for years I've thought of rulers of Muslim lands according to the ayahs of surah Maida, that as they "do not rule by what Allah revealed", they are either "kafirs", "fasiqs" or "zalims" and I know a fasiq can still be Muslim albeit a sinful one. I'm very very wary of calling anyone kafir cos of the hadith regarding the seriousness of this, but would appreciate some clarity inshaAllah

Salam Dear Sister, Jazak Allah for your question, Zionism is political movement based on fallacious Torahic claims, namely that Mount Zion, which is a hill in al-Quds located just outside the walls of the Old City, belongs to the Jews. Hence, all the Torahic claims nullify Iman.

However, we cannot judge a person whose behaviour reflects some Zionist tendencies as being a Kafir, since the Kafir is the one who believes in the Torahic claims, not the one who behaves as such and executes its agenda; this is exactly akin to the Muslim who separates religion from life in his behaviour due to laziness, but he does not believe in the idea of separating religion from life, which is based on negating the referentiality and authoritativeness of revelation.

Hence, you are right about being wary of calling someone a Kafir based on their behaviour. I hope this answers your query. Ramadhan Karim Inshallah

Fascinating. JazakAllah khayr that's very helpful. It's just that in recent months I've started referring to Arab rulers as "Zionists in jubbas" due to their actions and that led me to wonder whether it is a nullifier of iman or not. I hope you don't mind if I share this question and answer on social media as it may offer clarity to others with similar questions

Is Muslim defeatism preventing us from victory in Palestine?

 This post is not about questioning the sincerity or genuine concern being expressed by Muslims (and non Muslims joining them) about Palestine in the form of protests, boycotts or petitions.  This is about whether we're addressing this crisis through obedience to Allah (swt) or heedlessness.  

And Allah had certainly fulfilled His promise to you when you were killing the enemy by His permission until [the time] when you lost courage and fell to disputing about the order [given by the Prophet] and disobeyed after He had shown you that which you love. Among you are some who desire this world, and among you are some who desire the Hereafter. Then he turned you back from them [defeated] that He might test you. And He has already forgiven you, and Allah is the possessor of bounty for the believers. (TMQ 3:152)

The questions I'm asking are: 

- Have Muslims dived so far down the liberal lizard hole that the commands and prohibitions of Allah ta'ala are not part of the conversation about how to address this crisis?  Not even in private company?  Where terminology such as 'jihad' is limited to the nafs, where shariah is absent from siyasa (politics), where our victory through the help of Allah ta'ala via our obedience to Him is not even considered as a viable option?

- Do Muslims only think of the likes of Salahuddin and Zengi as historical legends, when they should be viewing them as role models and see their actions as a blueprint for what we should be seeking in our leaders, instead of the pathetic taghout rulers who at most pay lip service like Erdogan whilst supplying israel with the very fuel and foods that Palestine is being starved of?

- Do Muslims really think it's appropriate to look up to scholars who call for obedience to these taghout rulers who only ever turn their weapons on Muslims?  Who sit and have cosy dinners with open Zionists and accuse the niyyah (intentions) of anyone who questions this?  All this whilst Allah's enemies call openly for our mass slaughter, genocide on the same social media channels that are censoring us?  Meanwhile such scholars police their language meticulously in the hope of seeking acceptance from the enemies of Allah (swt) so that they aren't banned from western nations and can be used as an opiate of the masses to promote naval gazing as a virtue even though our Nabi (saw) warned us in this sahih hadith:

Narrated Abdullah ibn Umar:

I heard the Messenger of Allah, (ﷺ) say: When you enter into the inah transaction, hold the tails of oxen, are pleased with agriculture, and give up conducting jihad (struggle in the way of Allah). Allah will make disgrace prevail over you, and will not withdraw it until you return to your original religion. Reference: Sunan Abi Dawud 3462

- Do Muslims genuinely think that responding to this crisis using the terminology, values and methods of the kufaar is something through which Allah ta'ala will grant us victory or (if not victory) even some semblance of security or long term stability in the region?  I mean behaviours like: writing protest letters/petitions to the same western governments that established this cancerous entity in the hope of triggering their conscience or appealing to their hypocritical values of human rights,  accepting the leadership of taghout rulers in the Muslim lands who are actively pursuing normalisation with the usurping entity and protecting it by literally holding back crowds of Jordanian volunteers insisting on coming to the aid of our Palestinian brothers and sisters

Last but not least:

- Have Muslims become so defeatist as to have forgotten that destroying the enemies of Allah is not difficult for Allah (swt)?  Allah sent ababeel to destroy the elephant army that came to destroy the Kaaba.  Allah protected Ibrahim (as) by making a fire cool when his whole society and even his father tried to kill him.  Allah ta'ala does not need our help to liberate Palestine- but why would Allah ta'ala WANT to aid a global Muslim community that is turning for answers towards the golden calf of kufr values, of secularism, of contenting itself with the lip service of taghout rulers whose actions violate His laws, of placing 'humanity' as a yardstick for right and wrong instead of halal and haram?

Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.  (TMQ excerpt of Surah Rad verse 11)

Do you think our condition will change by putting our "faith" (literally) in the humanity and values of the nations that destroyed the very Khilafah that shielded Palestine from such calamities as the Nakba in the first place?  Joe Biden once said "If 'israel' didn't exist, we'd have to invent it", meaning if it wasn't already here, he'd invest US military aid and resources towards making it happen, and the opposition parties in the West are no better.  Have you forgotten how the western nations collaborated to disarm Bosnian Muslims whilst Serbs remained armed, leading to the mass rapes and mass murders of thousands of Srebrenican Muslims, because, as the then French President Francois Mitterand admitted, he "did not want to see the rise of a Muslim nation in Europe" and the then US President watched these massacres live on TV?  You want to appeal to THEIR humanity?  Knowing full well their history of slavery, colonialism to the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the assassinations of heads of state that stood up to them- you really think writing to your Senator or Congressmen/women of the nations ideologically opposed to us will change/improve our condition?  All this, even though Allah (swt) told us in Surah Hud v113:

And incline not toward those who do wrong, lest the Fire should touch you, and you have no protectors other than Allah, nor you would then be helped.

Don't assume that only the Palestinians are being tested through their hardships.  WE are being tested through our relative ease, WE are being tested with censorship, legal threats and massive societal pressures to avoid using demonised words like shariah, jihad, khilafah whilst being pushed to discuss this whole crisis as if we are secular atheists begging for some semblance of human rights and dignity.  Is that really the best we can do?

Fascism, 1930s ghettos, dehumanisation followed by annihilation

 We were all taught about the holocaust in our history lessons- what did we learn?

- That people in power blamed Jews for most societal problems in Germany

- That mobs and gangs went round smashing up Jewish homes and businesses, with the approval of the government

- That Jews were relentlessly mocked and demonised in the press through insulting cartoons

- Jews were constantly depicted in the media as conniving, evil and a major threat 

- Jews were discriminated against and locked away in ghettos behind a barbed wire fence

- Jews were never accepted as belonging to the nation they'd lived in for generations (or even centuries)

- Millions of Jews were driven out of the country or killed solely due to their religious identity

- That these^ measures were the first steps towards planning the mass murder/annihilation of Jews

- Attacks on Jews were never perceived as 'unprovoked'- it was viewed as their own fault for being the scourge of an otherwise 'civilised' society

- The Daily Mail made cartoons depicting Jewish refugees as rats

Now replace the word 'Jews' with 'Muslims' and 'Germany' with 'occupied Palestine' and that will give you an exact description of the situation there from 1948 to the present day.  The main difference now is that Britain, America and Europe are endorsing and justifying the ethnic cleansing and genocide as "the right to defend themselves".  Meanwhile social media are actively censoring/restricting many who speak out against what is currently happening.  The West are sending a clear message: the holocaust is an evil and unjustifiable act when it happens to white Jews- but the same thing happening to Palestinian Muslims is fair game

NB: I've slightly edited the image to blot out the swastika inside the red rectangle in case it was the reason why the image was initially censored

Hijab, feminism and "the male gaze"

 Walaykum salam,

Primarily, women wear the hijab because it is a command from Allah (swt) regardless of how men perceive it or react to it.

Too much emphasis in modern society is given to the 'reasons' or the 'logic' behind Islamic rules and this is not a good way to look into such topics. The best way to understand Islam is to contemplate deeply the creation, the alternation of night and day etc as these are all signs from Allah that the universe and all that's in it could not have come about by itself and needed a creator because all of creation is needy and dependent on somethings for survival. The next step is to learn about the miracle of the Quran which is in its language and composition and the fact that no one has been able to take on the challenge of providing one surah like what is in the Quran even if they sought the help of the best literary minds.

Once you learn these things and are convinced that there is a creator, that He (swt) made us all and understands our needs and what's best for us better than any human being- then that should be enough for us to follow His commands. On top of that, once you understand the weak basis of all forms of kufr: religious misguidance in the form of other kufr beliefs, ideological misguidance in the form of communism, capitalism, the so called 'freedoms' and democracy etc- one you understand how baseless and weak those concepts are, it becomes much easier to reject them and not be taken in or fooled by the various cultural and emotional arguments used to propagate them.

Hijab is a command from Allah and lowering the gaze is also a command from Allah. The problem with pervy men is that we do not live in Islamic societies (even the Muslim populated countries are not governed by Islam) so men's unIslamic behaviour is often not regulated or stopped at the root. During the Caliphate of Umar bin al Khattab (ra), he hired a respected widowed woman to patrol the market places. She held a whip and if she saw men loitering around to ogle at girls or do inappropriate things, she would whip them. So Islam does provide solutions to these problems when it is implemented but the problem these days is it is not implemented, so then feminists jump in and say Islam isn't working and is causing oppression of women and they propose that society should be less Islamic and more 'free' and allowing women to uncover and violate Islamic rules for the sake of freedom. Whenever there is a problem in Muslim communities there will be munafiqs and ignorant/naive Muslims who will try to lead people to believe that the best solution is less Islam in the society- though they never say less Islam, they'll label it "combatting extremism", or "less mullah-ism" or that sort of thing.

The way protests in Iran are depicted these days is just a case in point. Yes it does sound like some women have been mistreated and two or three have died under suspicious circumstances so that should be investigated and authorities shouldn't be treated as infallible but this push with the help of the west to uncover the Muslim women is very sinister and has nothing to do with women's rights just like how they pretend to care about the rights of Afghan women whilst bombing them into the stone age and starving their children.

The above post^ was my answer to the following question posed on Ummah forum:

Assalaamualiakum,

I have a question regarding the hijab. Obviously we are told to cover and wear hijab as a commandment from Allah (swt) and to prevent any man seeing our body. My question is regarding Muslim men who still sexualise women no matter what they wear. Women who are fully covered even with niqab, don’t commit tabarruj, and even some who are on Hajj/Umrah will be assaulted, harassed or looked at sexually. Is it because the hijab minimises the attention? I’m just confused on this so if anyone could answer my question I would appreciate it. For context I’m a Muslim female who tries to cover, I don’t wear makeup and wear long baggy clothes so this isn’t hating on the ruling. Hijab and modesty means a lot to me and I love wearing the hijab I’m just interested to further my knowledge on this.

Unfair social media "community standards"

 Apparently, FB wouldn't let me share this post as they claim that it "violates community standards".

I'm still quite baffled as to exactly which rule this supposedly breaks.

Keeping the post on here because it's still excellent and profound advice and reminders benefit the believers:

Trojan horses entering Pakistan

 Trojan horses entering Pakistan:

A few years ago, some liberals posted online videos about the plight of what they call the "transgender community" in Pakistan (a community who are a mixture of intersex eunuchs/hejra and "transgender" people who are mostly biologically male but identify and behave like females). The video resonated with much of Pakistani society, because it was true that the hejra community in particular did face a lot of discrimination and mistreatment in society, so proposing that they should be given more rights makes sense and wont seem objectionable to most- but there's more to this story than meets the eye.

The real purpose of those videos by liberals was not to solely improve the situation of the hejra community- it was to use a relatable topic to bring public opinion on to their side and then, under the guise of "rights for transgenders", use it as a trojan horse to shoehorn in new laws that include other things such as greater acceptance of homosexuality and the wider LGBTQ+ community in general, knowing full well that LGBTQ+ are not accepted in mainstream Pakistani society outside a few liberal elite and aggressively secular circles.

Why am I mentioning this now? Because the same thing seems to be happening again in a different context after the lynching of a Sri Lankan man in Sialkot.

Whilst early news reports are suggesting that he was an innocent man who was falsely accused of blasphemy, unfairly targeted and savagely beaten to death by a mob- large swathes of Pakistanis would quite rightly object to such a heinous crime and call for the perpetrators to be punished. Even the radical controversial group TLP appear to have distanced themselves from this incident. So if media reports are anything to go by, public opinion is largely in support of the victim and in support of punishing the culprits involved- but there's more to this story than meets the eye.

Is the real purpose of such news reports simply to seek justice through the courts to punish the perpetrators? Or is the real purpose an attempt to sway public opinion against Pakistan's blasphemy laws and in favour of increasing secularisation in schools as well as further crackdowns on religous institutions and organisations? Circling secular vultures such as Hasan Nisar would certainly hope for the latter.

As I've mentioned elsewhere: Islamic upbringing and the proper Islamic education would have prevented persecution and injustice towards religious minorities in Pakistan, such as the saying of the Prophet (saw) "he who hurts a dhimmi (non Muslim citizen living under Islamic rule), hurts me". This is why when you look at the lives of the Prophet (saw) and the rightly guided Khulafaa (ra), you don't see these sorts of atrocities and even if there was a rare case of a non Muslim saying disparaging things regarding Islam: in many cases, people were forgiven by the Prophet (saw) and other cases were addressed through the courts and state apparatus to ensure people got a fair hearing and vigilantism wasn't a thing. So whilst we'll hear a lot of hysteria implying that overzealous implementation of Islam is at fault for this act of cruelty- in many ways, the opposite is true and it's the lack of Islamic knowledge and the lack of implementation of Islam in Pakistan (especially in a broader political context) that contributed to this outcome.

The point here is not to suggest that the hejra community shouldn't have rights, or that the mob killing in Sialkot was justified- far from it. The point is that jaise haathi ke daanth khanay ke aur dikhane ke aur (according to the well known Urdu phrase "the elephant has one set of 'teeth' for eating and a different set of 'teeth' for show"), likewise a similar point can be made about news reports "khabaren dikhaate kuch aur, khabar ke peeche ka maqsad kuch aur" (news reports show one thing but the agenda behind it is something else).