“And you will see every community on its knees. Every community will be summoned to its record of deeds. They all will be told, ‘This Day you will be rewarded for what you used to do’.” – Sūrah al-Jāthiyah (Ch. 45 v. 27/28) I often contemplate this verse from Sūrah al-Jāthiyah (Kneeling–the 45th Chapter) on the Fourth of July when our country pats itself on the back. Given the shift of American Muslims over the last few decades from being somewhat uneasy about their existence in America to being recklessly uncritical only to return now to an uneasiness due to this country being complicit to genocide, it still seems that there is a strain of well-intentioned pro-America thinking amongst Muslim that came out of some American Muslim thinkers in the 90's who, again well-intentioned, sought to try and make Muslims in America feel at home in their homeland and while I applaud the effort it also nonetheless only contributed to the flatfootedness of Muslims in American in terms of their political ideologies (none of which panned out) and, in my opinion, either contributed to that sense of alienation or at the very least did little to nothing to combating it. My personal theory is that to be Muslim, especially amongst an overwhelming non-Muslim majority, is to be, well, alienated.

͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­͏     ­

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Imam Marc Manley

Jul 4

 

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“And you will see every community on its knees. Every community will be summoned to its record of deeds. They all will be told, ‘This Day you will be rewarded for what you used to do’.” – Sūrah al-Jāthiyah (Ch. 45 v. 27/28)

I often contemplate this verse from Sūrah al-Jāthiyah (Kneeling–the 45th Chapter) on the Fourth of July when our country pats itself on the back. Given the shift of American Muslims over the last few decades from being somewhat uneasy about their existence in America to being recklessly uncritical only to return now to an uneasiness due to this country being complicit to genocide, it still seems that there is a strain of well-intentioned pro-America thinking amongst Muslim that came out of some American Muslim thinkers in the 90's who, again well-intentioned, sought to try and make Muslims in America feel at home in their homeland and while I applaud the effort it also nonetheless only contributed to the flatfootedness of Muslims in American in terms of their political ideologies (none of which panned out) and, in my opinion, either contributed to that sense of alienation or at the very least did little to nothing to combating it. My personal theory is that to be Muslim, especially amongst an overwhelming non-Muslim majority, is to be, well, alienated.

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I’m not saying alienation should be valorized or extolled as a virtue but we should come to accept it as the terms and conditions of living not only in a non-Muslim country/culture, but increasingly as Muslims have lost the capability for nation-state building, the likelihood that we will live as strangers even in lands that were once Muslim (to one degree or another). Türkiye is a perfect example of this. It’s not simply anti-Arab nationalism that we see growing there but rather "natural" outgrowth of Atatürkism and its brand of hyper-secularism: Turks aren't merely anti-Arab, many are increasingly anti-Islām. I’m not singling out Türkiye; we can see the fading of Islām in the minds and hearts of many Muslim countries and cultures. My point is, no matter where you go, if you are a religious, devout, committed Muslim, the world is going to be and increasingly isolating and alienating place. To this, I can only quote our beloved Prophet ﷺ in which he so eloquently said,

بدأ الإسلام غريباً وسيعود غريباً كما بدأ فطوبى للغرباء

"Islām began strange and will return being strange so inform those 'strangers' of goodness to come." – Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim no. 145.

His ‎ﷺ use of ṭūbā reminds me of the verse in Sūrah al-Ra’d in which Allāh promises the believers all manner of goodness as a reward for the troubles they endured during this Dunyā (worldly life):

ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّـٰلِحَـٰتِ طُوبَىٰ لَهُمْ وَحُسْنُ مَـَٔابٍۢ

“Those who believe and do good, for them will be bliss and an honourable destination.” – Sūrah al-Ra’d (Ch. 13 v. 29).

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