Hating America

One thing that annoys me is the stark nationalism that exists among many Muslims worldwide that is translated and misrepresented to reverts as “Islamic”.

I have gone through this process as I became more and more educated by Muslims and Islamic scholars that are from non-western, traditionally “Islamic” countries.  Many of these countries being ruled by brutal dictatorships or generally oppressive or unstable regimes, not by Islam.

It is firstly important to realize that no country that exists today is an “Islamic” country, that is, ruled by shariah 100% without diluting it with either former colonial roman laws or made up laws by the dictatorships themselves.

It is my proposal that Islam and Islamic viewpoints do not have to be intrinsically anti-west or anti-American.  As an American revert, I see a heck of a lot more good in my country than most others, especially today’s countries that are mostly populated with Muslims.  In fact, America is still one of the safest places to practice, gather in numbers, and freely speak about any religion, despite the current Bush Administration scrutiny that attempts to curb terrorism by our group.

In my experience, it is the leftist ideologies predominant in many Muslim countries that often gets infused with Islamic understanding.

I remember one worldwide well known scholar (who will go nameless), whom I met personally and witnessed speaking in public in the US, state that his culture is superior to western culture because he is from a “Muslim country”, a society based on Islamic values.  In response, another well known scholar from Canada (who will also go nameless) stated in pubic to him, and I agree, that much of his countries culture, though Islam originated there, is based on unislamic culture predating Islam and still carries many stark unislamic practices.  You can still get prostitutes, drugs and many of the things in his Islamic country just as you can get these things in western societies as well.  Hence, neither culture is superior except in that which is good.  The only difference being that western culture has yet to embrace Islam and much of western is much safer to practice and preach Islam without being jailed or executed by the dictator that you are preaching against according to your beliefs, case in point the sham trial and execution of Syed Qutb by hanging.

Also, Muslim countries have fought many unjust wars, not just against non-Muslim, but Muslims as well.  So, America is not the only country we should look at, but we should also look at ourselves and our countries.

Preaching and railing against the west while using an Islamic platform as a moral high ground is hypocritical and counterproductive.  Muslims can ally with the west on common ground as the Prophet (pbuh) did in his time and by living in the west we ally ourselves by default with them.  So, we should abide by our civic agreement to live in our western countries peacefully and abide by the laws of the land in exchange for security and freedom.  This is what is commonly known by political scholars as a “social contract”.  The Prophet (pbuh) did this when he sent the sahabbah to flee from oppression to the Abbasid King (who was Christian) and the early Muslims abided by the agreement to live peacefully in a non-Muslim land in exchange for protection.

As Muslims, we dont have to be against our government any more than any other government, even Islamic ones.  We can be patriotic and allied to the land that we grew up in and love.  If we love our country, we will do everything possible to peacefully impart Islamic knowledge to them.  We should not defame, rail, plot against it in the name of Islam.

I don’t hate America.  I want what is best for America and our constitution give us the freedom and opportunity, equal to any other group, to alter the course of its policies that we dont agree with. We just need enough people involved in the political and social process.

As American (or western) Muslims, we should not tolerate any other Muslim defaming or speaking unjustly or hypocritically about our nation.  We should separate nationalism from Islam and recognize when our scholars are speaking like this.  We should correct them and always speak with justice and fairness in all things.  Nationalism infused into Islamic rhetoric will divide and destroy us as a people.

Read my signature and you will understand.

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