Muslims, Outrage, and Virtue-Signalling

Some Muslims feel outraged when their brothers & sisters do “un-Islamic” things because they feel protective of their religion. They think this comes from love for the deen or from ghairah, but it may actually be coming from the ego/nafs.

They feel like they work so hard to be able to call themselves Muslims, so they feel cheated when people who seem not to try (or who seem to be okay with doing un-Islamic things, especially publicly) can also claim that title. They feel like it waters down their identity.

They derive their value & identity from their allegiance to a group that they feel is morally superior to others. Their identity as a Muslim is not just based on their relationship with Allah. It’s based on their relationship with the morally superior: Muslims.

This results in people who feel like the sins of others are an attack on their own identity as Muslims. They feel the constant need to condemn and excommunicate others over issues big and small because everything is personal. Everything is a threat to their identity.

They also feel the need to signal to other Muslims: “Don’t worry, I love and hate all the right things!” They present this as “dawah” or “advice” when it very often isn’t. If it was really those things, they would have genuine concern about the effectiveness of their methods.

The reality is that while practicing Islam correctly will help us reach higher levels of virtue & morality, and while we should dislike sinning, we have to understand that Muslims are all at different levels of their practice. They are still Muslim even when they are imperfect.

That means that they are worthy of our patience, our kindness, our positive assumptions, our excuses, our private advice, our constructive criticism, and our consideration of their unique condition and circumstances. That means we have to care about them. They are our family.

It goes back to the classic: Islam is perfect, Muslims aren’t. We have to constantly ask ourselves: “Why am I saying this? What do I hope to get from it? Is there a better way to achieve this? Is this the method that the Prophet (S) would regularly choose?” May Allah forgive us.

Plug: If you’re interested in this topic, I’m working on a project with a team of incredible people that will be delving deeper into these types of issues. Subscribe to hear about it when we launch: http://bit.ly/tareqnewsletter