1/ Is wokeness or "cancel culture" the most important thing in the world? Of course not. Is it important? Yes. I've struggled with how to respond. Initially, I considered just staying out of it. Recently, I've been reflecting on why I care about it more than others who I respect

2/ First, even though I'm not the most religious person, I am a believer. For me, that means being suspicious of secular claims to religious certainty. I discuss this in greater detail here:

https://wisdomofcrowds.substack.com/p/how-anti-woke-should-you-be

3/ I wasn't sure, at first, that my belief in God was directly related to my discomfort with woke posturing. But I kept on coming back to the religious mimicry of it all. At a gut level, it just felt very wrong, even if I couldn't always describe why

4/ The other part of it is also quite personal. As a Muslim, an Arab, and a brown person, it always grated on me when people would assume things about me merely because of my "identity," largely an accident of birth

5/ I cared about being Muslim and being Arab, and I was proud of my heritage. But that didn't mean that I stopped being an individual. I was a writer who happened to be Muslim, not a Muslim who happened to be a writer. I spoke about my community, but not for it

6/ That I, as an individual, would somehow be responsible to and for a group identity that others insisted on constructing for me seemed odd. But not just odd. It dawned on me more and more that it was anathema to what I held dear and what I thought about human worth and dignity

7/ My belief in the individual and my belief in God are related (and, for me, it's less about Islam and more about monotheism). We are individuals who are responsible in the eyes of God. We are *not* responsible—in any ultimate sense—to any one group or collective identity