A lot to be said about the condescension of “moaning”. The argument of Sh AHM rests on a presentation of Islamophobia as something that is experienced predominantly at the level of street hate, rather than as something that happens within the bureaucracy of every day life. https://twitter.com/muslimscholars_/status/1271170596005720065

I’m all for the Prophetic model of responding to interpersonal hate with kindness, if directed at me personally. Will admit I’d have much more gheerah for my wife and children, and indeed others, if I saw them being abused.

What AHM’s narrative ignores, is that all the kindly minded platforms on Thought for the Day, will not repeal legislation leading to disenfranchisement. The fear society has for us as Muslims is rooted more deeply in the fear they have for others more generally and historically

When Muslims get stopped in their tens of thousands at airports, it’s not because the average Joe on the street misunderstands us, it’s because Muslim names, appearance, clothing, and countries they travel to are all pathologised. This is a policy that is put in place

When citizenships for hundreds of British citizenships have been removed (and of course this is something he could not be subjected to because of his origins) this is because, again how policy is determined based on a hierarchy of races that he seems less concerned with

If one looks at almost any policy that exists that discriminates, it is less about a kind word changing policy, but rather a greater machinery for how the structures of the state harm us.

Most Muslims are not confused at all. They don’t equate the behaviour of the racist on the street with the harm the state is capable of. The ‘moaning’ AHM is complaining of, is to do with the law, which requires solutions that are far outside his discourse of quietism.

What instead, if we could imagine a world in which AHM had taken the concerns of Muslims seriously enough to direct his voice of kalimatul haqq towards those in power, rather than condescendingly towards those who feel the violence of the state in their daily lives?

What if he gathered all the other Muslim scholars around him to say, you know, Muslims living under a different juridical system to the rest of the society they are a part of doesn’t seem at all like a healthy society.

Ultimately it’s very easy to punch down and say to Muslims they have to fix their behaviour. When you couple this with a presentation that we are not an inextricable part of the societies that we live in, then this becomes a toxic narrative.

Not sure why AHM is intimating that Muslims are somehow separate from the society the live in? Wherever I travel in the UK, I meet Muslims who intonate, gesticulate and generally imitate the regional qualities of their neighbours - for some reason he doesn’t see that as belonging

Muslims suffer from them same diseases as others living in modernity. We do not scholarship to help with that. What we also need though, is scholarship that doesn’t secularise the message of the Qur’an and the Prophet from the realities of the world we inhabit

We are in desperate need of scholarship that is brave, and true. One that places the every day lived experiences of Muslims within an understanding of state violence. One that gives da’wah to the people of Egypt, while correcting fir’aon and his accomplices

Those of us defending the rights of the marginalised in society, even those who are not Muslim, do so not just for ourselves, but also for the health of the society.