Thread by @MohamedGhilan

This is a short poem I wrote a while back:

Peace is the whip
Scholars use to
Beat
Justice
Out of
Muslim
Consciousness.

At the most recent Muslim World League's International Conference on Muslim Unity: The... facebook.com/drmohamedghila…

Muslims living in the West have a moral duty to be the voice for the voiceless and the oppressed, especially those living in places where even showing empathy with anyone the regime condemns is considered a crime.

We live in a time when governments are doing their damndest to manipulate Islam to serve their ends. It’s therefore imperative for us living in relatively free societies to preserve this religion.

Any state sponsored Islamic educational initiative should be ignored.

The nation state exists for itself and everything else is a means to keep it that way.

Since Islam encompasses all of life, that means you can’t just separate the politics of a scholar from his other jurisprudential rulings. It’s a package deal.

This is not simply about differences in opinion and we can live and let live. It’s far more pernicious and serious than that.

A scholar doing work with the state is automatically discrediting all his work because of an irresolvable conflict of interest.

Once a scholar begins sleeping with the state in the same bed the only thing they have for them will be their own prayers and ritual acts of worship. Anything outside can be thrown to the wind because we can’t tell anymore who’s being served and to what end.

And we can’t even claim we can just confirm the opinion issued aligns with the Quran and Sunnah and therefore we can trust it.

The Quran and Sunnah get manipulated in all kinds of self-serving ways. Just ask Muslim women and they can tell you some stories.

This is not to say there can be zero interaction between the scholar and the ruler. But come on! There’s a difference between have a relationship where the scholar derives no material gain or personal benefit and straight up being supported with initiatives that gaslight Muslims.

Furthermore, a scholar engaged in initiatives dealing with Muslim societies *must* know what’s happening in Muslim societies and why it’s happening.

ISIS didn’t arise because of intolerant versions of Islam. ISIS arose because they were a logical consequence years of oppression.

Both Shaykh Bin Bayyah and Shaykh Hamza owe us a clarification to all this confusion.

I still maintain my trust that they do not stand with oppression and are not in the pockets of anyone. But given Shaykh Bin Bayyah’s most recent statement about Saudi Arabi, they owe us that.

"Do not to mix with the princes and Sultans and avoid seeing them; for seeing them and sitting with them and mixing with them is great mischief; but if you are impelled to do this, avoid praising them and commending them, for God the Exalted is angered...
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