muslimcoder on Nostr: So was watching The Thinking Muslim with their latest discussion with Imam Tom ...
So was watching The Thinking Muslim with their latest discussion with Imam Tom Facchine and the man seriously has such good insights. May Allah سُبْحَانَهُۥ وَتَعَالَىٰ preserve and protect him and his family.
Wanted to share the very comprehensive response from Imam Tom to the following question by Muhammad Jalal.
(Also super satisfying that I don't have to break up my post due to a paywall limitation 😆)
MJ: Those who Embrace Islam are they expected to embrace Muslim culture in inverted commas or Arab culture or Pakistani culture whether that's dress or food or you know other aspects of cultural life because of course we do see a lot of converts who become Muslim and culturally also they shift more than just their ideas and their habits and their religious commitments.
TF: This is one of the most important questions especially for Islam in Europe and the UK because there's two mistakes going on, and one is one that's committed by the Muslims and we have to own that.
That Islam has a positive relationship towards local cultures. That everywhere Islam, because Islam is a barebones set of instructions and guidelines, when it comes to your individual worship it's quite detailed but when it comes to your culture it's actually quite barebones, if you look at marriage, if you look at transactions, if you look at dress, if you look at food, it's very barebones.
Is that by accident or by design? It's by design. Why? So that it can be a universal religion, so that it can travel to lands and be accepted by people and actually have a productive relationship with the local culture. So there's almost like a three-fold filtration that happens when Islam interacts productively with these cultures is that there are certain cultural elements that are completely illegitimate and harm human beings; alcohol, zina, promiscuity, these sorts of things are inherently harmful, and culture cannot justify them.
There's another category of things that's a mixed bag. There's good elements to it, and there's bad elements to it, and so if you remove the bad harmful elements to it then it's actually fine.
Let's take poetry, maybe even rap, drill, maybe you could have something where there's positive messages and there's nothing inherent about it, it's an art form there's nothing inherent about that which is wrong, it's dependent upon the content and the messages that are being conveyed.
Then there's a third category of things that are fine the way they are you know beans and toast it's completely fine, the way that you dress, Islam it has guidelines for what you need to cover but not for how you need to cover it.
So you're covered appropriately with a suit with a blazer and a shirt and someone else who wears flowing robes and someone else who does this they're all equally valid.
So historically wherever Islam has gone it has produced a local version of that culture that was very vibrant and productive, so when it was in Arabia it produced an Islamic Arab culture, and then when it went to North Africa it produced an Islamic Berber culture or an Islamic North African culture and then when it went to West Africa or subsaharan Africa an Islamic Sahel culture and then into Anatolia and into the Balkans and into Iran and into South Asia and the subcontinent, and into southeast Asia.
Everywhere Islam went it produced a new local culture.
Okay now what about when it comes to the UK? We have to allow it to produce a local culture here. If we think that Islam in the UK is only going to be reproducing cultural forms from Arabia and the subcontinent then that is not allowing Islam to do the work that it needs to do and it will always be perceived as a foreign religion and it will never be considered an option for the average Englishman or woman to take on themselves.
On the other side of that and this is the so we've owned our mistake here, now let's get to the other side, that Allah says in the Quran that he divided people into Nations and tribes so that they would get to know one another.
And so the diversity, they say variety is the spice of life, diversity is an enriching factor and in the age of ethnonationalism, which is another ideology and one very problematic, we have experienced an intense homogenization of everything, homogenization of language, homogenization of culture, my family as I mentioned came from Italy in 1905, there's a saying with the Italians it said there are no such thing as Italians except outside of Italy. Garibaldi I believe, one of the nationalists, he said okay we succeeded in making Italy now we have to make Italians. It's a construct, there is no such thing as Italy really I mean if you go like the venetians and the Sicilians are very different, my family comes from Veneto, they don't see themselves as having a lot in common with the Sicilians, they can't even barely understand each other before standardized Italian and standardized Italian didn't really even pick up until the 60s and 70s, so these things are constructs.
If you go to what does it mean to be British, how far are we going to go back? Are we talking about after the Norman Invasion, so we've got Anglo Saxon Norman culture or the Normans are problematic let's just roll it back to the Anglo-Saxon culture and before the Anglo-Saxon culture we have the British Roman culture and before the Roman Invasion it was just the Britains and the Picts and all these these groups.
You have to realize that these things are influx, and that these things are sociohistorical constructions and that they're fluid. They're fluid, it's meant to enrich life and the nation state and specifically the ethnonation state has taken a snapshot, it's as if there's a whole movie and you took a screenshot of one frame that said this is the only part of the movie we're allowed to play.
They're having arguments in Italy about tortellini if tortellini can have halal meat inside of it, it's ridiculous, tortellini you know it can have anything inside. How old is tortellini. There were things before tortellini, tomatoes didn't even come to Italy until after the "discovery" or "exploration" of the new world.
What were they eating in Italy before the tomato? These things are much more influx than we give credit for, they're much more fluid than we give credit to and the ethnonation state asks us to homogenize in an unreasonable way that we have to be willing to embrace a certain amount of variety as an enriching variety.
Now where the rub comes in and where people in the UK feel it and people in Europe feel it is that their ways of life and that diversity and their own locally informed culture is being erased it is being erased but who's erasing it? Exactly who's erasing it? Is it the Muslim from the subcontinent, first of all you shouldn't have colonized them if you didn't want them to come here.
Tired of the somalis and Nigerians and the pakistanis, you shouldn't have colonized them, chickens coming home to roost but leave that for a second, the working class British person what's the real threat to eliminating their culture it's not the Pakistani and the Nigerian and the Bangladeshi it's McDonald's it's Coca-Cola it's globalization and there's a sense that some people are starting to see that but they don't realize how under threat they are.
Why can't you have a big family? Why don't you have high birth rates? Why don't you have bigger families? Because neoliberal capitalism has squeezed you so tightly you have to work so hard just to survive, rents are out of control, prices are out of control, they have set up the entire system to squeeze you so that you can barely even support yourself let alone a family, let alone five children. That's why it's low, they've undermined your sense of what relationships and love should be through their Disney movies and media and culture, they've normalized indecency and promiscuity. They've normalized all these things that's what is threatening your culture, that's what's threatening your viability, not the people who have come from abroad.
Now our duty is to make sure we don't get conscripted and Muslims have to be careful because the left wants to conscript us and bring us in and make us fodder for that criticism, you see that's the game and there are people that there will be on the right and they look at that and they'll say see look the Muslims are just part of this DEI initiative they're going to force this down our throats we're all going to be doing these sorts of things imposed upon us minority rights all of this regime it's like they sense, it's like someone put a blindfold on them and they sense that something is wrong but they're misdiagnosing what's exactly wrong.
Us we have to make sure that we're not conscripted into that, we have to resist the enforcement or imposition of these different cultures that are coming in. It has to be mutually agreed to, it has to be mutually beneficial, it has to be a dialogue, it has to be an exchange.
Wanted to share the very comprehensive response from Imam Tom to the following question by Muhammad Jalal.
(Also super satisfying that I don't have to break up my post due to a paywall limitation 😆)
MJ: Those who Embrace Islam are they expected to embrace Muslim culture in inverted commas or Arab culture or Pakistani culture whether that's dress or food or you know other aspects of cultural life because of course we do see a lot of converts who become Muslim and culturally also they shift more than just their ideas and their habits and their religious commitments.
TF: This is one of the most important questions especially for Islam in Europe and the UK because there's two mistakes going on, and one is one that's committed by the Muslims and we have to own that.
That Islam has a positive relationship towards local cultures. That everywhere Islam, because Islam is a barebones set of instructions and guidelines, when it comes to your individual worship it's quite detailed but when it comes to your culture it's actually quite barebones, if you look at marriage, if you look at transactions, if you look at dress, if you look at food, it's very barebones.
Is that by accident or by design? It's by design. Why? So that it can be a universal religion, so that it can travel to lands and be accepted by people and actually have a productive relationship with the local culture. So there's almost like a three-fold filtration that happens when Islam interacts productively with these cultures is that there are certain cultural elements that are completely illegitimate and harm human beings; alcohol, zina, promiscuity, these sorts of things are inherently harmful, and culture cannot justify them.
There's another category of things that's a mixed bag. There's good elements to it, and there's bad elements to it, and so if you remove the bad harmful elements to it then it's actually fine.
Let's take poetry, maybe even rap, drill, maybe you could have something where there's positive messages and there's nothing inherent about it, it's an art form there's nothing inherent about that which is wrong, it's dependent upon the content and the messages that are being conveyed.
Then there's a third category of things that are fine the way they are you know beans and toast it's completely fine, the way that you dress, Islam it has guidelines for what you need to cover but not for how you need to cover it.
So you're covered appropriately with a suit with a blazer and a shirt and someone else who wears flowing robes and someone else who does this they're all equally valid.
So historically wherever Islam has gone it has produced a local version of that culture that was very vibrant and productive, so when it was in Arabia it produced an Islamic Arab culture, and then when it went to North Africa it produced an Islamic Berber culture or an Islamic North African culture and then when it went to West Africa or subsaharan Africa an Islamic Sahel culture and then into Anatolia and into the Balkans and into Iran and into South Asia and the subcontinent, and into southeast Asia.
Everywhere Islam went it produced a new local culture.
Okay now what about when it comes to the UK? We have to allow it to produce a local culture here. If we think that Islam in the UK is only going to be reproducing cultural forms from Arabia and the subcontinent then that is not allowing Islam to do the work that it needs to do and it will always be perceived as a foreign religion and it will never be considered an option for the average Englishman or woman to take on themselves.
On the other side of that and this is the so we've owned our mistake here, now let's get to the other side, that Allah says in the Quran that he divided people into Nations and tribes so that they would get to know one another.
And so the diversity, they say variety is the spice of life, diversity is an enriching factor and in the age of ethnonationalism, which is another ideology and one very problematic, we have experienced an intense homogenization of everything, homogenization of language, homogenization of culture, my family as I mentioned came from Italy in 1905, there's a saying with the Italians it said there are no such thing as Italians except outside of Italy. Garibaldi I believe, one of the nationalists, he said okay we succeeded in making Italy now we have to make Italians. It's a construct, there is no such thing as Italy really I mean if you go like the venetians and the Sicilians are very different, my family comes from Veneto, they don't see themselves as having a lot in common with the Sicilians, they can't even barely understand each other before standardized Italian and standardized Italian didn't really even pick up until the 60s and 70s, so these things are constructs.
If you go to what does it mean to be British, how far are we going to go back? Are we talking about after the Norman Invasion, so we've got Anglo Saxon Norman culture or the Normans are problematic let's just roll it back to the Anglo-Saxon culture and before the Anglo-Saxon culture we have the British Roman culture and before the Roman Invasion it was just the Britains and the Picts and all these these groups.
You have to realize that these things are influx, and that these things are sociohistorical constructions and that they're fluid. They're fluid, it's meant to enrich life and the nation state and specifically the ethnonation state has taken a snapshot, it's as if there's a whole movie and you took a screenshot of one frame that said this is the only part of the movie we're allowed to play.
They're having arguments in Italy about tortellini if tortellini can have halal meat inside of it, it's ridiculous, tortellini you know it can have anything inside. How old is tortellini. There were things before tortellini, tomatoes didn't even come to Italy until after the "discovery" or "exploration" of the new world.
What were they eating in Italy before the tomato? These things are much more influx than we give credit for, they're much more fluid than we give credit to and the ethnonation state asks us to homogenize in an unreasonable way that we have to be willing to embrace a certain amount of variety as an enriching variety.
Now where the rub comes in and where people in the UK feel it and people in Europe feel it is that their ways of life and that diversity and their own locally informed culture is being erased it is being erased but who's erasing it? Exactly who's erasing it? Is it the Muslim from the subcontinent, first of all you shouldn't have colonized them if you didn't want them to come here.
Tired of the somalis and Nigerians and the pakistanis, you shouldn't have colonized them, chickens coming home to roost but leave that for a second, the working class British person what's the real threat to eliminating their culture it's not the Pakistani and the Nigerian and the Bangladeshi it's McDonald's it's Coca-Cola it's globalization and there's a sense that some people are starting to see that but they don't realize how under threat they are.
Why can't you have a big family? Why don't you have high birth rates? Why don't you have bigger families? Because neoliberal capitalism has squeezed you so tightly you have to work so hard just to survive, rents are out of control, prices are out of control, they have set up the entire system to squeeze you so that you can barely even support yourself let alone a family, let alone five children. That's why it's low, they've undermined your sense of what relationships and love should be through their Disney movies and media and culture, they've normalized indecency and promiscuity. They've normalized all these things that's what is threatening your culture, that's what's threatening your viability, not the people who have come from abroad.
Now our duty is to make sure we don't get conscripted and Muslims have to be careful because the left wants to conscript us and bring us in and make us fodder for that criticism, you see that's the game and there are people that there will be on the right and they look at that and they'll say see look the Muslims are just part of this DEI initiative they're going to force this down our throats we're all going to be doing these sorts of things imposed upon us minority rights all of this regime it's like they sense, it's like someone put a blindfold on them and they sense that something is wrong but they're misdiagnosing what's exactly wrong.
Us we have to make sure that we're not conscripted into that, we have to resist the enforcement or imposition of these different cultures that are coming in. It has to be mutually agreed to, it has to be mutually beneficial, it has to be a dialogue, it has to be an exchange.