Reclaim Your Heart

UMMAH

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D
ROP THE
 P
REFIX
What kind of Muslim are you? The question seems odd,
but for those who seek to divide and conquer Islam, the
answer has become increasingly important. Even more
disturbing are the labels we assign ourselves.
In our families few of us can say we’ve never disagreed
with our siblings. But when a family member makes a
mistake—even a big one—or has a view we don’t agree
with, even fewer of us decide to divorce that family and
change our name. Today, the same is not true of our
Muslim family.
Today, we’re no longer just ‘Muslim’. We’re
‘progressives’, ‘Islamists’, ‘traditionalists’, ‘salafis’,
‘indigenous’, and ‘immigrants’. And each group has
become so alienated from the other, that we’ve almost
forgotten that we share a common creed.
While real differences do exist within our ummah,
something very serious has gone wrong. Within the fold of
Islam, differences are not only tolerated—they’re
encouraged as a mercy from God. But as soon as we label
and marginalize any who disagree with us, our downfall
begins. Once we accept and internalize these labels as our
main source of identity, the result is disastrous. As a
result, we create our own camps, attend only our own
gatherings and conferences; soon enough, we’re talking

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only to those who agree with us. Dialogue within the
ummah disappears, our differences become only more
polarized and our views become more extreme. Before
long, we stop caring about what happens to the ‘other’
group of Muslims around the world, as we amputate limbs
from the unified body our Prophet 
taught us we
were. The ‘other’ (who happen to still be our brothers)
become so foreign—even despised—that we no longer
wish to be referred by the same family name, and even
join our enemies against them.
Suddenly those differences, that were once a mercy,
become a curse–and a weapon to defeat Islam. Our
enemies “summon one another to attack [us] as people,
while eating, invite others to share their food.” (Abu
Dawud)
On March 18, 2004 RAND, the influential U.S. think tank,
released a report to help ‘civilize’ Islam by effacing it and
remaking it in the image of Western secularism. In the
report, 
Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources,
Strategies
, Cheryl Benard writes, “Modernism, not
traditionalism, is what worked for the West. This included
the necessity to 
depart from, modify, and selectively
ignore
elements of the original religious doctrine.”
In order to “depart from, modify, and selectively ignore”
elements of Islam, Benard suggests a simple strategy:
label, divide, control. After labeling each group of

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Muslims, she suggests pitting one group against each other.
Among other strategies, Benard suggests “encourag[ing]
disagreements 
between 
traditionalists 
and
fundamentalists,” and “discourag[ing] alliances between
traditionalists and fundamentalists.”
By succeeding at this division and supporting the
‘Modernist’/ ‘Progressive’ Muslims, Bernard hopes to
invent a ‘civil democratic’ Islam that is less backwards
and problematic. More specifically, she hopes to create an
Islam that will surrender itself to the hegemony of the Neo
Conservative Agenda.
So if the first step to deforming Islam is to exploit the
labels that exist, let’s say: “Thanks, but no thanks.” God
tells us: “And hold firmly to the rope of Allah all together
and do not become divided.” (Qur’an, 
3:103
) So although
we really appreciate this effort to ‘civilize’ us and our
religion—we’ll have to pass. You only reform something
that’s corrupt or outdated. And you only fix something
that’s broken.
And while it’s nice of you to want to call us ‘modern’ or
‘moderate,’ we’ll do without the redundancy. Islam is by
definition moderate, so the more strictly we adhere to its
fundamentals
—the more 
moderate
we’ll be. And Islam is
by nature timeless and universal, so if we’re truly Islamic
—we’ll always be modern.
We’re not ‘Progressives’; we’re not ‘Conservatives’.

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We’re not ‘neo-Salafi’; we’re not ‘Islamists’. We’re not
‘Traditionalists’; we’re not ‘Wahabis’. We’re not
‘Immigrants’ and we’re not ‘Indigenous’. Thanks, but
we’ll do without your prefix.
We’re just Muslim.

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