Prophetic Politics Part 1: Building Leverage Through Principled Action | Blog

In Sūrah al-Raʿd, Allah says,

Unfortunately, one of the tragedies of our contemporary era is the apolitical manner in which this verse is often interpreted and applied, taking on two distinguishably flawed tendencies. For some, interpretations tend towards being individualistic, effectively “blaming the victims” by connecting their suffering to their own transgressions and insisting they must change themselves in order to relieve their own oppression. Consequently, on the flipside and by the same logic, those individuals who are not experiencing hardship have no reason to seek change—neither external nor internal. As a result, what we are resigned to is a Muslim “prosperity gospel,” which essentially conflates ease and security in this world with Divine approval. However, from an Islamic lens, there is no justification for such an exclusively individualistic reading. In fact, conversely, it may well be that the sins of the privileged minority of the ummah today are an aggravating factor in the slaughter of our brothers and sisters elsewhere.

For others, interpretation of this verse tends towards viewing “change” in terms of a secularized understanding of Islam wherein piety is limited to the five pillars of worship and the four walls of the mosque. Thus, when we think about changing our situation, we do so in, yet again, solely individualistic terms, such as returning to the daily prayers or giving up alcohol. The issue with this approach is not that it should be discarded as false—fulfilling our obligations to Allah certainly does bring ample tangible improvements to our lives—but rather that it fails to encompass other types of religious duties and transgressions that we might need to focus on in order to change our situation. On the topic of activism, failing to command the known good and forbid evil is a transgression, cowardice and fear in the face of our enemies is a transgression, and not coming to the aid of our oppressed brothers and sisters is a transgression. Bitterly, it may very well be these types of transgressions that are responsible for the subjugation and slaughter of our brothers and sisters, just as much as falling short in our prayers and almsgiving (zakat).

In light of this, our shared anguish over the genocide in Gaza must, therefore, result in collective introspection. Inevitably, the first step on this journey is the realization of both our individual and collective responsibility for what is happening in Gaza. Rather than falling into victim-blaming or deflecting the responsibility of change elsewhere, we should ask ourselves, where did we go wrong? How have our actions or omissions enabled these transgressions? What can we do differently to not only stop the slaughter of our brothers and sisters, but to ensure that such atrocities are never repeated? For Muslims in the United States, whose tax dollars sustain the genocidal occupation, such accountability is an even more pressing issue.

So, how did we get here? In the aftermath of 9/11, building political power was the last thing on the minds of most Muslims in the US. Harassed by the FBI, institutionally shuttered, and experiencing an exodus of scholars who were being deported or fleeing overseas, the larger part of the Muslim community went into survival mode. We didn’t—or rather couldn’t—garner capacity to challenge the structures of power that steamrolled the unjust conviction of the Holy Land Foundation Five and those like them. Instead, safer options like relief work, interfaith, and education won the bulk of our attention, energy, and resources. While a noble, valuable, and logical reaction given the precarity of the times, the hyperfocus on such avenues to the exclusion of other forms of political and legal activism undoubtedly made space for the forces of evil to criminalize Islam, securitize Muslims, and undermine the Muslim ummah at every turn.

Interfaith work and relief efforts were thought to be enough to avoid scrutiny and even offer political protection. Anti-Islamic sentiment was largely thought to be rooted in individual animus born of ignorance rather than political narratives fueled and funded to uphold structures of power. As such, the remedy to this hatred was sought in ample open houses and Abrahamic messaging on the front end and heart-softening and belief-boosting conferences on the back end. However, this perception was quickly shattered by the Israeli response to the events of October 7th, 2023, which horrifically morphed into the world’s first livestreamed genocide. In order to drum up support—or at least silence opposition—Zionists have since leveraged the anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim tropes they have been peddling for decades in mainstream media and on university campuses.

Now, a full year later, it's important to recognize that the dominant community-building strategy employed by the American Muslim community since 9/11 has been unable to prevent the current genocide. Our abundant relief efforts, national organizations, interfaith projects, and conferences and conventions drawing tens of thousands of attendees, have fallen short of effecting political change—at least the type needed to rein in foreign policy that would have perhaps spared the lives of Reem, or Hind, or Sidra. Politically, we find ourselves incapacitated.

When we look to Divine guidance we find that a driving force for our incapacity is our fear of misfortune and our overwhelming love of this worldly life. These vices lead many among us to be unable to fully commit to a righteous cause and, to a worsening degree, actively commit to aligning ourselves with the enemies of Islam. Allah says,

The Prophet ﷺ pinpointed our fear of losing this world as the root of our weakness and humiliation, saying,

Wahn, or weakness, has multiple degrees and expressions. Sometimes it reaches the level of full-scale hypocrisy and other times it manifests as hesitation and risk aversion, particularly as a choice to appease, rather than confront, those in power. In these cases, the danger is that Satan (Shayṭān) will always provide ready-made rationales for why such behavior is necessary or even smart, and it becomes easy to convince ourselves that ingratiating those in power, befriending them, and proving our loyalty to them will put us in their good graces and eventually benefit us. Each Muslim has a personal moral duty to ensure that they aren’t succumbing to the wahn in their hearts and, in this sense, opting for the ‘easier’ path, and thus bringing about disgrace for themselves and the ummah.

Through his blessed conduct and inspired politics, the Prophet ﷺ taught us to forgo appeasement and negotiate from a position of leverage. Of the many examples available to us in the Prophetic biography (sīra), consider the Treaty of Ḥudaybiyya. Usually, when reflecting on the treaty, we recall the terms of the agreement itself or its consequences for the Islamic cause. Not taking away from these profundities, there is another crucial nuance to the context surrounding the treaty that is often overlooked and less appreciated: the leverage engineered by the Muslims in order to make such a treaty possible in the first place.

Prior to the treaty, the Prophet ﷺ had a dream that he should take his Companions with him on minor pilgrimage (ʿumra). Beyond the spiritual significance of this collective act of worship, the timing and circumstances of the pilgrimage were also politically momentous. In an active state of war with the Quraysh, making ʿumra during this period would have meant marching right into the heart of enemy territory, unarmed—an act with risks akin to those faced by Gazans during the Great March of Return in 2018-2019. With the political legitimacy and power of the Quraysh predicated upon their facilitation of pilgrims to the Kaʿba, their vulnerability was exposed through a direct challenge to their power. By attempting to make ʿumra under such circumstances, the Muslims forced the Quraysh to make a difficult decision. If they allowed the Muslims to make their pilgrimage, it would make them look weak, humiliating them and giving the Muslims a free platform to spread the message of Islam. However, if they used the opportunity to slaughter the Muslims, they would stand to lose the confidence and trust of the entire Arabian peninsula, politicizing the pilgrimage and undermining their legitimacy with an unprecedented act of treachery. The sensitivity of the situation explains why the Quraysh took so long to even begin negotiating, such that the Muslims feared that their emissary, ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, had been killed. The turmoil forced upon the Quraysh is evident in their stipulating within the treaty that the Muslims would only be allowed to make pilgrimage the following year, during a three-day period during which the Quraysh would evacuate the city entirely.

To be sure, while this attempt at ʿumra was an intended act of great worship, it was also a political masterstroke. There is no negotiation without leverage, and building leverage requires identifying your opposition’s needs, creating a situation that highlights their vulnerability with respect to those needs, and forcing them to make hard decisions that ultimately lean in your favor. Every need is simultaneously a vulnerability, and positioning yourself to be able to deliver or withhold the very thing that your opponent needs most makes your demands more relevant to them than the moral righteousness of your cause. In their eyes, to negotiate without leverage is to be ineffectual, merely expressing a grievance or a helpless plea that can be sidelined or neglected for more ‘consequential’ threats.

The Prophet ﷺ taught us that the believer doesn’t allow him or herself to be stung from the same hole twice. Muslims in North America have been taking the same course of action for decades, each time expecting a different result. The moment is ripe for a new era of Muslim political thought and action in North America, one that is based on both power and principle—a prophetic politics. Encouragingly, the American Muslim community has a promising array of advantages, such as ample wealth, high levels of education, and relative freedom to organize, communicate, and express ideas. Rather than being content to use these advantages to build palaces out of our homes and mosques, we must leverage these assets into coordinated power building for our own long term survival and the benefit of the ummah at large.