# The Secret Cost of Individualism | Imam Tom Weekly

**Author:** Tom Facchine
**Series:** Imam Tom Live
**Published:** 2025-04-16
**YouTube:** https://youtu.be/62rfMNg-EjE
**URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/the-secret-cost-of-individualism-imam-tom-weekly
**Topics:** Culture, Family & Community, General Psychology, Psychology & Mental Health

## Description
You've been told secularism saved the world from religious violence. But what if that’s the biggest myth of our time? Imam Tom uncovers the true history of how your understanding of “religion” was reshaped — not by faith, but by power.

## Transcript
**[0:00]** Individualism is a disease that is very prevalent in our societies because individualism is good for business. Because when you consume as an individual, you consume more. Governments want you to think of yourself as an

**[0:17]** individual because if you think of yourself as an individual, you buy more, you're taxed more, and there's more people on the roster, right? Whether it's the roster of people who have incomes that are being taxed, or homeowners, or people who have mortgages, or whatever it is. So we have to pay attention that

**[0:36]** society and how it's constructed right now, it's not neutral. There's a reason why society frays collective entities. There's a pressure towards individualism. And of course, we know that individuals are easier to control and they're easier

**[0:52]** to indoctrinate. So there's that too. But Islam is also not the radical opposite of that in the sense that we're not communists in the literal and figurative sense of the word. We do recognize differences between individuals. We do recognize private property, for example, is something that while it's qualified

**[1:10]** in Islam, nobody has the absolute right to property and there's some things you're not allowed to do with your property. We don't erase private property entirely. And there's other predilections where you have your individual rights. Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala says in the Qur'an, even within a household, when are you allowed to come into someone's bedroom? When do you have to

**[1:30]** knock? When do you have to seek permission? If I'm showing up at somebody's house, when do I, you know, seeking permission and having to leave if I'm not given permission to enter? So there is recognition of individual life as well. But I would say that Islam balances those things perfectly, that it balances our collective lives and our individual lives. It's not so

**[1:50]** individualistic that we can make decisions on our lives or about our lives and act like or pretend like they don't affect other people. I remember when I was just becoming a new Muslim and some of the Muslims told me the difference about coming to the West and if you like had a snack with you on a

**[2:08]** subway or on a train, they learned very quickly that it's considered weird to offer people some. That back home, that it would be considered weird to not offer people some. And this was a quality that the Prophet (ﷺ) praised when he praised the Ash'ari tribe. He said that when times got tough, they would gather

**[2:26]** together what they had and they would split it up equally among each other. There was this collective solidarity. And even the idea, the Prophet (ﷺ) said that he prohibited two people talking to the exclusion of a third person who's present because that would make the third person feel sad or

**[2:41]** alienated. So Islam has these things that cater towards our collective reality that we're interconnected and the things that we do and the choices we make and the things that we say have effects, very real effects on the people around us and the society around us.

**[2:58]** What's wild is that this is a problem that is so old that even like John Donne, the famous English poet, he writes this one poem lamenting the individualism in his age where he says, every man fashions himself a phoenix

**[3:13]** needing to be reborn. Like basically everybody wants to, everybody imagines that they have to invent themselves from nothing and be a self-made person. So he was dealing with that in the 1500s, you know, earlier and we continue to deal with it in new ways today. So these are just, you know, just an example of one of the many ways where

**[3:32]** Islam stands to offer alternatives and call people to something that is a more balanced way to live. If society has teetered or people have teetered to one extreme or the other, it's not to say that Islam is median in the

**[3:51]** sense that it is in between every extreme that you find. That's not what we're saying, but that Islam calls people to balance and a balanced life that both takes care of your individual needs and your collective responsibilities.

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