# What Activism Is Missing Today | Snapshots with Imam Tom Facchine

**Author:** Tom Facchine
**Series:** Imam Tom Live
**Published:** 2025-07-10
**YouTube:** https://youtu.be/1i5JD8V0w0c
**URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/what-activism-is-missing-today-snapshots-with-imam-tom-facchine
**Topics:** Politics & Practical Theology, Social Justice

## Description
Imam Tom Facchine sits down with Paul Williams from Blogging Theology for a conversation on truth, God, Christianity, liberalism, identity, and how Islam reframes it all.

## Transcript
**[0:00]** Political activism needs Islam more than ever, in both directions. Meaning that, pastorally, as an individual, you won't be able to be as effective as you could be.

**[0:17]** And you might even fail entirely, if you are not tied to the worship of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. If you have not purified your soul. Just look at the social movements in American history. Many times, different social and political movements were undermined, infiltrated, sabotaged by their lack of discipline and their lack of piety.

**[0:41]** Self-serving, right? And so delusion is the first stage to corrupt someone's nobility and deny or invalidate their ability or capacity to act ethically. One of the most powerful politicians in New York was arrested Thursday on corruption charges.

**[0:56]** Authorities say New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver used... Breaking news! A judge has just sentenced former Senator Bob Menendez in the Gold Bar bribery case. When it comes to refusing a bribe, when it comes to refusing to act immorally, when it comes to doing the right thing when no one is watching, there's no substitute for taqwa.

**[1:15]** There's no substitute for piety. That you know that your Lord is watching. And you're striving for Jannah and everything that you're doing is brought into that project of striving for Jannah. So it's very, very important from the individual aspect that it's going to be the fuel.

**[1:30]** Your taqwa, your piety, your purification, all those things might be your limiting factors when it comes to how effective of an activist you can be. But activism also has to change. Much activism today, and we look not with an eye or with an intent of belittling anyone in their work, nor do we want to discourage anybody from doing the work that they're doing.

**[1:54]** But we look at it from a lens of taqweem, of evaluation and assessment. And how can we improve? How can we have ihsan in this thing? Much of our activism is very expressive, meaning that it's more calibrated to express how we feel about something than it is to achieve specific strategic objectives.

**[2:14]** And if you look at the seerah of the Prophet (ﷺ), he was extremely strategic when it came to the types of resistance, the passive resistance and active resistance that took place during the Meccan period. When it comes to on the battlefield, when it comes to his entire life, extremely strategic.

**[2:30]** And so we have to question, what does activism look without Islam, without worship, without taqwa? The same tactics over and over again, whether they meet the scenario or not. The same sort of emphasis on our output and our energy and our intention and our righteousness or our rage or feeling that we are in the right.

**[2:52]** And not necessarily on impact, accomplishments, achievements, goals. I think that if we have a more Islamic activism, then we will be able to do both of these things. We will be able to engage in these activities, but in a sensible way where it is strategic, it is matched up to achieving concrete goals and objectives.

**[3:13]** It is creative. It's not just stuck in the same rut of doing the same things that everybody is always doing. It will be moral. It will be uplifting. It will be inviting. And it will be, insha'Allah, victorious. Al-Fatiha.

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