# Why Don't Muslims Just Leave? | Imam Tom Weekly

**Author:** Tom Facchine
**Series:** Imam Tom Live
**Published:** 2025-02-26
**YouTube:** https://youtu.be/TwrmT7IMZ9A
**URL:** https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/imam-tom-live/why-dont-muslims-just-leave-imam-tom-weekly
**Topics:** Culture, Family & Community, General Psychology, Psychology & Mental Health

## Description
"Why don’t you just leave?" It’s a question Muslims in the West hear all the time—sometimes even from fellow Muslims. If you believe in Islam, why not move to a so-called "Muslim country"? But is hijrah really the answer? Imam Tom Facchine unpacks the deeper issues behind this question, from the...

## Transcript
**[0:00]** Why don't you go live in some country that practices Islam or Islamic law? Why don't you guys just make Hijrah? If you don't like it, why don't you leave? And if you guys, you hear, you're Muslims, you believe Islam is the best, you think Islamic values and Islamic guidance are the best, why don't you go live in some country that practices Islam or Islamic law?

**[0:16]** We get this question from Muslims too. Everybody always asks, why don't you go to the Emirates or to Qatar or to any of these other countries that seem to be practicing Islam? And that really misses the whole point. The whole Hijrah conversation, I mean, I'm a convert.

**[0:31]** Like I'm from this country, my family has been in the United States since 1905. I have a certain duty to this place when it comes to wanting what's best for it. And certainly the Prophet (ﷺ), he lived this example, which is part of the Sunnah of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala,

**[0:48]** that He sends people as messengers to their own group, to their own nation, right? He doesn't outsource the job. So if you understand that one of the most important things is to have a da'wah mentality, that you're not just an individual just trying to live a comfortable life,

**[1:04]** that you're supposed to raise the bar, you're supposed to carry Allah's message forth wherever you go. Then what better place to do that than in places where Islam is hardly known or poorly known or misunderstood or misrepresented? And especially if you're from that place, then you actually have a duty to carry forth the da'wah in that place.

**[1:22]** Now, if you can't practice your Islam and you're going to be thrown into jail just for the shahada and praying and trying to go to the mosque, but that's not the situation of most people. Most people, especially in the United States, most people across the world, you're allowed to practice your faith. You're allowed to do the basics, establish the five pillars.

**[1:39]** And so, yes, there are challenges, especially if you're raising children here. There's acculturation and there's different forces of assimilation that you have to plan for. However, you have a certain responsibility to carry da'wah forth. And the other thing is that Muslims need to be real.

**[1:54]** The places that you have imagined in your head from YouTube as being this great Hijrah place is not really all it's cracked up to be most of the time. You likely have a romanticized image in your head that the grass is always greener on the other side. And so if anybody is seriously like,

**[2:09]** listen, I can't take it anymore or I'm worried about my children and I want to move, then rather than talk about vagaries and talk about ambiguity and talk about things on such a high level that they're not even comparable, you really have to talk about specifics like this specific town over here

**[2:26]** and this block that I live on in this community I live on over here versus this community in this town in this country over here. If you can't make that level of comparison, then honestly, I don't see that as a very serious Hijrah conversation. And to the non-Muslims who are wondering, why don't we just leave?

**[2:41]** Well, you have to understand, we believe you should stay and try to persuade people and convince people to change a place for the better. I don't know where people got this idea of voting with your feet where everybody just leaves according to, oh, well, there's a regime over here or there's a country over here that espouses my values.

**[3:00]** People have the right to live in the place where they're from and they have the right to attempt to persuade people to change that place or to change how that place is governed or how that place is organized. So this idea of, well, if you don't agree with what we're doing, then you get out. That's ludicrous. I'm sorry.

**[3:16]** That, no, I'm going to stay and I'm going to try to argue and shoot videos and write books and write articles and try to persuade people and show people a better way.

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