Something strange is happening in the Muslim world today. You can feel it when you scroll through social media, when you listen to certain so- called “Muslim speakers,” and even when you watch news panels or the so-called experts discussing Islam. There’s a growing trend of people presenting themselves as representatives of the religion yet they don’t have the training, the background, or the grounding in the classical tradition that every real scholar insisted upon for centuries. Not to say that one who is not an alim should not speak about Islam because that would be contrary to the teaching of the Prophet (ﷺ) who said:“Convey from me, even if it be an Ayah”. However, many tend to forget the second part of the same hadith which says ‘And whoever lies upon me purposely, then let him take his seat in the Fire.” [1]
And the concerning part is not just that these people are unqualified. The concerning part is why they are given a platform in the first place.
If you look at policy papers like Civil Democratic Islam [2], not conspiracy theories, but an actual published recommendations by think tanks you see a very clear strategy. They openly discuss which kinds of Muslim voices should be promoted, which ones should be sidelined, and how “helpful” it would be to push certain interpretations of Islam over others obviously for their own empirical and political gain. They frame it as reform, modernization or social progress. But when you read closely, it becomes obvious that the goal is to reshape Islam to the extent it is no longer Islam which was lived and practiced by the Companions of the Prophet (ﷺ)
The kuffar of the West who benefit from the division of the Ummah do not want the Muslims to unite, and even more so, they do not want the Muslims to unite upon the real Islam that was revealed to Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ). Since they know it is impossible to erase the religion, their strategy becomes “If we cannot remove Islam, then let us shape the voices of Muslims so that those who speak do so in our language and promote a version of Islam that does not challenge our imperial interests.”
And this is where the unqualified public figures who are called scholars these days in the west and well as in the east come into picture.
These individuals are invited to conferences, given media spots, and presented as “Muslim thinkers,” or even “Muslim Scholars”, even though many of them have never studied Arabic, usul al-fiqh, hadith sciences, or any of the disciplines that have defined Islamic scholarship for 1400 years. Yet they speak on matters that classical scholars approached with much caution. For centuries, the scholars warned about exactly this problem
Imam Ibn Sirin famously said, “Indeed, this knowledge is your religion, so look carefully at whom you take your religion from.”[3]
Imam Malik would refuse to give fatwas if he felt he hadn’t studied the issue deeply enough — and that’s Imam Malik, one of the greatest jurists in Islamic history. Their message was simple: knowledge must come from people qualified to carry it.
Today, the loudest voices often come from people chosen not because of their knowledge but because they say what powerful institutions want Muslims to hear. When a government or think tank wants a certain message to spread, it becomes very easy to elevate someone who naturally aligns with that message. They get the microphone, and the actual scholars get drowned out, jailed and sometime bombed.
The result is confusion. Ordinary Muslims begin to feel embarrassed about their own religion. They start hearing that hijab is cultural, that modesty is outdated, that Islamic morality belongs in a museum, and that secularism is the natural “next step” for Muslim identity. These ideas don’t come from within the Islamic tradition — they come from political and social pressures, dressed up in Islamic vocabulary.
Modernists want the Islamic world to become part of global modernity.
They want to modernize and reform Islam to bring it into line with the age [4]
It is essential to understand that modernity in technology, education, scientific advancement, and societal progress when kept within the guidelines of Islam is an integral part of our religion. However, the form of modernity promoted by these non-Islamic ideological frameworks which is no longer a hidden agenda as it used to be pushes Muslims toward a complete negation of Islamic principles. This is a topic that truly deserves an entire book, but for the sake of clarity and further reference, we will share a video that discusses this issue in detail.
We will, In Sha Allahu taala, write more in our upcoming blogs on these topics, addressing the figures whom many Muslim youth unfortunately look up to today. We have also produced a video series in The Reviving Series – Season 1, where we explain the dangers of certain modernist trends that present themselves under the cloak of Islam while promoting ideas aligned with RAND.
We ask the Muslims to hold onto your deen with knowledge. Surround yourselves with people who truly understand the religion, as our Salaf taught and practiced themselves. And remember that Islam has survived every empire, every agenda, every attempt at reshaping it because the truth doesn’t disappear just because someone prefers a different version of it.
The battle is now being fought with ideas and with definitions, in who gets to speak for Islam and who gets to shapes your understanding of your own deen
Understand the plots of the enemies of Allah , they plan to make you turn away from your deen
but Allah (عزَّ وجلَّ) says in the Quran “They wish you would disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so you may all be alike.” – Surah An-Nisa 89
References
- Sunnah.com. (n.d.). Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 3461. https://sunnah.com/bukhari:3461
- Benard, C. (2003). Civil democratic Islam: Partners, resources, and strategies (Report No. MR-1716). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2005/MR1716.pdf
- Sunnah.com. (n.d.). Mishkat al-Masabih, Hadith 273. https://sunnah.com/mishkat:273
- Benard, C. (2003). Civil democratic Islam: Partners, resources, and strategies (Report No. MR-1716). RAND Corporation. https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monograph_reports/2005/MR1716.pdf
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