Islam is Reality, Not Religion: Don't Adapt Your Message for Western Approval

Well, you know, it's symptomatic or demonstrative of the Western Superiority Complex, which you know, actually even that term needs to be interrogated a little bit, Western Superiority Complex. Because in fact what we're talking about most of the time is not a superiority complex sort of by definition, but it's a condition which compels them to always want or to always need to invalidate and delegitimize and to subordinate others. Meaning it's not actually a sense of of actually being superior as in they're not sitting comfortably in a sort of assured state of certainty about their superiority, rather they need to be assured that others will count out to them and that is the basis for proving their superiority to themselves. You understand? Because I mean if you're superior, if you if you genuinely believe that you are superior and that the rest of us are inferior intellectually, culturally, morally, racially, or what have you.

If that's what you really think, then I don't think that you would feel threatened or intimidated by others, you know. But being treated as superior by us is the only way that you can really feel like you're on the top, that's the only way. Your superiority relies completely on enforcing the inferiority of others and having them comply with your sense of your own superiority. It's not something that you feel comfortable about just on your own. And of course then when you are consistently treated this way, treated as superior, then you develop the expectation that you will be treated this way by everybody, you know.

And anyone who does not treat you this way, well, absolutely agitates you. That agitates you and gets you gets under your skin like nobody else. So I started to say is demonstrative of this complex that Westerners always assume that their paradigms are absolutely true, and that their paradigms are objectively correct, and anything, any concept, any idea, any viewpoint, any point of view that does not fall within the the the parameters of their paradigms, well they should see it automatically as a shortcoming. And they are really blind about this. They're completely blind about this.

I can give you an example. It's a it's a fairly commonly occurring example for me. I had someone tell me on x a few days ago that they follow my content and they said that they agree with me on everything except for when I talk about Islam, when I talk about religion. And he said, religion is a private matter and should never be brought into discussions. You know, should never be brought into discussions about, you know, socioeconomic issues, political issues, geopolitics, and what have you.

And he said, he basically told me that if I would just leave that element out of my content, well then I would have a much broader appeal and I'd be able to reach a much wider audience. I mean, where do I even begin with that? You see, again there are so many layers to the mental cage that these people are in. There are so many layers of obliviousness and presumptuousness, you know. The complete lack of self awareness that they have is really stunning.

And all of that would be manipulation. Understand, all of that would be manipulation if you didn't recognize it for what it is. Do you know what I mean? Like if you were not aware, if you did not instantly see the absolute unqualified arrogance of that comment, and you made the mistake of thinking that there was actually anything genuine or anything honest about this engagement, well then you could easily get manipulated by it, you know. That casual audacity is a tactic whether they know it's a tactic or not because if someone doesn't consider what they're saying to be audacious, if they don't consider it to be arrogant, then you can kind of set a tone where that arrogance will not be taken as arrogance, but will actually be taken seriously.

You understand? But if you are actually grounded in your own understanding, then the first thing you notice is the arrogance in a comment like that. See that casual arrogance can fly under the radar if you're not careful, and before you know it you're sinking into a discussion, framework of discussion that already completely concedes your own legitimacy and your own validity. But when you are aware and when you are rooted in your own epistemology, then the first thing that you see, you know, but the first thing that you see is just someone who is completely encased in their own western pathologies. You see someone who is actually completely incapable of usefully interacting with non westerners.

They can only talk to other westerners. They're only capable of talking to other westerners, other people within their cult. I'm not gonna make it a habit to to do talks or to make videos where I'm breaking down individual comments by people. Comments that expose the intellectual dysfunctions of westerners. And by the way that includes westernized non westerners, which there are plenty of those.

But I do think that some of the particular dimensions of this comment might be useful for us to dissect as a way to help sort of show what what I'm talking about. But I mean, their paradigms versus our paradigms and so on. So what this comment is saying, I mean the the surface level of intellectual stuntedness in this comment. What this comment is saying basically is brother Shaheed I agree with everything that you say except for the parts in your content that disagree with my personal opinions and my personal biases. And you should therefore eject those parts from your content and that would make your content more popular.

If you remove the parts that I disagree with, which means of course that that his personal opinions and his personal biases actually mirror the opinions and the biases of the wider population. Which is why if I adjust my comment to suit those biases, then he says according to his logic I will have broader appeal. I mean think that through. First of all, it says about the commenter is that you actually operate within the dominant paradigm. This is admitted in your comment.

You you operate within the dominant paradigm and whatever falls outside of that I e whatever falls off the narrative shelf that I've talked about, well that makes you uncomfortable. And your advice is for me to conform to the parameters of accepted western paradigms To to conform to the limits of that shelf, which means that no, you do not actually agree with any of my content. You understand? He needs my criticism of the West to be presented within western paradigms. You know, secularism, atheism, humanism, liberalism, leftism, whatever.

And if it if it's coming from outside those Western civilizational paradigms, then it is invalid and it is illegitimate and it is flawed. That's the position he's taking. Meaning, whatever he might think about himself as an anti imperialist or as an anti colonialist, as a critic of the West, he is in fact someone fully immersed in it and who completely upholds it to the point of opposing those who oppose it by calling for epistemological concession on our side. You understand me? He's opposing those who oppose western paradigms because he's insisting that we accommodate and adhere to those western paradigms in our criticism of the West.

And he doesn't he's not even aware of the hypocrisy of that. He's not even aware of what that says about himself. Right? He said religion is a private matter. Well, who told you?

You understand? That obnoxious assertion is completely a 100% based on you thinking that your opinion which is derived from exclusively western experience and western history, you think that that is a universal truism. You think that your premise is a fact, not a bias, not an opinion. Well, don't accept that. No.

Atheism is a private matter. Lack of belief is a private matter and you should keep that to yourself. No. I do not agree whatsoever that I am supposed to separate Islam from how I understand the world. That's what you want me to do.

You want me to abandon my whole belief system, my whole epistemology, the foundations of my knowledge whenever I engage with the world and talk about the world. You want me to see Islam the way that your dysfunctional so called civilization sees religion as if your view has ever been correct. Your view about the world or your view about religion As if your religion has ever been correct. Or as if there's any equivalence whatsoever between your religion and Islam. No.

Obviously, I reject that. Obviously, that's ignorant. You should understand and I think Muslims need to be clear about this. When we're talking to westerners or when we talk about Islam or more specifically when we refer to Islam in our perspectives on things. Understand we are not talking about a religion, we're talking about reality.

See, we don't see this the way you see this. Islam is not a religion in the way that you think about religion. No. This isn't just some philosophy that we concocted that that that human beings concocted to make us feel better or to give us some sort of personal private solace in an otherwise chaotic world. And therefore if it was that, then it's something that we should be able to compartmentalize the way you do, and say, this does not really have anything to do with the real world.

This is just something private that we tell ourselves, and therefore we should not apply this in our judgments about reality. No. Not at all. That's not how this works. That's not how Islam works.

We don't operate in your paradigms about religion, understand this. No, Islam is reality not religion. Islam is reality. And we're not going to pretend otherwise just because it doesn't accommodate your views about what religion is. Your misunderstanding about religion does not require us to accommodate your ignorance.

See, you're taking atheism or anyway, unreligiousness as the basis or or as the base standard of objectivity and intelligence, but it's obviously not that. That's an incredibly biased ignorant position, you know. When you say take religion out of your discourse, you're not saying anything except adopt my atheistic framework in all discourse because I don't think that your religion is real or useful. I don't think that Islam is what you say Islam is. I I reject that.

Well, who cares what you reject and what you accept, what you think Islam is or what it isn't? Who cares what you what you say Islam is or what your so called civilization says it is. Your so called civilization that we're criticizing after all. We're supposed to adopt the position of your so called civilization with regards to our civilization while we're criticizing yours. We're supposed to take your position regarding Islamic civilization as if your position towards Islamic civilization, your position towards Islam itself, your position towards religion itself, as if this is not a fundamental cause of why your so called civilization is as primitive as it is, is as undeveloped as it is, is as morally bankrupt and as brutal and as violent as it is.

No. This is your whole problem. No. Your atheism is subjective. It's irrational.

It's an irrational bias. And it has been responsible for absolutely staggering deterioration in your society in every conceivable way. You got even worse, you got even more vicious, you got even more bloody, you got even more savage when you disavowed your church and you were already vicious and bloody as it was. You were already vicious and bloody as Christians. But when you decided to be atheists, when you decided to become your own gods, oh, you multiplied your cruelty, you multiplied your brutality, you multiplied your greed and your immorality exponentially.

And the fact that you can actually think that you are advocating this, this atheism and secularism as a rational, reasonable intellectual position. You think that it's that, and that religion should be a private matter that's kept out of discourse, and kept out of analysis, and so forth. And that religion should never be invoked as something that provides solutions and something that provides corrections to human behavior and that provides a better outcomes to society. If that's what you think, then you are an enemy to your own self and to everyone else. No.

You need to keep your atheism out of any discussions. Well, lucky. You need to keep your atheism out of any discussions about the world, human beings, about society, about politics, about geopolitics and so forth and so on. You need to keep that to yourself. Do us all a favor because that is something atheism, secularism and so forth that has caused more catastrophes to the human race than anything else in history.

And this is objectively true. This is objectively the fact. You know, always like to say that religion that religion has caused more wars and death and more destruction than anything else because you never looked into it. But history does not support your position at all at all. I mean between the beginnings of Christianity until the so called enlightenment, we're talking across multiple wars, conflicts.

Conflicts that are typically categorized as religious in nature even though that's debatable. Listen, you you killed roughly somewhere between 10 to 25,000,000 people. We're talking about from from year one of Christian on the Christian calendar to around 1685. 10 to 25,000,000 casualties in a millennium and a half or so. That's an average to to something like six thousand to fifteen thousand deaths per year pre enlightenment.

Okay? Now ever since you got enlightened, ever since you threw off the shackles of the tyrannical supposedly warmongering church between 08/1685 until today about three hundred fifty years, three hundred fifty years of you being enlightened, of you being secular, where you've killed between 250 to 500,000,000 people. That's like half a million to a million people per year for the last three hundred fifty years. I understand you killed 20 times more people in about a quarter of the time ever since you became secular, ever since you became atheistic and so called enlightened. And you still have the gall to advocate for this?

No. This is something you should be ashamed of. It's completely discredited morally. You should never even disclose to anyone that you believe in such a horrendous approach to the world as atheism. See this is what I mean, it's like you people can't even open your mouth on any topic, almost any topic at all except that you reveal to everyone how densely indoctrinated you are.

That's the only thing that any intelligent person ever gets from your comments, well, Gets gets from your advice just how densely indoctrinated you are, that's all they see. And then there's the part where he said that if I remove the religious element, if I remove the Islamic element from my content, from my talks, well then I would have broader appeal. As if this is the reason to say things, this is supposed to be your motivation, this is supposed to be the driver, mass appeal, bigger audience, more approval. That's why people say what they say, not just to tell the truth. You think I don't know that if I take the truth out of my statements then that will instantly make them more popular?

That that will make my content more popular? Obviously, know that. Yes, I can tell you what you wanna hear, that's easy. I can tell you what you wanna hear, I can use your paradigms, you know, I can do what do what your leftists do and criticize the West, criticize colonization, criticize capitalism and so forth according to your frameworks, your western frameworks, Marxism, what have you. And in so doing actually uphold the primacy of western narratives, uphold the primacy of western epistemology.

Sure, can do that. I know how you talk, I know how to talk your language. I know what allowable critique is, you know, what kind of critique is permitted on the narrative shelf, I know that. Yes, I can be just as dishonest as you are if dishonesty and falsehood are fine with me, you understand? And if I didn't have any sincere or genuine concern for people, if I didn't care about them actually learning something, learning the truth, actually benefiting and actually developing, if I didn't care about any of that, then yeah sure of course.

It'll be the easiest thing in the world to just keep perpetuating the same false world views that have oppressed the whole world for so long. The same false narratives, the same false frameworks while pretending to be critiquing them. Obviously, know very well how to use your epistemology, I grew up with it. We all know your epistemology, you force it on everyone. And that epistemology like I say has been an absolute disaster for mankind.

And this person pretending that they agree with everything in my content except for the Islamic elements, you know, you pretend that you agree with me except for the Islamic elements, while at the same time you're urging me to embrace western epistemologies and western paradigms and western frameworks. No. That means that you have not even understood my content much less agreed with any of it. You haven't understood a single word that I've said. Not to mention you say broader appeal.

Right? A broader audience, that's what I should be looking for. But what you mean is Westerners. What you mean is people who live and die inside those paradigms. It's just like when when when America and the EU call themselves the entire international community.

Right? If I remove the Islamic element from my content, then I can have an appeal to that broader audience of some 700,000,000 westerners instead of to that more narrow audience of 2,000,000,000 Muslims and 4,500,000,000 non Muslims in the global South. According to you, the broader audience that that 700,000,000 is broad and 6,500,000,000 is narrow. Look, know that non muslim analysts, I know that non muslim and western analysts and academics and community leaders and even politicians, I know that they listen to Middle Nation content and I know that they will never admit that they listen to Middle Nation content. And I know that they're never gonna invite me to speak, they're never gonna have me on a panel or anything like that.

But I know absolutely that they're listening without a question, without doubt. And I also know without doubt that they won't won't admit that fact because of the Islamic element in my content. And I'm aware of this. I know they won't have me on and they won't invite me at all on any sort of a panel or platform because I'm controversial, because I have a sketchy past and what have you. No one is gonna admit that they're listening but they are listening.

We see them copy Middle Nation content, they learn from Middle Nation content, they may not like it but they do. You know, they'll start taking middle nation positions, we see it, they take middle nation positions months later or even years later even after they themselves might have dismissed that content or those positions or even criticized it when those positions were first published on the channel. And anyone who follows our channel knows it and sees it when it happens, you know. Shahid is too radical. Right?

Shahid is too anti West. Shahid is too pro Muslim. He's not objective. Shahid is this, Shahid is that, Shahid is the other until I'm not. Until I'm not.

Let me tell you something, I didn't come to Islam because of some spiritual experience, some epiphany. I didn't have anything like that. And I also wasn't going through any type of transitional difficulties in my life or any kind of a crisis that caused me to embrace Islam in some sort of a desperate search for meaning, that's the thing that happens. No. I came to Islam through an analytical process, through a strictly rational reasoned process, an intellectual process.

And the fact of the matter is you cannot treat Islam the way you treat any religions. It is qualitatively and quantifiably distinct. Listen to me, your experience with Christianity is not informative at all about Islam. I mean truth be told this is exactly the same sentiment that made Christianity completely unrecognizable from the teachings of Nabi Isa Alaihi Salam. The teachings of prophet Jesus, the original teachings of prophet Jesus.

Because you have that sentiment, that sentiment of alter the message to give it broader appeal. Make it more relatable to what people already believe and what people already accept, use their paradigms. That's what you did with the teachings of Jesus. This has been your whole problem for two thousand years because you want acceptance not change, you want approval not rehabilitation, you want popularity not improvement. But like I've said many many times, we publish what we publish on the channel for posterity not for popularity.

We are here to bear witness. Inshallah with as much honesty as possible to bear witness regardless of whether or not our testimony makes anyone comfortable or makes anyone uncomfortable. We're not doing it for comfort or discomfort, we're doing it to tell the truth. Middle nation is a Muslim channel and our three objectives, the three objectives of Middle nation are to promote the economic sovereignty, the political independence and the psychological decolonization of the Muslims and of the global South more broadly. Yes, we have a significant audience in the West.

We have a significant number of westerners who follow the channel, but the West is not our primary audience. Even even when I talk to or about Westerners in my content, the audience is still our own people. It's always our own people. I'll talk to you, I'll talk to Westerners about how they are primarily so that our own people can understand how they are. And if any westerners take that to heart, I don't bear you any ill will in the West.

I don't I bear you no ill will as Allah is my witness. I wish no bad for you. I think that what has been done to you, to your collective psyche in the West, to your minds, what your so called civilization has done to you, in fact, I think it's actually worse than anything that you ever did to us, including colonization, including the crusades, including all the wars and the invasions and the literally hundreds of millions of deaths that you've caused. I think what you've done to your own people is worse because what you have done to your own people has been to make them into that kind of people who can even commit such atrocities and feel nothing about it, and feel fine about it, even feel proud about it. That means no matter how many of our lives destroyed, there isn't a single life in any of your societies that you have not destroyed.

You destroyed their minds, you destroyed their morals, you destroyed them spiritually, you you destroyed them spiritually, you destroyed them mentally, you destroyed them intellectually, you destroyed them morally, and you destroyed their humanity. And you did that systematically, and you're still doing it systematically, relentlessly, and ruthlessly on an ongoing basis. Yes, I have pity for you. I have pity for you and I don't have any hatred and I don't have any ranker towards you whatsoever. But yes, also unfortunately, I cannot say that I have respect for you.

I mean except for respect for you as a fellow human being just on that basis, But even my respect for you as a fellow human being, well that mostly manifest in the form of pity. In the form of pity. Because you were raised in a so called civilization that has not in fact has not endowed you with any characteristics deserving of respect beyond that. And this comment, this comment that I'm responding to is a perfect example of that. That so called civilization has made you oblivious, it has made you delusional, it has made you unserious, it has made you mentally and intellectually stunted, and has made you rigidly encased in a box of indoctrination.

A box of indoctrination that completely disconnects you from reality. With every passing day, it becomes more and more conspicuous to everyone else in the world and fewer and fewer people are willing to play along and pretend that you make any sense whatsoever. And I'm sorry to tell you that, but you need to know. Yes, I have said it before, I am a Muslim supremacist, an Islamic supremacist. Absolutely, 100%, yes, I am.

And I know that you don't want me to be that. I know that you wanna apply your understanding of what supremacism means and what that what what that would imply, the word supremacism. But it's got nothing to do with your white supremacy or your western supremacy or any other type of racial supremacy or what have you or any any of your conceptions of supremacy. No. It has to do with the supremacy of values and morals.

It has to do with the supremacy of justice over injustice. The supremacy of tolerance over intolerance. Decency over indecency. Morality over immorality. It has to do with the supremacy of fairness over unfairness, and honesty over dishonesty, and the supremacy of truth over falsehood.

It has to do with the supremacy of God over creation. It has to do with the superiority of those who submit to God over those who deny God and who oppose God. Of course, I know that if I remove that element from my content you will like me a whole lot better. I'm obviously aware of that. I know if I do that you'll share my content, you'll invite me on your programs, you'll quote me in my analysis, I'll get interviews and invitations and so forth.

If I would only just remove that element from my content, that has to do with prioritizing truth over falsehood. But you see I can't do that because I do not subscribe to that atheistic secular paradigm that has ransacked the world for four hundred years. That paradigm which sees any sort of value in being welcomed by the creation if it means being rejected by your creator. And the truth of the matter is that I can't even give you an honest analysis, I can't even give you an honest critique of the West if I don't tell you that it is exactly that paradigm that is at the core of your dysfunction.