Is the UAE Destroying Islamic Morality? | Shahid Bolsen Responds to Brother Evan

Okay. So brother Evan, who I've talked about before, Evan Evan writes on x. He posted a tweet directed to me, and I wanna try to respond to it. And hope that I can answer these questions, in a satisfactory manner. Okay.

So first of all, thank you, brother Evan, for your very articulate post, your very thoughtful post, and your queries. I think that there's lot of different ways to approach the subject, a lot of different ways to analyze the issues that you raised, and I think it's a good opportunity to maybe dispel some misconceptions. I'll try to be as thorough as possible. I'll try to be as organized as possible. This might be quite long.

I think it's a good opportunity, to just even talk about The UAE itself for a minute. So to start off, if you'll indulge me, I would like to talk about my own personal background with regards to that country because I have a great deal of experience, with The UAE. I lived there. I was jailed there. And I'm, more intimately familiar with and more aware of and have worked to expose, and to correct injustices and corruption that take place inside The UAE more than most of the people who condemn The Emirates, and certainly more than any of the people, who very stupidly accused me of working for The UAE.

I actively participated, in resolving cases of wrongful detention, legal abuse, interpol abuse, torture, human rights violations, lies and corruption, all perpetrated by The UAE. I did that for about a decade. I am banned from entering that country, and I haven't been there since 2013. And the last time I actually walked around freely in The United Arab Emirates was around twenty years ago, because prior to 2013, I was in prison for seven and a half years. So my personal observation of the society is about twenty years old.

But my overall experience goes back to 2003 up until about 2023. That includes my the time that I lived there, the time that I was imprisoned there, and the time that I was working for Detained in Dubai, is the leading international organization dealing with human rights in The UAE. I have literally thousands of cases of wrongdoing committed by The Emirates in my head. Cases that I personally worked on, cases that I was involved with, individuals with whom who were involved in those cases, individuals who I personally know. I've criticized The UAE on my channel many times.

I was one of, if not the first person, to condemn their actions in Sudan at a time when I had Sudanese even in my DMs and in my comment section telling me that The UAE could not have possibly had a role in the RSF's attempted coup. And I've warned many times that The UAE is the most worrisome member of BRICS, in my opinion, more so than India for a variety of reasons. I've talked about how they're way too interested in using mercenaries than they should be, you know, when Sudan itself is a perfect example of why soft power would is always gonna work better for them than violence. Now, when I moved to The UAE, I was quickly disillusioned. And I can tell you that, no, it's not a misperception.

It's not an exaggeration in terms of the the that is in The UAE. It's probably a higher per capita number of nightclubs in The UAE than in any other Muslim country. And, yes, prostitution is rampant. And if you're going to The UAE expecting it to be like Medina at the time of Rasulullah you will be utterly shocked. I mean, the the image that people have globally of The UAE is not is not a western fabrication.

It's literally the image that The UAE spends millions upon millions of dollars on PR and marketing to promote. This is an image that they created. But again, with experience and with time and with interaction, you gain more perspective. And if you're someone who's interested in, as I know brother Evan is, in objective analysis, particularly around regional politics, geopolitics, and if you understand something about the history of the region and of The UAE, then The UAE is not that hard to understand. And now understanding is not the same thing as agreeing, and it's not the same thing as endorsing.

So firstly, think it's important to know some basic facts about The UAE. The actual Emirati population of The UAE is only about 10% of the population, and roughly a quarter of those Emiratis actually have heritage from Iran, from Balochistan, from Africa, and so on. They're not actually from the land itself by origin. The other 90% of the population comes from all over the place, South Asia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and so on, and other Arab countries like Lebanon, Egypt, and so on, Iraq, Syria, you know, Sudanese and Somalis and so on, Palestinians, etcetera etcetera. The actual Emiratis, you know, hail from the land itself, who come from the historical Bedouin tribes of the area, you'll barely ever see them if you're in The UAE.

You'll barely ever interact with them if you're there. Most of them are concentrated in and around Abu Dhabi, and they themselves tend to be quite conservative. Obviously, they're not only in Abu Dhabi. I'm not saying that. Most of the original tribes and the families are around there.

That's generally where you'll find them. The ones with literally centuries of history in that land. Okay. So there's that. 90% of the population is not Emirati, and the government actually deals with citizens very differently than they deal with non citizens or expats or what have you, tourists and so on.

And 100% of what you see in places like Dubai is there for that 90% and obviously for tourists. Maybe three quarters of that 90% of non citizen residents of The UAE are Muslim. So you can say that The UAE is roughly a 75% Muslim majority country, if you include the people who live there but who are not citizens up there. And then at any given time, you have approximately 260,000 tourists in The UAE, and the nightclubs and hookahs are primarily there for them. I think this is actually something that needs to be understood.

Again, understood, not agreed with or endorsed. The nightclubs and the prostitutes, and the allowance of things like bikinis and whatnot on the beaches, This is primarily for tourists, not for citizens, and largely not even for residents because the truth is that most non western residents in The UAE can't afford any of these things. UAE is an incredibly expensive place to live. Despite advertising, most of the people who live there are not rich, and they're not living decadent extravagant lives and so on. Most of the people are struggling, most of the people are working seven days a week, sending money home and barely making it.

That's a fact. I mean, it should be obvious that what you see in The UAE marketing, in their ads, in their promotion, their vlogs, what have you, all of these things that you see in the West, the image of Dubai, the image of The UAE, is very obviously curated and targeted to Western tourists. That experience of The UAE is largely a tourist experience. You understand? The vice that they promote is because they know that Westerners like vice and it brings them.

And they're largely the ones who are participating in that vice once they get there. It's there for them and it's promoted to them. And they're the ones mostly anyway who can even afford it, who can even afford to indulge in all of that. Mean, obviously, that's not to say that there aren't Emiratis themselves who do partake in these things. Of course, there there there are Emiratis who do that.

But these will tend to be the more westernized among the young people and so on. But as far as the government is concerned, these activities, this fascist is predominantly taking place among non citizens, and their prime concern is their own citizens, and is predominantly taking place among non Muslims. Now, if you look at the historical context, the the the land that became The UAE was colonized first by the Portuguese in the sixteen hundreds and then by the British, with the British being dominant in the that land between the seventeen hundreds all the way up to the nineteen sixties. So when you analyze a country, need to expand the pinhole that you're looking through, you know, to get a fuller picture, to understand where it has been so you can better evaluate where it is now. So for example, if you think that The UAE, the land that that that is now The UAE was more Islamic four hundred years ago or three hundred years ago or a century ago, you'd be wrong.

Because for like half a millennium or more before becoming a state, before independence, under the British and under the Portuguese for example, alcohol was completely legal. Prostitution was normal, you know, it was completely westernized and completely colonized. That's the history that you have to juxtapose the present the present day against. We're not talking about a place that has gone from a pristine implementation of Islam to a degenerate playground in 2024, 2025. We're talking about a country that has been gradually reclaiming control over its affairs for just the last fifty years, economically, politically, culturally, and religiously, after literally centuries of Western influence.

And obviously, that reclamation process is a process. You know, you can look at other countries, colonized or formerly colonized countries. Say Tunisia. Well, okay, alcohol is legal in Tunisia. Prostitution is legal in Tunisia.

There are nightclubs, there's bikini beaches, there's topless sunbathing in the hotels and so forth. You know, brothels in Turkey. Alcohol is completely legal in Turkey. Lebanon is the same. The point isn't that any of these things are okay or that because it exists in other Muslim majority countries, then, you know, The UAE is off the hook.

No. But the the the point is that all of these countries have an historical context, and that has to be factored into the evaluation. Alcohol is regulated in The UAE. It's not allowed for Muslims, and it's only allowed at certain locations. Look, locations that have been licensed.

You have to have a license for this. And it's illegal to be in public, with any trace of alcohol in your bloodstream, you know. Okay. Prostitution is officially illegal even though it is it blatantly exists, and enforcement of the law is quite selective. But again, we're talking about a country, we're talking about a system that has only existed in a in a structured, institutionalized way for just over fifty years.

You know, the legal system in The UAE is very, very underdeveloped. I can testify to that based on my own farcical trial experience, you know, when I was in when I when I had to go to court. And I can say it based upon the innumerable cases that I'm familiar with. The only degree of professionalism is really found at the supreme court. And I think that at least part of this is because The UAE has been hyper focused on building and diversifying their economy for maybe the last thirty years or so.

And that has left a lot of other areas of state development, state institutional development completely neglected. You know, it's not a cohesive, it's not a a disciplined system. You'll find police, prosecutors, lawyers, judges, and so on, not to mention citizens and residents. They don't even know what the laws are of the country. It's very arbitrary, it's very capricious, it's very selective.

And of course, personal connections, personal networks, and so on, usually determine the outcome of anyone's case or the way any dispute is handled, so forth or the way anyone is treated. See, The UAE was only, like, 20 years old, when the Gulf War happened. The first Gulf War, the invasion of, Kuwait by Iraq. And when the Soviet Union collapsed leaving America as the only remaining superpower. So in my opinion, these events, made The UAE leadership realize the need for economic diversification.

And they didn't wanna be entirely dependent upon oil, And they wanted to try to carve out some kind of sovereignty as a self subsisting economy. Well, as a desert country, their options were limited. You know, they went with logistics at first, a hub for re exports and so on, and they went with tourism. Well, the first sector is obvious due to their location. Logistics makes sense.

But tourism was less obvious and less viable. But we all know how they did it. They did it with opulence, decadence, luxury, and booze and hookahs. And then they had, you know, the the the outlandish real estate projects and so on. I mean, all sorts of other sectors developed as a result of what they were doing in the in the early days, especially in the area of finance and so on.

But, I mean, undeniably. Okay. Let me me talk about prostitution in in UAE. Women come to Dubai, say, from Russia. They work as prostitutes, generally serving foreign customers, westerners.

These are tourists, businessmen, and investors, and so forth. And that gives those investors something that they want. It increases the appeal of Dubai for them. Okay? But those women are only prostitutes in Dubai.

Back in Russia, they have shops, for example. So they'll make a lump sum of money while working as prostitutes in Dubai, and then they'll go to, like, somewhere like Dira, and they'll buy a bunch of supplies wholesale in bulk, and they'll ship it all back to Russia and sell it there. So their money circulates in Dubai. That's money being spent in Dubai shops that the tourist or the businessmen would not have spent otherwise. You know, it's a whole ecosystem.

And for The UAE, tolerating this has been very lucrative and has played a role in their goal of diversification. Is it moral? Obviously not. But the brother was asking about how allowing fascist has contributed to The UAE's overall geopolitical and strategic interest. Well, without taking this liberal attitude and without allowing things for non Muslims like this, their economy would likely be a fraction of what it is today.

Economic diversification for The UAE would have been much less achievable, and I think that's obvious. And I think it's also obvious that political power is greatly derived from economic power. You know, political independence is largely dependent on economic sovereignty, and I think that The UAE has been highly focused on their economy precisely for the purpose of being able to achieve political independence. And again, this cannot be understood in exclusion of The UAE's colonial history. You know, under the British, they had no control over their economy.

They had no control over their trade and what have you. And and from that experience, they learned, like many other colonized countries, they learned the supreme importance of money, the supreme importance of business, and having dominion and control over your trade. You know, they're also coming from a history in which there were always separate rules for non Muslims and separate rules for Muslims. You know, there were sharia courts for Muslims in certain matters, and there were separate courts for the non Muslims. So they've been habituated to this.

They've been habituated to the idea that non Muslims get to behave in their land in ways that Muslims do not. And there is precedence for that. There is some validity to that in the history of Islamic governance, you know, throughout the ages in Fiqh. There's some validity to that. Now, again, this is not an endorsement.

I'm just explaining the thinking behind it. Sheikh Zayed, the founder of The UAE, took a very laissez faire attitude towards religion and towards vice. He seemed to believe that it's up to the individual, you know, to decide for himself or herself. He didn't generally see that it it was the government's job to police religiosity, which for him also meant that the government didn't have to prohibit things for non Muslims that are prohibited from Muslims. You know?

There's a mosque over here and there's a nightclub over here and you choose which one you wanna go to. Never mind that that even allowing a nightclub in the first place creates a choice for people that you didn't have to create for them. You know? You just created a temptation, and you opened a door for evil that you didn't have to open for these people to begin with. But again, they've been thinking about their economy.

So if if Kufar want to go and spend money and doing things that Kufar like to do and spend money on, and you're officially prohibiting Muslims from doing those things, then their feeling was let them. Let the Kufar do it. Let them go and do these things and spend money on these things, and we'll make money off of that. And with that money, we'll secure our ability to get out from under Western political domination. This, I think, I believe that this was their rationale, and all of the evidence suggests that their plan has been working.

And you might not you you might not fully appreciate how well their plan has been working if you have never been involved in trying to get, UAE abuses, rights abuses addressed by foreign governments because you'll hit an absolute brick wall. The UAE has, has achieved a level of influence and autonomy which I think most people are completely unaware of. They've become a country that it is simply not possible, for the West to dictate to in most matters. With this autonomy, they have become more defiant. They've become even less sensitive to Western criticism.

You know, with regards to, for example, you LGBT, or religious offenses with regards to blasphemy, or censorship of what they regard as offensive media things on the media and so on. They legit do not care about any of this, what the West has to say. You know, they reintroduced a separate parallel court system for non Muslims, which just reinforces the role of Sharia for Muslims. And obviously, we know something about the extent to which The UAE's regional influence and their regional leverage has increased. It's completely disproportionate to their size as a country.

Now as I said, I think that there's a learning curve in the region. And in my opinion, you you know, someone like MBS, I think he's trying to see how he can take Saudi Arabia down a similar path, but without making all of the moral and religious compromises that The UAE has made because that's not even viable in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia can't be like Dubai. I mean, maybe that's what the NEOM project is supposed to be. You know?

We know that you you you people like to do a bunch of nasty things, so we're gonna give you this, you know, completely sealed off weird long box that you can do it in. But the point is, I think that they feel that there is safety and sovereignty in a successful economy. And with that safety and sovereignty, you can have the independence and autonomy to actually protect your society from external coercion, which ultimately is the only long term strategy for even being able to build and to maintain the sort of society that you want. And that's again based on their history and their experience, and it's based on simple logic. Now, okay, I know that that brother Evan wasn't asking for a, you know, a breakdown of The UAE per se, why it is the way it is and so on.

But I do think it's necessary to sort of address some of these things within the the in the context of his post. Because like I said, there are a number of Muslim countries that are far more liberal than The UAE. Yet, as he said, The UAE is the poster child for liberalization and liberalism. You know, Turkey is more liberal, but Erdogan is portrayed as a great Muslim leader. Malaysia is more liberal in some ways.

Indonesia is more liberal in many ways. You know, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon too. So I think it's important to point this out because the crux of brother Evan's queries is when tolerated immorality gets out of control, when it gets or you think that it's a danger to the Islamic moral character of the society. So it's important to note that there are countries where there is there are far greater levels of liberalism than in The UAE, no one gets alarmed about it. Which to me kind of suggests that the whole issue itself is disingenuous.

Not on the part of brother Evan, but on the part of people who seem to obsessively hate on The Emirates or hate on Saudi Arabia. I mean, in my opinion, there's many things that are far more concerning about The UAE than any of these issues from an Islamic point of view. But anyway okay. Enough about The UAE. Brother Evan is asking about what normal citizens as Muslims how we are supposed to navigate all of this when we see our governments implementing policies that are or seem to us to be immoral or so called un Islamic.

And this goes back to his introductory statement where he said that governments have to be kept in check by the people. Otherwise, if they're not kept in check by the people, they will become tyrannical and oppressive. First of all, that's an opinion. That's not necessarily true. I think it's fair to say that that that governments will always tend towards or often tend towards authoritarianism, but that's not the same thing as tyranny.

It's not the same thing as oppression. I think that the assumption that governments will always become tyrannical is sort of drawn from Western experience and Western history, in my view, in my opinion. Because that's what their governments always have done because that's what their governments always do and always have done. And and their their solution is to replace the government every few years, which just results in a tyranny of incompetence and insincerity. And it results in a in in in real power relocating outside the pale of government so that it can manage, the affairs of the society with a degree of continuity without any interference.

But if you have rulers, if you have a government that reigns for a longer guaranteed period of time, their expertise will be greater, their planning will be longer, and they'll have more of a stake, in my opinion. But, yes, of course, if there's no mechanism for removing them, then that can also turn into a sense of entitlement by the ruler, by the government, or what have you. And it can make them indifferent actually to the population. So, yeah, there does need to be some sort of a process of accountability. But the question is, accountability to whom?

And accountability by whom? And classically, in the Muslim world, that would be the, you know, people of influence, particularly the ulama, but also tribal chiefs, army commanders, and so on, you know, eminent families, prestigious, prestigious families, and so forth. Accountability to the general public, historically, only ever had to do with resolving, you know, particular individual grievances, and that would usually have been dealt with on the level of, like, provincial authorities. Concerns about the religious validity of policies, that's something that would have been raised by the privately with the ruler. Or else if we're talking about behaviors in society or rather misbehaviors in society becoming normalized in the society.

Well, the scholars would have addressed that through fatawah and through, you know, religious lectures, through and treatises that they would write and so on. Basically, through and. Let me be clear about one thing. The the idea of government of classifying governments as Islamic or un Islamic in an absolute way isn't how traditional Islamic governance was ever understood. That's a modern framework.

In classical fiqh, the main concern is just whether the ruler is Muslim or not. If the Muslim is, if the ruler is Muslim, then his rule is valid, even if he's unjust, even if his policies are questionable, even if he, fails in certain sharia compliance. Only thing that would invalidate his rule is open kufr, meaning clear undeniable rejection of Islam. It means that a government can just be better or worse in terms of sharia compliance, but that doesn't make it illegitimate. A ruler can be sinful.

A ruler can be oppressive. But as long as he doesn't reject Islam outright, well, then he's he's still recognized as the as a legitimate authority. The role of the people is not to delegitimize the government, but to try to guide and influence it towards better governance. Now that doesn't mean that we ignore injustice or ignore immorality and so on, but it means that we deal with it strategically through advising, through influencing, and through shifting public sentiment. You know, if the government is tolerating so called un Islamic practices, our job is to try to make sure that Islamic sentiment in the society is strong enough that they feel the pressure to correct course.

So instead of obsessing over whether a government is Islamic enough, then the real question is to what extent is it upholding or undermining the Sharia? To what extent is it tolerating immorality just for strategic reasons, or is it fundamentally shifting the identity of society away from Islam? You know, are we seeing isolated compromises being made, or are we seeing a structural replacement of Islamic principles? And determining the answers to these questions is not gonna be the job of the general public. It's gonna be the job of the scholars, those with knowledge and so forth.

And it's not the business of anyone who isn't under the jurisdiction of that government, you know. Some Muslim in The UK can't decide how Jordan should be governed, for example. And this is actually a serious problem in my opinion because of the Internet. We have Muslims, you know, in The US, in Canada, in The UK, Europe, or wherever deciding that the Khaleed is Islamically eroding. That this people or that people of this or that country are being de Islamized.

That Islam is dead in such and such country, thousands of miles away, and something needs to be done about it. You know? You understand how much that sounds like a colonizer mentality that that the people in country b are calling for the overthrow of the government in country a? You know? Or if not overthrow, then they just opine and they disparage and they claim, that, those people way over there in that other country, are being thrown into secular corruption.

Meanwhile, those people way over there in that other country are going to the masjid, they're wearing hijab, you know, they're giving zakah, they're fasting, they're memorizing Quran, they're just living Muslim lives like anyone else. You know, maybe there are concerts, maybe there are nightclubs in their countries, probably there are, maybe there's drugs, probably there are, there's prostitutes, probably. All of these things might exist in their country, as many of these things or most of these things have existed in the Muslim world to one degree or another for centuries. And the people who partake in those activities are mostly non Muslims, mostly tourists, or else already unserious Muslims. And those activities are being allowed for a variety of reasons, most often related to, particularly when you have a large non Muslim population living in that country who would accuse you of oppression if you didn't allow it, you know, or else you have some powerful external state external state actors who would make that accusation.

The bottom line is imperfect government is still a government, and we don't get to decide the legitimacy of that government based on our personal judgment or our personal opinion about its policies. Our responsibility is to engage, is to influence, and to shift the balance of opinion so that it is politically and socially impossible for the government to ignore Islamic values. That's how we hold power accountable, by making Islam the dominant force in society, you know. It means that if we wanna see change, we need to apply pressure where it actually matters, and that doesn't necessarily mean protest, it doesn't necessarily mean rebellion, it certainly doesn't mean rebellion. It means strategic influence, it means engaging with the the people of authority, the decision makers, the business leaders, the media, the scholars and so on.

Because these are the forces that actually shape governance. But your first stop your first stop should always be the scholars, because you don't know fit, you know. And despite what many people think or what most people think, most of the rulers in the Muslim world do consult with the ulama. They usually have a fitly foundation for all of these sorts of policies, you know. To what extent are non Muslims supposed to adhere to Muslim norms of behavior in spaces that are provided for them?

You know. This is largely it comes down to the of the ruler to decide that. And in order to make it clear that these activities are not supposed to bring Muslims to them, you get this contradictory phenomenon of where the government allows a policy or allows something, while simultaneously the governing religious authorities of that country issue a fatwa against it. Meaning, Muslims should not do this. And like I said, most most Muslims don't.

And in fact, most Muslims don't even need to be told. Like brother Evan mentioned the example of Singapore. Well, Singapore relatively recently repealed the law called section three seven seven a, which was a law that criminalized same sex relations between men. In other words, it's no longer criminalized in Singapore. They repealed it.

Okay. That had zero effect on the Muslim community of Singapore. Because Muslims follow the Sharia because of personal belief. In other words, just because the government allows something, it doesn't mean you have to do it. You know?

Muslims opposed the repeal when it was being debated, but repealing it didn't suddenly cause a wave of homosexuality in the Muslim community, you know, you can have a concert, you can have a nightclub, but Muslims understand this is not for us, and we don't go. And like I said, when you have a large non Muslim population, you have to navigate how to balance, to what extent you require those non Muslims to adhere to a Muslim lifestyle, you know. Or if your economy requires foreign non Muslim participation, you have to balance to what extent you're gonna cater to them for the sake of your own economic benefit, for the economic benefit of your nation. It's an incredibly tricky calculation. It's not easy.

But I do think that you'll find that most of the alarm about the supposed erosion of Islamic values in this or that country is usually being expressed by people who do not live in that country. You know, people who are not even familiar with the people of that country, who don't know the historical context of that country, people who don't even really understand the geopolitics, the economics, or the society that they're even talking about and pretending to be worried about. The truth is Islamic values and Islamic practice are stronger across the Muslim world, including the Khaleid, than they were fifty or sixty or a hundred years ago. I mean, take Malaysia. The indigenous people of Malaysia, the Malays, they're a 100% Muslim.

But in the nineteen sixties, they used to appear in liquor advertisements. But that's unthinkable to date. You know, Qatar defied the west when they banned alcohol at the stadium for the World Cup. And Saudi Arabia said that alcohol is not gonna be allowed when they host it. Observance of hijab is now really the norm across the Arab world, and even widely practiced in Turkey.

That wasn't the case not so long ago. I mean, I remember when it wasn't the case. You know, 1.6 per 1,000 people converted to Islam in The UAE last year compared to 0.09 conversions per 1,000 in The UK. No. Islam is doing fine in the Muslim world, including the GCC.

There are things that our governments do and that there are things that our governments allow which we do not approve of. And our popular disapproval prevents, and inshallah, always will prevent those things from ever being normalized and spread more broadly in our societies. I mean, there's something else to be said here. If the Muslims were gonna de Islamize and corrupt their societies, you know, fall into disbelief or whatever, well, had a chance to do that under colonization. Like I said, The UAE was under the British for centuries, and that didn't make them abandon their religion.

I mean, how many countries, Christianized under colonization? At least 50 at least 50 countries across, so called Latin America, Africa, and Asia all became Christian under colonization. Meanwhile, these people have been in our lands for centuries, really for basically a thousand years if you include the Crusades. And the most that they've ever ever been able to do to us is to impose foreign governmental structures on us and to one degree or another spread fascism. But Islam and iman have remained deeply rooted in our countries.

Because no matter how big their sword is, Islam is so much bigger that it's barely a beast thing when they come to us. And as soon as we start acquiring sovereignty, you see the manifestations of Islam that they tried to stamp out reemerge. So I think that the people who get alarmed about this sort of thing severely underestimate the power and the solidity of Islam in the Muslim world. You know, we may go through periods where we are collectively better or collectively worse. You know?

We may have rulers who are better or rulers who are worse. But this is just like how iman itself increases or decreases in the heart of an individual believer, but it never dies out. If the leaders are wrong in their itch to head, okay, this is between them and Allah See, there are like two conjoined hierarchies in society, pyramid shaped. One pointing up and one pointing down. The one pointing up represents the ruling structure itself.

Meaning, the higher up you go, authority increases until it's concentrated at the peak of the pyramid. The one pointing down represents responsibility. So at the peak of the power structure, you have the broadest responsibility. And at the bottom of the power structure, you have the least responsibility, you know, responsibility and accountability and so on. Where power is the least concentrated, where authority is the least concentrated, where you have the least authority, and that's the general public.

This is sensible, you know. It goes against the western delusions about democracy, But this is the most sensible approach, it's the most realistic and healthiest approach, you know. In the West, they wanna put responsibility on every rank and file citizen without giving them power, without giving them the information, without giving them the authority or the skills or the expertise that exists at the top of the ruling hierarchy. This just creates tension and stress, frustration, mania and so on, is dysfunctional. Feeling responsible for what you have no power and no authority to impact causes mental and emotional trauma.

So, you know, if the ruler is making a mistake, well, he'll answer for that. You won't. That's fine. If a ruler makes something aloud that's not allowed, he'll answer for that. You won't.

Unless you accept the allowance and go along with it, because there's no obedience to disobedience. And this is how Muslims operate. This is how most Muslims operate in the world and always have. I mean, everything is allowed in the West, for example. So does that mean that Muslims in the West will just abandon the rules, the the the akam of halal and haram in the West?

No. Well, they don't do that in the Muslim world either. So, you know, you can either take the position that Muslim rulers in The UAE or anywhere else are implementing policies, that seem immoral or are immoral because they sincerely believe that they're necessary according to their itched head, for the long term best interest of their nation. And you can acknowledge the evidence that this is true in so far as you can actually see the results. Or you can just believe that they're bad people who hate Islam.

It's up to you. But I think that's childish. I think it's much more realistic to understand that the rulers just have certain priorities, such as economic sovereignty, and they have a limited set of options for pursuing that, given the economic, geopolitical, and historical context of their countries, and given the real existing global power dynamics and regional power dynamics that they're contending with. I think it's foolish for anyone to believe that any of the rulers wanna destroy Islam, and I think it's even more foolish for anyone to believe that Islam can ever even be destroyed. And again, if you actually factor in history, we're not seeing anything in the Muslim world except for Islamic resurgence in our societies.

Even the fact that you have, you know, so many people condemning The UAE for some of the things that they allow, and rightly so from a moral perspective. This is proof of that reality. And the funny thing is that you have people attacking the GCC, attacking Saudi Arabia, and so on, based on a religious zeal that has largely been derived from the educational and Dawah efforts initiated and funded by Saudi Arabia and the GCC. No one has built more mosques, no one's built more madrasas, no one has put out more informational literature on Islam than these countries in the GCC. Saudi Arabia alone has spent close to a $100,000,000,000 since 1979 just to promote Islam globally.

That's over $2,000,000,000 per year for the last forty five, forty six years. That seems like a strange approach, if you're trying to destroy the religion. So basically, in my opinion, there's no loss for you if you give Muslim rulers the benefit of the doubt, you know. And if you consider the possibility that they might be navigating complexities that you can't fathom, and that they're doing the best they can. And if they do things where they allow things that contradict with what you understand to be correct in Islam, well, they're gonna meet Allah with all of their deeds just like the rest of us, but it costs you nothing to think the best of people, even the rulers.

And it benefits you nothing to think ill of them, you know. They sin and you sin. They make mistakes and you make mistakes, and you should love for your brother what you love for yourself, which is guidance and forgiveness. You know, there isn't one model for strengthening Islam in our societies. In other words, sometimes it works from the top down, and sometimes it works from the ground up.

So if you think that the top down approach is faltering, then okay. Protect and strengthen Islam in yourself, in your household, in your family, in your community, in expanding circles outwards. You know, take responsibility over what you actually have authority over, and don't busy yourself with pretending to be responsible for what's beyond your control.