What is Middle Nation? | Shahid Bolsen Explains

What exactly is Middle Nation? Well, Nation is just a translation of the term that Allah used to describe the Muslims. Literally, a nation that is just, balanced, and moderate. And these qualities contribute to Allah's further description that our ummah is the best ummah that was ever raised among mankind. It is this balanced, fair, moderate nature that helps to make us the best ummah.

We're proportionate, we're reasonable, we're judicious, and we exist at the perfect point between extremes, swastia. So it seems to me that these attributes of the Muslim ummah, should be emphasized and should be actualized in our approach to the world, and our approach to each other. We should operate within this paradigm, this way of thinking, and develop a sort of middle nation mentality, a mentality of maturity and dispassionate realism. A mentality of moderation and balance and equilibrium and practicality, intellectually, religiously and in all that we do. This is We should embody intellectually and in our analysis, our understanding, and in our opinions, and in our reactions to world events the characteristics of a witness, because we know that this is another distinction of our that we will be called as witnesses over all the nations who came before us.

So we should try to embody the qualities of a reliable, impartial, uncompromised and uncompromising witness testifying under oath on the witness stand, telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. This means doing our best to have integrity, honesty, objectivity, forthrightness, and maturity. It means doing our best to keep our emotions in their proper place, self interest in its proper place, and all other potential biases in their proper place. It means being accurate, it means being realistic, it means being proportionate, it means never being extreme, as extreme is understood in the religion. Neither going too far in dogmatic or sectarian rigidity, but also never going too far in license and laxity.

Never being unduly negative, and never being utopian and overly idealistic. It means not being swayed by trends, or by the prevailing zeitgeist of the era. It means not caring about what's popular or unpopular, and it means being as informed and as educated as possible about an issue before forming an opinion. All of this has to do with having an approach that is, actively practicing Now as for what has to do with being an ummah, I can say that we believe in normative Islam, but we also believe in what you could call big tent Islam. Meaning that if you affirm tawhid, and if you qualify for janazah when you die, then you are our brother or sister in Islam.

And that doesn't mean that anything and everything you do or don't do that may contradict or not fulfill your normative Islamic obligations, it doesn't mean that that's approved of or acceptable. It just means that we know that we all pass through stages of iman and stages of knowledge. Some of us are better than others. And over the course of our lives the one who is better, and the one who is deficient very often trade places with each other multiple times over the course of a lifetime. So our judgment, comes in the form of naseeha, not condemnation.

And we primarily confine ourselves to what is actually our business, which is again a quality or an approach that is mandated by Rasulullah We believe with certainty that our ummah is the best And we believe therefore in uplifting each other, emphasizing the good in each other, and working to bring benefit to one another individually and collectively. And we hold ourselves to this standard of excellence. Excellence in conduct, excellence in thought, excellence in camaraderie and brotherhood. And we do not entertain, divisiveness, pessimism, extremism, defeatism or any other kind of ism that brings the Muslims down. Now thousands of people have come together who embrace what you can call this middle nation mentality, who believe like me, that the Muslims have to one extent or another and for various reasons lost track of what it means to be So first and foremost Middle Nation has become something of a an intellectual and religious thought movement among the Muslims.

A movement to revive this balanced and realistic Islamic approach to the world, and this big tent view of Islam. Now as a result, of these Muslims coming together, as you might expect from such a serious stock of people, they have organized. So, Middle Nation has now emerged as something of a social movement in addition to being an intellectual movement. These are people who have largely organized themselves around the ideas, for the purpose of putting those ideas into action. So the Middle Nation movement, social movement has three core broad objectives: to advance the economic sovereignty, the political independence, and the psychological decolonization of the Muslims wherever they are, as well as the people of the Global South more generally.

This has led to the creation of several projects and several initiatives. As an organized movement there is some degree of structure through which these initiatives and projects are being pursued and being managed. Among the initiatives is the the campaign to expel The United States from the United Nations through the invocation of Article six of the UN Charter, which is a campaign that now is spreading and gaining momentum around the world, activists and groups, beyond those coming from Middle Nation. There are educational courses that are in the works. There's a database of Palestinian and Muslim home businesses.

A campaign to buy local is being developed and we're working on a corporate democratization project and hosting several very lively and very informative community groups on on Telegram. Content from the Middle Nation YouTube channel is now available in multiple languages on a dedicated channel just for translations, and we're beginning to hold, regular spaces on x. And there's many other initiatives in the pipeline, All with the goals of, improving the lives and the understanding of the Muslims. Now these are all primarily dunya focused initiatives intending to benefit our people in this world with the intention that doing so will uplift the ummah here and now, and hopefully that will benefit all of us in the Akhirah. So there's Middle Nation the concept, there's Middle Nation the sort of paradigm or mentality or intellectual movement, and there's Middle Nation the social movement, And then there's Middle Nation the organized community of activists and professionals and educators and business people and volunteers and so on, who are at the forefront of that social movement.

Any number of independent organizations, NGOs, non profits, think tanks, businesses and so on can potentially develop from these this organized group of Muslims and non Muslims who are interested in incorporating Middle Nation ideas and objectives in their endeavors. I think to some extent this is all gaining traction, this idea of wasatiyya and the appreciation of the superiority of the ummah and the superiority of Islam, because the artifice of the West is collapsing. Even for Westerners, even for non Muslims it's collapsing. So Muslims are losing their attraction to Western ways of doing things, Western ways of thinking, and they're reconnecting with Islam, not just as a religion, but as a paradigm, an intellectual code of conduct, and as its own independent and completely valid world view in its own right, entirely apart, from western paradigms and ways of thinking and behaving. It's like Muslims and the West have been looking at each other in carnival mirrors that distort what each other really looks like.

And now we're seeing both them and us for how we really are. And the West is wholly unimpressive in real life, and Muslims in real life, Islam in real life is infinitely superior in real life. It's not just something we tell ourselves but in reality, and recognizing that superiority makes all of us want to live up to it, and to manifest it in our own lives and in our own pursuits. You know radicalism never really suited us as Muslims. Extremism and sectarianism and harshness and so on.

These are largely byproducts of colonization, Either as, extreme reactions against colonization, or as extreme misinterpretations influenced by the narratives of the colonizers against us. And both of these are losing appeal in the Muslim world. When you don't have power, you can be as radical as you want to be because you don't have any responsibility. But now that the Muslim world is rising, I mean the entire global South is rising. But now that that sense of responsibility sets in, the Muslims are I think returning to their natural state of wasaltiyah.

And that's really what middle nation is all about, as both an intellectual and as a social movement.