Al-Salam Alaikum, Shabab
This isn't really a question about anything or a request or whatever. I just feel like talking to the void. Maybe someone can read this experience and have a moment, maybe Rabena SWT can make me a reason to help someone, who knows. Maybe this'll help me, even.I'm a Muslim, from Egypt. I lived at home till 18 then my parents shipped me to the US because of my political activism. I am now 28 and I looked back at my whole entire life on my birthday, for some reason, since I left home.
As a Muslim boy in Egypt, I lived a normal ME life. No dating, tried my best to maintain prayers at the mosque, family, school, friends. Missed prayer a few times? It's okay, try again, Allah is all merciful. You're still alive, you can make it up. Broke your fast a few times in Ramadan? It's fine, just make it up. Just the normal life. I was perfectly fine. I was generally content with my life, barring some personal issues. Life was pretty simple.
My exposure to western life was mainly through movies, Internet and video games. I spoke English as if I was a native speaker. I had lived in Nigeria for a couple of years, but that's when I was between 10 and 12, so it doesn't really count as an experience. Besides, we never went out. We lived in a barb wired complex and were advised not to go out after 6 PM. Life wasn't THAT different, apart from praying in a mosque.
Then I came to the US. My whole life basically flipped upside down. I tried keeping a circle of Muslim, or even just Arab, people around. It was hard to let go of home. I was 18, by myself. Understandably, even though a lot of them were my dad's friends, they started drifting away one by one. No one wants to baby sit somebody else's kid without being paid for it. They had their own lives and the apartment I lived in was in the middle of nowhere. There was no Mosque or even a zawya for about 10 miles. For the first year, I did my best to really keep to myself and focus on school and fencing. My day consisted of school ----> Fencing practice ----> Home. Rinse and repeat. Kept praying home. Man, I was a model Muslim for a time. Then, day after day, I skipped a Salah because I was so tired I couldn't wake up for fajr. I had a loooooong commute from the apartment to school. Okay, fajr skipped, make it up later. One by one by one, all the salahs dropped. This was a disaster, to be honest. For whatever reason, skipping or missing Salah back home was.....fine. It was okay. We make mistakes and we make them up. But here, it was basically like....I dunno...like I made a huge crime. Like I did something I can never take back. I felt absolutely helpless.
The next year, I basically had no contact with Arabs or Muslims. My social circle consisted of the, thankfully, nerds of my class in school(Computer Science. All nerds). After my existential crisis passed, I became bored. School was boring, fencing became annoying and I just wanted to burst. Damn, a 19 year old basically thrust into the US, living close to NYC. The lights, the colors, the glamour, the LIFE. Ah man, I wanted to experience all that so bad. Hey, no harm in trying 'once', right? I moved out into a city close to NYC, couldn't move to NYC itself because school. Got a job and became independent. My social circle expanded. Started making more women friends, going out, meeting people, you know. The whole package. I'd refuse weed, alcohol, cigarettes. It was fine, I said. It was just fine to feel like a part of this party train. Bit by bit, I found my identity shifting. My principles and ideology slooooowly shifting to a new place. The Liberal Freedom. Bit by bit, I found myself sinking into this....pit. I thought it was a hot spring at first, but no it was a pit of muck. Just like any other social pit everywhere in the world.
I was losing myself, but I was fine with it. I blended into the whole "Western Freedom vs Islamic oppression" narrative. I became a white man, basically. A white man with a white savior complex. "These people have it right, this freedom is great, if only my people can see that". As muck would have it, it doesn't keep you afloat. Nah, it sucks you in. I gave in to a lot. I started permitting what was not permitted. Dating, sex, this lifestyle, everything. Once your brain follows a thought process, it's only natural that your body will naturally follow through. Wont go to details, because I mean 5alas b2a y3ni Rabena knows best what I have done, may He forgive me. I was happy with how my new social circle commended my "breaking out of my shell". I craved that. I lavished in the attention they gave me. I felt like I was doing NOTHING wrong. And when I say I did everything, I did everything. All of it. You'd only know I'm Muslim if you asked me my name. Nothing else.
My opinions on the internet were extremely liberal, but that was not the problem. See, I think liberalism gets a lot of things right about humanity. The problem was...I fell in line with Americans and Europeans. This is the highest achievement of mankind. Liberal thought. The absolute top of humanity. The culmination of a thousand years of Evolution. This society is the utopia. Every path a society takes WILL AND MUST LEAD to this end-state. This society and life style was the end-state. There're no alternatives. Of course it does not help that my political past back home pushed me to this mindset.
I stayed like this for a few years. Lived like that. School started getting fucked up, Money stopped coming in, but hey...just a crisis and it'll pass. I indulged in this lifestyle. Indulged till it was overflowing. More, I wanted more. I couldn't get enough. The more I experienced, the more I wanted. At that point, I must've become a scholar at Dar el Iftaa' for bullcrap because hot dang, I was permitting everything for myself.
Then I realized something. When the dust settled and I looked around, I was worse off than when I came here. I looked behind and saw a path of absolute destruction of my life. This indulgence literally DESTROYED me, when I showed so much promise at first. I looked back at the social circle, and they all moved on to live their lives. I was the one stuck where I was. The "internet friends", who yelped about freedom and feminism everyday, all of a sudden turned out to be misogynist, racist assholes. I just never saw it earlier because I never asked them the right questions. Imagine a guy telling you, to your face, that no woman would choose to wear a hijab or niqab unless she was forced. Feminism chose revealing clothes for a woman, so THAT IS WHAT WOMEN WANT. The ME is so backwards because of religion, and THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN SAY TO CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE. Hundreds of arguments, dozens of tired essays written. These people....don't really care about any of those they claim to stand up for. They're not really about "Freedom", only their interpretation of it. Feminism is their interpretation of it. Liberalism is their interpretation of it. Where is our interpretation? Where would the world be if Islam maintained its world leadership? Our experiences; historically and socially, are VASTLY different to the west.
How can a white man who, self admittedly, never spoke to nor met a hijabi before claim to speak for them? Feminism what? Funny story, this is the one that made me REALLY realize the sham I was involved in, this same person is a fan of video game company that was outed as a haven for harassers, rapists and sexual predators. This person tweeted all day and all night about accountability, about "#WeStandWithVictims". One day, a friend in that fandom tells me a story about how one of our friends basically harassed her online. Stalked her, hacked her facebook and made uncomfortable advances until she blocked him. One day, they start talking about this guy on discord and I got so pissed because they talked about him fondly. So I told them what he did. This guy and the rest of the discord men all of a sudden were all like "Proof?" or "I dunno, doesn't seem like him" or "I have to hear his side first". HUUUUUHHHH???? Where that vitriol you all had? Where's the "activism"? Where are the hashtags of solidarity?? Nah, that's only applied if it gets you brownie points. In a publicized scandal, but when it's from inside your circle friends? Nah, bro.
It's all a sham. Now, I'm not saying that this is how EVERYONE is (I swear to God if I get one more American telling me not to generalize), this is MY experience. Liberalism has some great principles and great qualities, but do not follow people. It can feel liberating and exhilarating, but it's not going to be there forever. Nothing, whatsoever, in western life is set in stone. Everything can change at the flip of a dime. Do NOT permit sins, even if you ARE doing them. Acknowledge that they're haram and that's it. Do not be afraid of committing sin, EVERY HUMAN SINS. All the Prophets have sinned (Except Sayedna Muhammad SAAW obviously) and they were all forgiven. Life of Sin is not the end of the line. I realized that I permitted Haram because it felt like a disaster. The end of the world. What's truly the end of the world was permitting it, not indulging it. Living in the West FLAMES UP this inferiority complex that I hope we can one day overcome. To preserve our identity and principles. I still have A TON to work on as a Muslim. I can make friends with Americans and proudly decline any invitation to partake in a certain life style that's not mine. I can talk with them, stand up for them, merely for the fact that they'd stand up for me. I am a Muslim human being. I do not permit what is Haram. I make mistakes, I forgive myself for them and I live.
Your principles are nothing to be ashamed of. Whatever atheists bring up from Aisha's RA age to killing apostates does not matter because they do not care. Their morals are LITERALLY dependent on what's trendy, nothing else. You have a root for your morals. It's called Islam. Let that be your guide and frame of your morals. That's all there is to it.
If you read this far, goddamn you deserve a medal.
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