Epistemological Sovereignty: Engaging with Non-Muslim Works

You know, one of the things that had come up in the book discussion chat on no logo by Naomi Klein, it it had me thinking about a few things. And I've I've noticed every now and then that in our larger discussion chat or even sometimes from viewers of content, they will try to make the case that, oh, if you're supposed to be anti West, then why do you make reference to, like, Western works or Western books or things like this? And it is mind numbingly obnoxious and extremely obtuse. I'll just go ahead and be the one to say that that a person cannot understand that two things can be true at the same time. But, also, from an Islamic epistemological perspective, we have never restricted truth to the moral purity of its vessel.

And there's a lot of things intrinsic in our deen that tell us that truth is truth no matter from whom you take it from. I wanna start by just addressing that because for us, revelation establishes a principle that wisdom may appear in unexpected places and that Allah may advance his deen through means or people that do not necessarily embody Islamic ethics. And as an ummah, this is something that we absolutely 100% have to be cognizant of, that we have to be mindful of. Sometimes, and not to veer into too many things because we've talked about a lot of these different things offline, Like, a person will feel like if the ruler of the Muslims is not the most righteous person on the face of the planet, then somehow their rule over Muslims is invalid. It it lends itself to so many imanic and issues of thinking that Allah will then bring injustice towards the masses regardless of the piety of the masses because of the sins of one person.

Now we do know that there are concepts within our deen that does place a high emphasis on justice and fairness and things like this from religious leadership, religious rulership, but that's not the only factor in the equation. I think the gist of the point, especially making the connection to no logo or why with mid within Middle Nation, we're even having a book discussion on this this specific text, is that two things can be true at the same time. Two things can absolutely be true at the same time. The this principle that Allah can use anyone as a vessel for the truth and use any means to advance the deen regardless of the ethics embodied by the person who represents it, that principle legitimizes critical engagement with non Muslim or even morally compromised sources when the content itself is true or diagnostic or even clarifying. As the prophet tells us the hadith from Abu Hurayrah to and Sunan at Tirmidhi, The that wisdom is the lost property of the believer.

Wherever you find sound wisdom, then the true believer has the greatest right to it. And the prophet even said that Allah will support his religion. That Allah will support the religion even through a sinful person or in another narration, another variation of this hadith, through a man or a person that is a facet through a or a facet, through a person who is essentially an openly sinful individual. And this hadith is narrated in Sahih Bukhari, also from Abu Hurayr to. And Ali ibn Abi Talid, he said that, you know, look to what is said, not at who said it.

Look to what is said. Look to what is said. Do not necessarily look to who had said it. In Ibn Sireen and this statement of Muhammad Ibn Sireen, Rahmatullahi'aari, is found in the of Imam Muslim, Sahih Muslim, that this knowledge is religion, so be careful from whom you take your religion from. So look at how two things can be true.

Allah will advance the deen to a person who may be openly sinful. Wisdom is the lost property of the believer. So wherever you find it, the true believer has a greater right to it. Look to what is said, not necessarily to who is said, but knowledge is religion, so be mindful of whom you take your religion from. So we can take wisdom from people without taking religion from them.

We can take knowledge from people without making the knowledge we take from people our religion. Two things can be true. We can make distinctions between these things. Creed and law are only taken from Revelation and its trusted inheritors who are the true scholars of our religion and the true people of wisdom in our religion. And the criteria for who that is is is is it should be obvious to anyone who's not trying to be intentionally or unintentionally obtuse.

Diagnosis of worldly systems may be taken wherever it is accurate, and that distinction is what grounds the engagement with works like no logo by Naomi Klein or Ulu's work on propaganda, for example, which is another book that we also covered. But that book, propaganda, was one of the best books I'd read, and I'm so glad that it was recommended through the Middle Nation platform. Some of the connections that I'd made in the chat that I just mentioned in passing was how logos and brands can go beyond just the the the semblance of, you know, the product that's being sold, which is a point that Naomi Klein makes in the book, No Logo, that it's less about the product and more about the development of the brand, But how there are clear, cirrhotic when I say cirrhotic, I mean, sira, of the sira, cirrhotic clarifications through different, times in the life of the prophet where through that epistemic clarity, we can better understand how the wisdom that we find in different places connects us back to our deen. For example, the prophet himself, he modeled his epistemic clarity through one of the most painful experiences that he encountered while being in Mecca, and that was the story of thought.

After being rejected and and even having stones thrown at him, bleeding until his sandals filled with blood. The prophet made a very beautiful dua that Ibn Ishaq had collected in his seerah. O Allah, I complain of my weakness and my lack of resources and my humiliation to you. It's a very, very beautiful dua. It's a very, very long dua for the sake of time and and clarity.

We we won't get too deep into that dua. But after this dua, the supplication that he made in dealing with the rejection of the people of Ta'if, The angel of the mountain in this hadith is narrated by Aisha in Sahih Bukhari and in Sahih Muslim. The angel of the mountains in the area came to the prophet on the day of Ta'if, and the prophet was grieving. He was broken by his situation and circumstances. And the angel said, Muhammad Allah has heard what your people said to you and how they responded to you, talking about the people of thought.

The angel announced himself, I am the angel of these mountains, and your lord has sent me to you so that you may command me with whatever you wish. And if you wish, I will crush them between these two mountains. Okay? Now what does this have to do with no logo? Just follow me here for a second.

Okay? The prophet responded. The the prophet of mercy, he said, rather I hope that Allah will bring from their descendants people who will worship Allah alone without partners. See how that dua worked out by looking at Ta'if today. See how that dua worked out by looking at Ta'if today.

What does this have to do with no logo or anything like this? Well, this response, it demonstrates extraordinary clarity. The prophet went to Ta'if because this was a place where it could have served as a as a great stronghold against the people of Quraysh at that time. And the prophet had accurately diagnosed the injustice and the cruelty and the symbolic arrogance of of Ta'if's elite. Yet in the face of seeing the potential that they had and what they could become, he did not collapse his moral judgment into epistemic rejection just because that's how they were.

He saw this is how they are today, but this is who they could be tomorrow. And sometimes as people, because two things can be true, we have to follow the prophetic wisdom of distinguishing between oppressive systems and future human potential. I could go on about, like, Adas, who the prophet had met afterwards and then became a Muslim through the meeting because of the trial of Ta'if, but that's not really the point. You know, even though it is great to contextualize, like, the story of Ta'if and stuff, but to get more within the alignment of, like, brand power versus, and how it can be made into a form of false transcendence. Naomi Klein, she argues that modern corporations no longer primarily sell products.

They sell meanings. You know? Brands promise identity. They promise permanence. They promise belonging while remaining structurally empty.

And the illusion of transcendence, it mirrors a recurring Quranic pattern where material symbols are mistaken for a proof of truth or legitimacy. Just a couple of examples that I I mentioned in the chat not to keep referencing referring back to that, But I mentioned the example of Kahlil who said about himself, everything that I have been given is because of the knowledge that I possess. So Kadruun's wealth functioned as his own brand, and it led to people seeing him as being, you know, powerful, as being influential. His public display created a narrative of inevitability and deserved success. And Naomi Klein, she describes the same logic when she writes that brands are not products anymore.

They are about ideas, attitudes, values, and experiences. So in both cases, material success is what is being reframed as moral validation. Klein shows how brands conceal labor exploitation behind prestige and aspiration, and the Quran exposes the same mechanism when Quran's spectacle of all of parading his wealth around and showing it off to the people when it completely and totally collapsed in Surat Tikasas. Chapter 28 verse number 81, Allah says that he caused the earth to swallow him up in everything that he possessed with him. And from that Quranic and immanic connection, we can see that collapse is not always physical, but it can even be symbolic.

Brands fail. And so whatever meaning they represent will inevitably evaporate, the same way most of us wouldn't have no idea who Qarun was if it wasn't for the fact that Allah had immortalized his example for all times for us to learn from it. And that same logic, it exists within Quraysh's pre Islamic prestige. The people of Quraysh, they all had this this understanding of their own material success, of the dominance of their caravans, of their ritual authority around the Kaaba. And they they treated their their power as a proof of divine favor and inherent right to leadership despite the fact that they were going against everything that Allah had sent prophets to to call them to.

So revelation did not merely challenge their theology, but it also challenged. There's nothing worthy of worship except Allah. That statement and phrase, Muhammad Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, it it challenged their symbolic economy. And so as with Kadirun, the threat was not merely poverty, but the loss of narrative control. And logos serve as propaganda that then lends itself to manufacturer consent.

Klein insists that branding operates as ideological conditioning rather than neutral commerce. Right? And so logos become tools of narrative control defining who is legitimate, what is modernity, or even who is dangerous. And and we see that, you know, again, making that emanic connection from the wisdom that is our property no matter where we find it. You can connect that to Firah Aoun's propaganda when he declared an existential threat in Surat I Ghafir, the fortieth chapter of the Quran, verse number 26, where he was trying to convince his people, you should let me kill Musa, and then let's see him call upon his lord.

And Fin'an literally told his people, I fear that he's going to change your religion and that he's gonna spread corruption in the land. Look at how the tyrant is trying to generate fear with his people that Musa was the problem, and that Musa is the one that's gonna change people to a bad way of thinking and feeling, that Musa is gonna be the one that spreads corruption in the land. There is a one to one of that of that methodology of in his time with Moses, peace and blessings be upon him, to in the time of the prophet Muhammad to us today as Muslims in the West and how Islamophobia is used to prop to to promote this fear driven terrorism prop like, fear amongst the people and propaganda amongst the people to make them feel like the one source of salvation for them, al Islam, and their society, al Islam, is the one thing that will actually change their world and and make it much, much worse. So that becomes a classic example of manufactured consent that we as Muslims have had in the Quran for 14 centuries, but that Naomi Klein actually, you know, pulls and brings out about corporate power.

For now, he brands himself as a protector of stability while killing infants. Does any of this sound familiar? You know? He he he pushes himself as the protector of stability, and then he says that revelation will create chaos. Klein describes the same tactic when corporations portray themselves as guardians of progress while framing labor activism and regulation as threats to prosperity.

I mean, it's it's a I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but I can't help but see those connections. Klein, she mentioned in No Logo that corporate power is not just economic power. It's cultural power, shaping stories that we tell about who we are. So in the seerah, you know, the seerah, the the biography of the prophet, it presents Quraysh as using identical propaganda tactics.

When the prophet began calling people openly to Islam, Quraish did not initially rely upon violence to to try to stop that message. They initially relied upon messaging. So you can see that it goes from messaging to violence. When the messaging of the propaganda doesn't work, then it shifts to violence. And we're seeing that in our time with the militarization of of ICE killing with impunity.

But let me not veer into too many other topics. Let's stay on no logo with Naomi Klein. They labeled the Quran in the time of the prophet They said that it was. They said it was magic. That there there were words in it that if a person just heard the words imagine in our time with the ego that people have, there's no one that's gonna be able to tell me anything that I'm gonna agree a 100% with, you know, this sort of pseudo intellectual skepticism, people pushing back and stuff like that.

In the time of of of of the prophets of Allah, they said, don't even listen to the Quran. It's poetry. It's madness. It's magic. And, you know, if you listen to it, it will change you.

Not because these descriptions will were coherent, because that's not what the Quran did. It liberated the people. But because the repetition of that messaging itself began to shape a belief. One primary example of this was one of the most knowledgeable in the Arabic language, one of the most knowledgeable in the history of the Arabs, and one of the most knowledgeable in poetry, which was a companion by the name of Abdulfil ibn Amr ad Dausi. What he says about himself when he first came to Mecca, and this is collected in the of ibn Ishaq and ibn Hisha, that the Quraysh relentlessly warned him.

They said to him, this man, talking about the prophet he separates a father from his son. He separates a man from his wife. Don't listen to him. And they continued to tell him this, to fail this, until he said, I placed cotton in my ears so that I wouldn't even hear what he had to say. The same way that you see people put cotton in their ears for anything that a Muslim has to say about Islam.

Oh, but is it your prophet? Oh, age of Aisha, Just stuffing your ears with cotton and not really trying to even diagnose why they're telling you not to listen in the same in the first place. Despite that manufactured fear to fail, as happens with a lot of converts and reverts, he he thought to himself, what is a man gonna say to me that's really gonna make me question my life, question the people in my life, question my father, question my wife? So Tufail, eventually, he said, you know what? I'm gonna listen to it for myself.

And he took the cotton out of his ears, and he listened to the recitation of the Quran, and he recognized the truth of it immediately. So the power of Quraysh's propaganda did not come from its evidence. It came from its preemptive framing. And so Klein, she points out that there's the same strategy when brands attempt to control how critique is encountered. They warn the consumer before they even have the chance to hear the opposing voice.

I could go on and on and on with examples like this. Haman. Haman is mentioned in Soterikafar where Fir'Aaron called on Haman to build this massive tower. Historical connections and all that stuff, mind blowing as it is, not the point of why we're bringing this up right now. Haman, his role was as a builder of spectacle to reinforce the the the the deceptive logic of Fir'aun, which was that Fir'aun was god.

So Fir'aun tried to tell Haman, build a tower so I can go up into the heavens and look at this god of Moses. Spectacle to reinforce something that isn't even logical by framing it as logic. Monumental projects, monumental towers, monumental infrastructure, it transforms the idea of power into the consumer's understanding of inevitability. So when Klein's analysis of flagship stores or branded cities or corporate sponsored public spaces, it reflects a very similar psychology. Space itself can become a part of that propaganda.

I mean, I could I could literally go on. And how branding becomes, like, a cultural occupation. One of, I would say, Klein's most incisive arguments is that branding colonizes culture, that logos move into schools. They move into art. They move into music.

They move into identity formation. And so Allah ta'ala in the Quran talks about Quraysh, talks about Ta'if, and how their existence sort of demonstrates the dynamics the dynamics centuries before you ever get to Klein talking about Levi. You know? Quraysh's authority rested upon its economic monopoly, which was tied to symbolic guardianship of the Ka'ba itself. And so their legitimacy was not merely commercial.

It became ideology or ideological. In the Quran, Allah tells us in Surat Quraysh, a chapter in the Quran that's named after the tribe of Quraysh, that Allah was the one that gave them the security for them to make those journeys in the winter and the summer for them to have the caravans and the economic success and the power that they use from using the house of Allah, Masjid Al Haram in Mecca as a means of their seat of power. But Allah told them, because Allah is the one that gave you this, worship the lord of that house, the one that protected you against starvation and the one that kept you secure against fear. The following surah or this surah of Quraysh comes after Surat Tifiyud, which talks about the time where Ibrahim had tried to use an army in order to destroy the Kaaba. You know?

This sequence of Suratifil, the elephants that tried to come to destroy the Kaaba, and then Surat I Quraysh, which then talks about the economic success of this tribe and why they should worship the lord that protected them from the from the army of the elephants and gave them that economic success, it reframes Quresh's economic success. Their trade routes, their safety, their prestige, it was not self generated achievement. It was the consequences of divine intervention. But Quraysh had transformed that protection into a brand of tribal superiority, a brand of tribal superiority that the prophet came in completely dismantled with a single phrase. No brand.

No logos. Right? Historically, Quraysh weaponized its legitimacy as the preeminent tribe of the people, the preeminent brand, to suppress Islam. They used boycott. They used ridicule.

They used rumors. They used social isolation, all while continuing to profit from the sacred economy that came from Hajj, that came from the pilgrimage. And Klein's critique of corporations occupying cultural space mirrors how Quraysh monopolized religious symbolism while rejecting its ethical implications, and Ta'if represents elite brand insulation. Ta'if as a city had agricultural agricultural abundance, had vineyards. It had an aristocracy that was created that that closed in on a symbolic form of its own economy.

So when the prophet sought refuge there from the torment that was happening in Mecca, the leadership rejected him violently, not just because they were ignorant of Islam, but because they feared the loss of their status. And that's what always happens when corporate democratization comes in any form. It's not, oh, we don't know. We don't care. We don't this.

We don't that. It's like, no. There's a status and there's a power here. Their wealth and their leisure insulated them from moral accountability. And Klein documents how brands behave simile similarly when being confronted with f ethical disruption, responding with exclusion, with mockery, with suppression rather than reform, which is what the whole point is about.

So one of the central themes in No Logo is the strategic separation between image and harm. Right? Klein said the factory disappears from the public imagination, replaced by a clean abstract brand identity. When a person buys Louis Vuitton, when a person buys Gucci, when a person buys insert brand, they don't think about the factory. They don't think about the sweatshops.

They don't think about the the disparity in wealth from the owners of these brands to the people who actually make the product that they're selling. And that is the power of actually shifting away from prioritizing the product and thus its manufacturing and emphasizing the brand and its ethos, its pathos, its logos, its logos. This moral distance mirrors the Quranic condemn condemnation of any form of of oppression. Empire relied upon enslaved labor beyond the grandeur. You know, the Quran exposes that contradiction repeatedly by naming the oppressed, which was at that time Bani Israel, and attributing responsibility directly to those who benefited from the oppression of the oppressed.

And in the of the prophet there's a meaning laundering, not necessarily money laundering, but a meaning laundering where Quraysh's persecution of the weak, of the enslaved, like Bilal, like Amar, like Sumayyah, the publicly tortured, killed, while Quraysh leaders maintained this image of nobility and guardianship of the sanctuary of Meshe Del Haram. Harm was normalized in order to make the reputation preserved. You know? I I I could literally go on and on and on with these connections, but I'll just conclude with this point. No logo, it provides essentially a modern case study of an ancient Quranic pattern that Allah points out across multiple millennia.

You know, logos function as idols of meaning. You know, they promise safety. They promise identity. They promise transcendence while extracting value in obscuring harm. You know?

So when you think about a Qarun, when you think about a Haman, when you think about a Fira'un, when you think about a Quraysh, when you think about a Ta'if, it illustrates the same dynamics of symbolic dominance, of propaganda, and resistance to moral disruption. And so when Klein exposes these mechanics, you know, she does expose those mechanics, but in order to actually diagnose the disease, you need the court to have. Because both will inevitably insist that power sustained by illusion collapses once the meaning is actually withdrawn, and we get to the essence of what is actually important, which is belief and why you believe in those things. The only thing that gives value to anything that any calfer has ever written is us being able to process it through any manic lens. If we if we do not process it through any manic lens, then it intrinsically, fundamentally has no value.

And I know that will probably trigger a lot of people. I talk about it in some of the classes I teach in high and I see in real time it triggers some people, but it's true. It's 100% true. Now we do have prophetic guidance, the hadith in Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, where the prophet quoting the famous poet from Islamic Jahiliya, Labid. He said in a in a line of poetry, the the prophet said the truest thing that the poet Labid ever said is everything besides the law is vain.

So, look, this is a person from pre Islamic Jahiliyah. He's making a point. The prophet affirmed that point. Wisdom is the lost property of the believer. But if you're not able to make any manic connection between those points, then it's like, what's the point then?

Yeah. For most people, accessing Islamic texts feels way way too out of their reach. But the truth is anybody who's willing to read anything by a non Muslim should understand that there will be much, much greater value in in similar works from Muslims. And the highest level of reflection is to be able to then extract that understanding from the Quran, extract that understanding from the seerah, and then make those connections from those things that you see in the world around you and the the knowledge in the world around you today to that timeless knowledge. If you're not if you're not trying to do that, then, I mean, what's the point, really?

That's how I see it at least. Aloha.

I mean, I don't know I don't know what what people's understanding of epistemological sovereignty is if it doesn't include your ability to engage with things outside of your epistemology by means of your epistemology. That's what that's what epistemological sovereignty would include is your ability to engage with things that are from outside of your epistemology by means of your epistemology through your own epistemology, which is how we're approaching No Logo. Because you can see just like what you're saying whether whether it's Naomi Klein, whether it's Noam Chomsky, whether it's Jacques Elul, whether it's any of the others that we've read or any book that you ever will read, particularly if it's referring to anything regarding social ills, socioeconomic inequality or injustice or any of these types of things, any type of social commentary, any type of political commentary, economic commentary, obviously, in philosophy, what have you, anything at all that you're ever gonna read from these people, no matter how much sense it might seem, there's always a big Islam shaped hole right in the middle of it That that the only way that it can actually make sense and the only thing that they are always leaving out is this truth, is the truth of Islam.

That that may or may may not be deliberate. Most of the times, I don't think it is deliberate because anyhow, the kufar. But we can see it. We can see it. And this is why, for example, there's not a huge difference between it's just like it's just like with when I talk about the narrative shelf and that that if you actually look at what they're saying, both sides are saying the same thing.

The ultra advocates for neoliberalism and Naomi Klein are saying the same thing.

Mhmm.

They're just one of them is saying this is bad, and one of them is saying this is good. But they're both saying this is the thing. This is the ultimate power is with corporations. And and one side presents it as a criticism, and one side presents it as applause. But the the message is always the same that that the corporations are running everything, and, basically, there's nothing you can do about that.

The the the Naomi Klein types will get into all of the details about how this is so. The the neo the neoliberal types will, because it's you know, because they're trying to really sell it, they'll gloss over everything, they'll use a lot of euphemisms. But if you're if you're approaching it with our own epistemology, then you can see all the things that Naomi Klein is leaving out. That maybe she's not even aware that she's leaving out, you know, that only we know about because we're Muslims because we have Islam. But I I I don't think that, you know, obviously, the idea of it's it's upholding epistemological sovereignty to only read our books.

That's that's not this this is this is epistemological insecurity, not sovereignty. You should have the sovereignty to be able to approach any works from anyone by means of your epistemology and understand them by means of your epistemology, and all of that will only prove to you how much superior your epistemology is to theirs because you'll be able to see all of the problems and the mistakes. And as you said, brother Karim, the shallowness and the hollowness of it. And and, like, from from from your perspective, brother, where you're coming from is from a very, you know, a very religious and spiritual place with regards to what you think is matters. So the religion or or sorry, the the the spiritual understanding and the the moral and the principle understanding that we'll get from our scholars who never wrote about corporations, who never wrote about Levi's and Gucci and brands and logos and whatnot, You're saying, yeah, but the lesson is there anyway.

The the bottom line is the lesson that we get from our scholars, and you should be able to get that same lesson. Well, we all get the same lesson from but what you need to learn is the same thing. And so why bother with reading Naomi Klein? Because what you would need is the lesson, and the lesson was from our scholars, and you're not gonna get that from Naomi Klein. Mhmm.

But we're sort of assuming that you've already you already know that lesson. You already have that epistemology because this is our dean. So that's how I'm approaching Naomi Klein. That's how I'm approaching Noam Chomsky. That's how I'm approaching Jeffrey Sachs and all of these other types.

I'm approaching it from the position of someone who's learned the lessons already. I'm not going there. This is what I'm saying. We're not going we're not reading Naomi Klein so we can learn from Naomi Klein. We're we're reading these books so that we can prove the superiority of our epistemology because Naomi Klein is also not gonna point out that all of this is has always been this way with you people.

They always come from this position of, oh, the system is broken. It's not broken. It's working exactly as it's supposed to. And so she's she's she's always putting these leftists and these liberals and whatnot, they're always putting forward this lie that something has gone terribly wrong just just lately. It just went wrong just the other day or just went wrong under this administration.

And if we could just get, you know, the Democrats back, that's the side that Klein is on. But then the other side would be, if we could just get Marxists in or if we could just get the communist in, if if only Che Guevara had taken over Washington DC, everything would be beautiful, you know, or or or Mao or what have you. So there's always a lie in their presentation in the way that they present facts and the way they present their commentary. And it's it's a okay. Actually, I said that there's a there's a Islam shaped hole in all of their theories and all of their books and whatnot, but there's two holes because there's a hole that's not telling the truth about what the what the solution is.

And then there's a whole whether or telling what's the truth about why the problem is in the first place, which I guess is actually comes down to the same thing. One is the presence of Islam is the solution, and the absence of Islam is the problem. But you never wanna talk about this. So, you know, we we're not reading Naomi Klein to bask in her wisdom. We're we're we're reading Naomi Klein to bask in our own our own wisdom.

And and we see we see that you people are struggling, and even subhanAllah, this is this is what always gets me. And I know I could end I could you know, we were just talking about in the meeting about, like, repetition. But I could do a video every single day about how these people cannot tell the truth. About I mean, I've I've I've already done it so many times. I've already said it so many times, but if they don't stop showing you all of the ways that they're dishonest, all of the ways that they lie, all of the ways that they don't tell the truth, all of the ways that they obfuscate, you know, whether whether they do it deliberately or they're or they're doing it because they just can't help it because they really don't they don't know how to be honest.

They literally don't have the capacity. They literally have no connection with the truth. It's absolutely against their it's like trying to exhale oxygen and inhale, you know, whatever the other thing is.

Carbon dioxide.

Yeah. Carbon dioxide. You know? They they can't do it. They just they just can't do it.

And they show it every day. Like, even at even at when this is why it's like I can't like, first of all, like like like that with the brother who said whoever that was who said that about why are we reading that? Aren't we supposed to be, like, reading our own books? Obviously, we're not putting Naomi Klein on a pedestal and and and sitting at her feet to to to learn her her great insights. And it's not an advocacy of what she's saying, but the people admire these people.

There are people who admire these people and who do think that they are great intellects and they're making a great contribution to understanding and to social justice and this and that and the other. But we can see where they're lying. We can see what they lie about just like we eviscerated Chomsky. We we destroyed Chomsky before the Epstein files came out. We already ruined that man.

You know? And even when we're reading the the the other one that I that, you know, that we we dropped off from what was it called? What was it called? With the with all of the the CIA what's that book called? With with all of the covert operations and the and the in interference that they've done overseas America.

Was it Killing Hope?

What's it called? Killing Hope. Yeah. Yeah. Killing Even Killing Hope, they pose it as he's eviscerating the American system, but he's upholding that America can do everything and that everyone is a puppet of America and they can do whatever they want, and they've always done whatever they want all around the world.

You're upholding American supremacy even while you're criticizing it. And and it's it's important for us to this is actually how you this is at least part of how you teach people some degree of what epistemological sovereignty looks like. It means, yes, I can engage with your works, and I don't engage with it. You don't spoon feed it to me. I will tell you what I think about what you're saying and where you're wrong and what I'm and what I can see you're lying about.

Whether you know you're lying or not, you're not telling the truth. Nobody's scared of Naomi Klein. Nobody's scared of reading Chomsky. Nobody's scared of reading leftists or right wingers or whatever because we know where we're coming from. We know what we stand upon.

And we know that when we read them, we find out they're not standing on anything. And in fact, they're all standing on the same ground. The right, the left, the Marxist, the capitalist, they're all standing on the same ground and it's quicksand. So, yeah, this is this is more, in my opinion, what epistemological sovereignty or an element of epistemological sovereignty. You know?

We're not intimidated by reading your books, and we're not just because we read your books, it doesn't mean that we are in love with you and that we just take it and whatever you say. Now I know maybe there's some sensitivity about that because it used to kinda be that way. Mhmm. Yeah. We would hold them up.

But okay. You should know by now that's not what we're doing. Maybe maybe some people have been doing that and maybe some people still are in danger. But but that's even more of a reason for us to take the approach that we take because I know that a lot of Muslims are influenced in the in America, in the West, are a lot of them are influenced by these Naomi Klein types, by the Chomsky types, by the Jeffrey Sachs types. They're they're spreading all of their stuff all over the media, all over social media.

The the whatchamacallit? The the the girl what's her name? What's I always wanna call it Heidi for some reason. What's her name? The

girl Thorn Thornberg?

Yeah. Thornburg. Yeah. She got the ponytails. I always wanna call her Heidi.

Point is those people that that's their brand, social justice. This is their logo, social justice. We're we're for the equality and all of this. And, yeah, you're not, though. No.

You're not. And you wouldn't even know how to be even if you even if you wanted to be. You know? And and so we have to we have to take them down to a certain extent even if we're not doing it in a we're doing it in a way the same way that the Muslims looked at the Greek philosophers and so forth. We're looking at what they did.

We're looking at what they said, and we're telling you where they got it right and where they got it wrong and how they have needs to be improved. And now nobody knows any different because you only got it from us anyway. You only ever received what the Muslims interpreted. You didn't get the originals. You got it already passed through our hands and our minds and our improvement and our editing before you ever read it.

And and this is one of the things that, myself and you and and really all of the Middle Nation leads, really connect on is that, you know, we're never gonna going to start or stop at a at a Naomi Klein. We're we're always we're always want the Quran and the Sunnah to be our foundation, and that foundation is not limiting. It it makes our access unlimited. There's nowhere that we can't go. Mhmm.

Yeah.

How how are you gonna think that because we are reading a book, we're teaching that book?

It's it's really ignorant.

This is your own colonized mind that we that it can't be that we're reading a book by a western I mean, I'm sorry, but by a western white woman except that you think that that means that we're teaching that book and we're gonna learn from from this lady. What this is in your own head that it's impossible for you to read a book by a by a Kafir objectively and from from a position of your own epistemological sovereignty. That means that you don't have it. And and meanwhile, you're you're you're acting as if you're trying to defend epistemological sovereignty by saying why are you why are you reading this book?

It's one thing that we try to do a lot. Right? It's just just pull the thread a little bit and just see see what's at the end of what it is you're saying. Like, what you just what you're saying is that in any situation or instance where a person is looking at any information from someone that isn't a Muslim that that inevitably is what exactly. You know, like, what what what whenever they dug a ditch at the battle of Hamdah, this was not the practice of the people of of of the region nor was it a practice of, you know, the prophet It was wisdom that was taken from Salman al Farisi from what he had seen somewhere completely different.

When you pull that thread and you realize what you're saying, you will you will understand either that you are just being far too hyperbolic and and your hyperbole is just highlighting the gaps in your knowledge on certain things or that, you know, you've just accepted this delusion as as a fact. And if that's if that's where you're at, then I guess that's fine. But the truth is epistemology needs branches of knowledge.

I mean, like, it begins from the position, and you said it at the beginning of your statement, that someone would say, why are you reading this book? You're supposed to be anti West. Who said who said we're anti West? We're anti evil, anti evil behaviors, anti Kufr, anti, anti oppression, anti injustice. You said that means the West.

Is that if the if you're saying that's what you stand for as the West, okay. I won't argue with you, but my point is we're not anti West. We're anti what you've done. We're anti what your culture has meant to most people around the world. And by calling out the injustice, I don't see that that's anti West unless that's what you stand for.

And we are and we are legitimately persecuting your belief system and your culture, but that's you. Now you're the one who's who's who's owning up to that. I didn't say that. Who said that we're anti West and that and that that that we're we're not pro us, we're not pro Muslim, we're not pro Islam, we're not pro Ummah. We don't have to frame that as being anti West.

If you if you make yourself anti Us, then we'll be anti you. But that's that's on you. Your that's that's from your initiative. Epistemological sovereignty doesn't mean, you know, being on the attack necessarily, but but we will engage with anything on our own terms. And if you think that we that that the only way for us to be able to maintain engagement on our own terms is to not engage at all.

Okay. Well, then you need to strengthen yourself. You need to strengthen your own actual basis and your own your own grounding in your epistemological sovereignty. Because if you yourself are too weak to engage with with like I said, to to be able to engage with alternative inferior epistemologies without you losing track of your own, then your grasp on your superior epistemology is too brittle, is too feeble, and you need to strengthen your your grasp on if you can be intimidated, you know, or moved by a by an inferior epistemology, then you haven't grasped the superiority of yours yet. And just by by shutting your eyes and closing your ears, it's not gonna make you understand how how superior your epistemology