On Effective Morality

When I was talking about how realpolitik as it's practiced in the West is, deemed as being amoral or or unideological, but the reality is that they are following their sense of morality. They're just being honest about it. This is the difference between realpolitik and every other, form of, political, practitioner, which is that they're simply being honest about the fact that they approach politics in in a way that doesn't really factor in morality. And this is consistent with, the West's deprioritization of morality. And I think, of course, they deprioritized morality because it's not really a concept that they fully understand anyway, and they don't really see the value in it.

So I don't I I think that just just to clarify, I think that realpolitik simply means, approaching politics, approaching policy, approaching strategy in the most effective way possible, according to the moral sense that you have. So when when that plays out in the West, it plays out in an amoral or an immoral fashion, But in the in the same way, when it plays out among Muslims, plays out in a moral fashion because we are trying to be effective in the most moral way possible, and we're trying to be moral in the most effective way possible. And so, for example, I would even I would even say that we shouldn't use the term or the the phrase lesser of two evils. We should use more what Allah refers to in the Quran, which is to do what's better between the available options. So rather than just saying we're going to pick the lesser of two evils, let's say, we're trying to pick what's the better of the available options.

Neither of those options may be optimal, of those options may be ideal, but those are the available options. So we choose the better one, that's all. I think that's that's more of a a positive way of looking at it, and it's a more Islamic way of looking at it, and I think that that's really what we mean, or what I mean anyway, in terms of an Islamic approach to realpolitik. And I wish that we had a different phrase for it rather than using the western phrase realpolitik, because really what we're talking about is just being effective, trying to be effective. And I and I personally think that trying to be or trying to achieve moral outcomes in an ineffective way amounts to the same thing as being amoral or immoral because you're not going to achieve the outcome at the end of the day if you're ineffective.

I'm I'm reminded of dua of Umar bin Al Khattab when he said that he sought refuge from the fitna of an incompetent friend, and he sought refuge from a competent enemy. So we have to try to approach all of our challenges in the most effective and competent way possible, and that means being realistic, that means being practical, that means being pragmatic so that we can be effective to achieve what's better. Rather than saying the lesser of two evils, we're trying to achieve whatever is better according to what is actually possible to achieve. That's all I wanted to say.