A Christmas Message from Shahid Bolsen

You know, one of the best things about Muslims is that when we do wrong, and we do wrong, but when we do wrong, we don't say that we're doing right. We don't claim that we're doing the right thing. We say, yes, we're doing this thing and it's wrong. But we'll come up with whatever excuse we might have or rationalization for why we're doing it even though we know it's wrong. This is something that distinguishes us a great deal from other, people who follow other religions.

Other religions tend to, whatever the prohibited thing is, when it becomes too difficult for them to maintain that prohibition, then they decide that it doesn't need to be prohibited anymore, and they make it halal, they make it allowed. This is something that Muslims haven't classically done. We've never said that the haram thing is halal because it's just too hard to avoid it, And that's one of the best things about us. Like I say, when we do wrong, we know that it's wrong, and we never try to pretend that it's right. Now, to be honest, I actually forgot that it was Christmas.

This is one of the benefits of not living in the West, you can actually forget this. I know that this might seem like a topic that I wouldn't normally talk about on my channel, but I think it's actually quite relevant in terms of psychological decolonization, and in terms of liberation from western centric paradigms overall. I've seen some clips of Muslim public figures in the West, basically giving fat words about how it's fine for Muslims to participate in Christmas festivities, you know, Christmas gatherings. Frankly, I I I think this is a very obtuse take on the issue. I mean, obviously, we are not supposed to validate, we're not supposed to endorse, and we're not supposed to even turn a blind eye to any occasion that upholds a truly heinous lie against Allah and against prophet Jesus peace be upon it.

Now you can argue that Christmas is more or less of a cultural festival more than a religious one these days. That's the argument that they make, but I think that's very disingenuous. I mean, Western Christianity itself is really a cultural phenomenon. I mean in fact, the the idolatry of the Puresh was largely cultural. It was even economically motivated in many in many ways and in many cases.

Just like Christmas, you know, has become a commercialized festival of consumption. But that doesn't make it any less illegitimate or any less harmful in my opinion. I mean, Abu Jahal didn't oppose Islam really on the basis of his devotion to his idols or his devotion to idol worship, but he he he opposed Islam on the basis of the cultural norms that benefited his clan. And Christmas is really a holiday celebrating Western so called civilization, that's what it is more than anything else. And as such, appropriately, it's based entirely on lie upon lie upon fabrication upon fabrication, and on the complete mutilation of historical and prophetic reality.

See, Christmas is about upholding the foundational false narratives of the West, narratives that have been responsible for the spilling of oceans of blood. Religiously, it's a holiday. Actually, in fact, it's a holiday celebrating the triumph of Jesus' enemies who succeeded in perverting and corrupting his message, and who succeeded in misrepresenting his life and his mission. That's what Christmas is. And as a celebration of their success in preserving paganism, and folklore, and mythology, and superstitions, you know, primitive rituals by wrapping them up in the cloak of monotheistic belief.

It's a spiritual nakba. It's a catastrophe on your soul. You lied about his date of birth and then you just kept celebrating a festival that Jesus himself, would have prohibited. You lied about his identity, you lied about his, teachings, you lied about his message, you lied about his death. I mean, the whole thing, the whole thing is a malignant fraud.

And you celebrate all of that every year in customs or through customs and through rituals and through activities that would all, each and every single one of them, each and every single one of them would have been scorned by Jesus himself. Because they're all drawn from your primitive pagan history, you know. You even lied to your children about some fat man flying through the sky. I mean, there is absolutely no aspect of this holiday. That's not all about lies, about distortions, and of course all about greed, all about materialism, all about consumption, all about extravagance, all about waste.

I mean, religiously, it is repugnant, and culturally, it is grotesque. It's a it's a it's a a toxic cocktail of deceit, of paganism, of hedonism, a subversion of monotheism, and it's a foundational cornerstone of western so called civilization. Christmas is to western empire what the July 4 is to America. I mean, year is it? And I think it's reprehensible to pretend that Muslims should be fine with any of this.

Rather than telling Muslims in the West that it's okay to participate in these gatherings and activities, leaders and public figures, you know, scholars, imams and so forth are supposed to be helping Muslims, helping new Muslims, helping converts, reverts and so on, helping them to find the strength to withstand the pressure of the society they're in to participate and to validate these celebrations of falsehood. You're supposed to be helping them to withstand that pressure, not to teaching them to succumb to that pressure. But you see a lot of these people, frankly speaking, a lot of these imams, lot of these teachers are immigrants themselves, and they have an assimilationist mentality. They have an appeasement, acquiescent mindset. So for them, they probably think that it's actually an achievement to even be invited to a Christmas party, to be included in those festivities because for them that means social acceptance.

They think that melting into the melting pot is the ultimate success, you know, and they'll tell converts not to listen to Muslims in the Muslim world. They'll say don't listen to those Muslims thousands of miles away when they say that it's not allowed to go to Christmas parties because they'll say that those Muslims in the Muslim world don't really understand the situation of Muslims in the diaspora, basically trying to drive a wedge between the Muslims in the West and Muslims in the Muslim world. Meanwhile, they themselves, these these imams and these teachers and so forth, they themselves don't actually understand the situation of Muslims in the diaspora properly, especially new Muslims, reverts, because they themselves are people who left the Muslim world and chose to come to the West in the first place. They're immigrants, and they have a completely different mindset. They have a completely different mentality than people who grew up in the West and then embraced Islam, you know.

Born Westerners who come to Islam are very different mentally, psychologically than born Muslims who come to the West. That's a fact. Most reverts in fact, in my experience, and I'll I'll count my own experience in that. Most reverts in the West are absolutely ready to reject Christmas. But a lot of these people feel that they themselves feel rejected.

They feel rejected if they're not invited to Christmas. Because again, they're very interested in belonging in the society, whereas westerners who grew up in the society and come to Islam are not that interested in acceptance by the society that they come from. We've been in that society. We know how bad it is. And we're just grateful for having Islam, Alhamdulillah.

So we don't generally care that much about appeasing social norms or being accepted or what have you, you know. We're not that interested in being allowed to participate in Secret Santa. But then you have these, I'm sorry, again, immigrant imams undermining the will and the conviction of new Muslims, you know, telling them that they should go to Christmas dinner because, you know, they'll rationalize it and say that you're just going to a Christmas dinner, you're sitting around a Christmas tree and opening presents, that doesn't constitute worshiping other than Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala, as if shook is the only sin. As if worshiping other than Allah subhanahu ta'ala is the only wrong thing that you can do. And everything that everything short of worshiping other than Allah is fine.

And they'll say that you should do that with the of maintaining the ties of kinship. Because it's a family gathering after all. This is when all the family gets together on Christmas, so you should do it. But I mean when I was a kid, we went to Catholic church as a form of family togetherness. It was a family togetherness activity, and church attendance is largely a cultural activity for millions and millions of people.

And like I say, western Christianity itself is largely a cultural phenomenon, if we're honest. Which is why you have western atheists, like a Douglas Murray for example, and his type of people, his whole gang, they argue in favor of saying Merry Christmas, how important they emphasize how important it is to say Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays, you know. Because for them Christmas is a celebration of western culture and they understand Christianity as the official sort of spirituality of Western so called civilization, which is to say, they recognize Christianity as basically a carrying on of ancient European paganism morphed with modern day capitalism. So it's all very western in their in their thinking. That's why Christmas is important to them.

It's all built on the complete sabotage and rejection of the message of Jesus peace be upon him. So I mean, you could argue that even church attendance is just a cultural, activity, and it's just as religiously empty as a Christmas party because both activities are only religious really in origin, but they're both cultural in practice. So now are we gonna have a fatwa saying that Muslims can attend church services with their non Muslim family members the on pretext of upholding the ties of kinship? No. Look, reverts to Islam want their ties of kinship to successfully pull their families to Jannah, but you treat it like your family members are going to hell anyway, so just be nice to them until that happens.

Just be nice to your family members until they are are dropped into the hellfire. But whatever you do, don't rock the boat by insisting on the truth about their festival of lies called Christmas. That festival of lies upon which the entirety of Christian Kufra is based, and which has not become any less significant by its commercialization. You act like, because it's become commercial, it doesn't contribute to misguidance anymore. I mean, you act like it's insignificant now because Christmas is a commercial holiday or is more or less of a commercial holiday.

You you act like it's insignificant because it's just a celebration of capitalism, a celebration of consumption, a celebration of overspending, of debt, and materialism. So you act like since it's only marginally a religious observance, a religious holiday, you say. Therefore it's fine for Muslims to participate in it and validate it. Well, I think that's treachery. It was always cultural.

Christmas was always cultural. It was always, nothing but a a a tradition. It was always a custom. It's never been based on the teachings of Jesus. It doesn't even have a basis in the bible.

Everything about it is pre Christian. It's nothing but a festival of western cultural hegemony. That's all it is. That's what Christmas is. It's a commemoration of the suffocation of the teachings of Jesus by European polytheistic paganism.

That's what Christmas is. And their polytheistic paganism was just like the Quraysh, meaning it was never particularly religious in character anyway. It was always materialistic, it was always, oriented more towards power and control, and it always worshipped heritage more than anything else. I mean, do you think that Jesus, peace be upon him, would attend a Christmas gathering? Like, look look, say, imam so and so, whoever gave a fatwa like this, imam so and so, I'm a new Muslim, okay?

But my family happens to belong to this weird sect that believes that you, imam so and so, they believe that you are the son of Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala. And they're inviting me to go celebrate your birthday at their home, which they do every year because they think that you are their Lord and Savior. Okay. Of course, I don't believe that you're their Lord and Savior, but you know, I hate to upset them. So is it okay if I go there to celebrate your birthday with my family, you know, listen to songs about your holiness and and exchange gifts and so on, you know, we put up a we put up an imam so and so tree in our house.

In fact, you know, imam could you come? They'd be thrilled. Come to come to our gathering in which we say that you are our holy lord and savior. Does that make any sense? No.

It's grotesque and you know it. Now, there is a level of unseriousness that's actually damaging. And I think that appeasing it, I think that going along with it is actually doing a grave disservice to everyone involved. You know, it's enough. Let them have their Christmas.

You have your Christmas. You have your Hanukkah. You have your Diwali. That's fine. You do what you want to do.

You go ahead and do your thing. But Muslims don't need to be singing jingle bells with you, you know. And if you come to our Eid, you know, if you come, non Muslims, if you come to our Eid, our Eid gatherings with the intention of coercing reciprocation from us when Christmas comes around, then don't come. That's what tolerance is actually. Real tolerance.

You follow your beliefs and I follow my beliefs. Won't interfere with yours and you don't interfere with mine. No compulsion. You don't need to come to my iftar for Ramadan, and I don't need to deck your halls with boughs of hali. Can we agree on that?

And if you do ask me why I don't want to be part of your celebration, you know, your celebration of western pagan triumph, then you best believe I'm gonna tell you. Because when you insist on distinguishing truth from falsehood, you create what they call a teachable moment. But if you keep your mouth shut, and you refuse to distinguish the truth from falsehood because you don't wanna, you know, spoil the festive mood or what have you, or because you wanna just go along to get along, because you wanna assimilate, because you wanna be accepted, then I'm sorry. You're actually giving your family and your friends and your colleagues the gift of ignorance and misguidance for Christmas. And you're actually showing them how much you don't care about them and you how much you don't care about what's gonna happen to them on your mokoyama while pretending that you're doing that, for the sake of maintaining the ties of kinship.

No. The ties of kinship should never be used, to tie your mouth shut in speaking the truth.