Qur'anic Psychological Decolonisation: Episode 1

Well, you know, I had originally intended to dive immediately into discussing some specific dimensions of psychological decolonization using the Quran as a reference and as a means of insight into doing that. But then it occurred to me that it might be better since this is going to be an ongoing topic and an ongoing series of talks, it might be better to begin by establishing a sort of groundwork to the subject. So first of all, let me clarify that this is not going to be tafsir. I will of course be using tafsir and referencing tafsir primarily ibn Kathir, but this series of talks is not about teaching Quran or about teaching understanding of Quran. The point is psychological decolonization, but the the Quran is our supreme source of guidance as Muslims.

It's our primary point of reference, and it's our means of understanding our world, our lives, and ourselves. Our whole approach to life, our our worldview, our our paradigm is framed by the Quran and Sunnah. And it seems to me that there could be no more appropriate and no more useful framework than the Quran for exploring psychological decolonization. So this is a reflection upon the Quran from this angle. So absolutely nothing that I say here should be misunderstood or misconstrued as any sort of, you know, authoritative interpretation of the Quran.

It's simply a sort of of the Quran through the lens of psychological decolonization. Because this in and of itself is a facet of decolonization in my opinion, relies upon our own sources of guidance, affirming that our guidance, the guidance that's with us is superior and perfect, and it is more valid, and more beneficial and more authoritative than anything else, that we might ever refer to. So let me start off by defining colonialism. And I don't just mean the manifestations of colonialism, but the ideologies and the reasons psychologically behind it, the psychological drivers, if you will. It seems fairly clear to me that when you look at the history, there's an interplay between the desire to acquire and control greater natural resources and the invention of the supremacist mentality.

That is to say countries like Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and The Netherlands all had access to natural resources within their borders, but they wanted more. So you could look at say, sort of the Takatu. Now did they, did they want more because they thought they deserved more, or did they rationalize their greed by convincing themselves that they deserved more? Because greed is rooted in, what is now popularly referred to as scarcity mindset. In other words, did the Europeans suffer from a scarcity mindset and and feel insecure and under provided for and thus feel that they were somehow overlooked by Allah and undervalued?

So then, it's conceivable that these disgruntled feelings could morph into an inflated sense of what they deserve because dissatisfaction generally is a manifestation of feeling that you have somehow been shortchanged. You know, a feeling that, what you have been given is less than what you imagine you deserve being given, what you imagine you're worth. So you might, tend to then inflate what you imagine you're worth even more until you start to think that you deserve everything. In an almost, resentful or vindictive vindictive exaggeration of your own importance. Now this should seem familiar to you because it reflects the sentiments of Iblis towards Adam reflects the sentiments of Kabil towards his brother Habil.

And to some degree, it even it even represents the or reflects the sentiments of Yusuf Yusuf's brothers towards him. You can see in surat al Fajr, ayah 20. When man is given a he feels that he's honored. So he feels resentful about it when he doesn't have it, when he hasn't been given that and maybe he feels dishonored and therefore disgruntled. And of course, the pagan history of Europe means that the entire development, their entire development as nations, as societies, as a so called civilization was guided by was wasa, by the whispering of Shaitan.

And as we know, when they did adopt Christianity, they remained pagan with only a flimsy veneer of Tariheen on top of that. It was a rebranding, if you will, a rebranding of paganism. So the in Europe, in the West, wasn't stopped by the church. They just modified it. They just modified the messaging just like when a company rebrands and they change their marketing strategy.

So the root of colonialism and imperialism or the seed of imperialism and colonialism in my view, were feelings of material insecurity and inadequacy, dissatisfaction and ingratitude, which then, both morphed into and intersected with an inflated sense of importance and self value, which then eventually solidified into a supremacist mentality. And, of course, every facet of this, can predictably express itself in violence. You can look at surah Al Adiyat. Man is violent or extreme in his love for which is generally understood in this ayah to refer to wealth. So the core of all of these things, obviously, is materialism.

It's a fixation on material things, physical things, judging on this basis, prioritizing on this basis. And, again, this reflects Iblis, his whole perception of, human beings, the outward, the external, the material. These represent the criteria of value, of honor, of worth, of, superiority or inferiority or inadequacy. This level of understanding is at the foundation, of what became Western so called civilization. And colonialism is a manifestation of this understanding and this approach to the world and this approach to life.

So, colonization, colonialism, imperialism are not, as they say, a bug, but a feature of what we call the West. The way that their whole so called civilization developed has made violence and pillage an inevitability. They've never known how to assign value properly, And they built their whole society and their whole character on this confusion. This is why until today, they still believe that wealth constitutes worth, and violence constitutes strength, conquest constitutes superiority. They had this Iblis led superficiality in their understanding of the world then and they have it now.

There's no way to divorce Western so called civilization and colonization from their origins, their roots, and their whole development in Kufr. Western colonialism, colonization, imperialism, and so on, these are all manifestations and expressions, of the Kufr, of their so called civilization, originating from, their wrong assignment of value because of kuffer, lack of appreciation because of kuffer, dissatisfaction because of kuffer, their inflated sense of their own importance because of kuffer, and their violent supremacism because of Kufr. I think it's crucial for us to understand this. We have to understand, we have to recognize, and we have to understand, that Western colonization is an imposition of confusion and misguidance, a confusion and misguidance that could not be inflicted upon the Muslims except by savage violence and oppression and by force. And they want us to be as confused and misguided as they are.

They want us to assign value according to the that same Shaytanic formula. I mean, every ayah that you read in the Quran about the way the the Kufar think, the way they feel, the way they view the world, the way they view life, you have to understand that this is what they call civilization, what they call advanced and evolved, what they say is superior and enlightened, literally kufar. Literally, every blameworthy attitude and perspective that Allah explains to us that the kuffer have, the attitudes and the perspectives that have made them lost, made them neurotic and violent and depressed and miserable, they want us to follow suit. They want all of that for us. So don't have it anywhere in your mind that the West is superior, that it's better, or that it's more advanced.

If you think like that, then you've been infected with this Kufri virus, this Jahili virus, this confusion, this lack of proper discernment of what is valuable, the very thing that gave Shaytan a foothold in their primeval culture. So given all of this, there are a few ayat which I think sort of can form a foundation for Quranic psychological decolonization. And really, this is not only just for Muslims, but for all people in the global South as well as westerners, Muslims and non Muslims, who themselves are suffering a form of colonization inside their own countries by their own corporations and by their own private sector. That's happening now. So the first ayah is is the very well known and very often mentioned ayah in Surat Al Hujarat, ayah 13.

O mankind, indeed we have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you, the most the one who has the most taqwa, and indeed Allah is all knowing and all acquainted with what you do. And then a a similar ayah is in Surah Rum, ayah number 22. And in his signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your languages and your colors. Indeed, in that are signs for those who have knowledge.

Still another ayah is in ayah number eight. O you who have believed, be persistently standing for, justice, firmly for justice, witnesses for Allah even if it be against yourselves, against your parents, against your relatives, whether one is rich or poor. Allah is more worthy of both. So follow not your personal inclinations, lest you not be just. And if you distort your testimony or you refuse to give your testimony, then indeed Allah is acquainted with everything that you do.

Now I have a problem, and I'll encounter this throughout these talks, which is that subhanAllah, any single ayah contains such an abundance of meaning, even with regards just to psychological decolonization, that it can almost randomly paralyzed in any effort to try to extract and articulate the insights that it contains because there's too many. By just looking at ayah the the ayah in Herjarat, Allah is telling us what the proper criteria of value is, which is taqwa, which is piety, it's righteousness. And then he's telling us the value irrelevance of race, tribe, gender, nationality, and so on. And in Surat the the irrelevance in terms of value of color and language. And in Al Maeda, the value irrelevance of class, of family, and even of self.

And each of these ayat provide further clarification of what is actually the criteria of value: piety, knowledge, justice, truthfulness, all of which are combined together under a righteousness. These are the qualities of superiority. These are the qualities of, value and honor and importance. And they have nothing whatsoever to do with material status, with external appearance, with race, with ethnicity, strength, power, wealth, so on, on and on and on. They have to do with belief, with understanding, with character, with integrity, and the prioritization of these qualities above and beyond even family, even tribe, even racial or nationalistic interests.

These are truly civilized values, civilized understanding of humanity because anyone can be righteous. Anyone can have honor. Anyone can have high status regardless of his or her wealth, regardless of his or her race or color or nation. None of those, incidental characteristics denote superiority or value. And as incidental value irrelevant, characteristics, they cannot be the basis of conflict.

They can't be the basis of rivalry or resentment or war or conquest. They can't be the basis of tyranny and oppression. They can't be the basis of privilege or the denial of privilege. They can't be the basis of any sort of sense of supremacy or entitlement. And our civilization developed around these concepts.

We didn't pretend to adopt these concepts, these values, by just, you know, slapping them on our cultural advertising like stickers. Our culture grew from these concepts. Like I've said before, their so called civilization was shaped by and guided by Wassa, and our civilization originated from, was shaped by, and was guided by Wahi. Just those three ayad destroy any conceivable legitimacy for colonial for colonization. And Western civilization, so called civilization, is built around the absence of these ayads.

So just contemplate what sort of ugliness that would create. Racism, classism, misogyny, brutality, nepotism, favoritism, prejudice, xenophobia, exploitation, on and on. And of course, colonization and violent conquest, subjugation, etcetera, etcetera. Everything that we know and associate with the West. You can, you can almost attribute everything that we associate to the West, all of the ugliness and the violence and the brutality that we associate with the West.

You can you can almost identify that it's because of the absence of just these three ayat. If they had had these three ayat and known these three ayat and integrated and incorporated and absorbed and and understood, and appreciated and actualized these three ayat, the entire history of the world would be different. And what I'm telling you is that the West, the collective West, Europe and America represents centuries upon centuries of misguidance, Kufr, and following Wasswasa. These people are multigenerational victims of shaitan. And one of the most, insidious aspects, of their supremacist mentality is that it, seals them off from guidance.

It makes them think that Wasswasa is the voice of enlightened reason. And because they are the most, influenced by was wasa, they think that they have a monopoly on reason and rationality. Well, they are century after century, the most confused, misled, uncivilized, unevolved, backwards people on the planet. But Shaytan has inoculated them against self awareness, against ever seeing themselves for how they really are. And part of how he did that was precisely by making them believe that they're superior and everyone else is inferior.

You know, it's like a a cult that can only be sustained by making sure that all of their members never talk to people outside of the cult. So they eventually become intellectual inbreds, only ever listening to their own version of reality. Their thoughts and perceptions are forever kept within their own, ideological gene pool. So just like with an actual, with actual inbreeding they become mutants, deformed. Defects develop intellectually, ideologically, morally, and in terms of character.

That's what happens when you pay superiority on anything other than piety and righteousness. You start to give honor and importance to impious wicked people just because they meet your criteria of value irrelevant characteristics. And then that elevation and that honor gives validity and respectability to impiety and to wickedness. And from there, the the mutations and the deformations just keep continuing on and on generation after generation, and that's the West. That's what the West has done to their own people, which is why their people have done so much harm to the world.

There are tragic people. There are tragic people whose hands have wrought tragedies all around the globe. They aren't saviors. They need to be saved themselves. And you're doing yourselves and you're doing them a gross disservice by thinking otherwise about them or by allowing them to think otherwise about themselves for even a second.