A WhatsApp message I sent to the son of family friends after his status advocating for Friday sermons on Sudan
Again, without wishing to sound unduly cynical - a lot of this is from my own personal experiences - a lot of what passes for “concern for the ummah” is the by-product of Moslem screen addictions. I don’t have any personal social media accounts. On occasion, when publicising a new episode for my Abbasid History Podcast, I manually log in (no saved passwords for them on my browsers) to send an update message on FB, Twitter and IG. It’s amazing how FB can suck you into scrolling even though I didn’t log in for that intention. Simply to post link to new episode and log out again. But then I find myself being concerned about things that never concerned me previously.
Islamist organisations like to look relevant by hijacking commentaries on events around the world. Places you didn’t know existed in the first place, let alone the problems there. People there or near there are paid to ensure the welfare of the people there. Not me. This is not being uncharitable. Charity should flow from reasoned assessment, not emotional reactions to edited clips. Islamists demonstrate “leadership” by interfering with foreign events. They amplify the imagined community of Ummah to exploit the goodwill of Moslems financially and for moral support. Then Islamists mess up. But those at the front driving the train can jump out first before the crash, it’s the followers and passengers who will suffer the impact more. Islamists will then reinvent themselves, shrug their shoulders, “youthful misadventures n’all dat”, and then rebuild their grift on the skulls and amputated limbs of erstwhile followers.