Our Muslim brothers and sisters in the West have long been a source of both hope and contemplation for us. Observing them from afar, we have been filled at times with deep sympathy and, at other times, with uncertainty. They face many challenges, particularly in navigating the societies they live in and the cultural relationships they must forge. In areas of Europe where Muslim populations are significant, such as the UK and Germany, discussions around concepts like “British Islam” and “German Islam” are emerging. Abdassamed Clarke is someone whose work I closely follow. He is a key figure, being a partner in Diwan Press and a former imam of the Norwich Mosque. I had the opportunity to speak with him about the situation of Muslims in the West.
Let’s start by getting to know you. How did you become a Muslim?
First, since the reader needs to know something about the interviewee in order to understand where to place his words, my name is Abdassamad Clarke, and I was born and schooled in Northern Ireland, and received my degree in maths and physics from Edinburgh University. Shortly after that I accepted Islam at the hands of Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi who was originally from Scotland, but had himself been educated in the deen by Shaykh Muhammad ibn al-Habib Meknes in Morroco, may Allah be pleased with both of them. The latter was thoroughly educated in the classical sciences of Islam, fiqh, Arabic, tafsir, ‘aqida, hadith and so on, and then later became a shaykh of the Qadiri Shadhili Darqawi tariqa. Thus he married the knowledges of the haqiqa – the reality, and the shari’a – the law, and Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi followed him in that.
Because of a previous exchange you and I had, this idea of becoming Muslim has exercised my thinking a great deal. In one sense, one does not become a Muslim; one submits in Islam. There are no converts, reverts, muhtadis etc., but only Muslims. Even ‘new Muslims’ as a category is troubling. And when you are a Muslim you are a part of an umma and you have a deen.
In another sense, there is a process of becoming a Muslim that must be engaged in, which many people who say the shahada don’t get the opportunity to do: that is encapsulated in the traditional saying that whoever spends forty days among a people is one of them. In the community I know and grew up in, someone who accepts Islam lives with other Muslims, for a considerable period at the beginning often living with them in their homes, and imbibes the deen in lived practice. What our Shaykh taught us even then was to stay together and live our lives together, both for the humdrum mundane matters and the project of establishing Islam.
Personally, I find some of the celebrity people who do “da’wa” a bit troubling. Online or in person they say a lot of things and get people to say the shahada and then leave them to it. That is irresponsible.
We know that as Muslims and even with the guidance we have access to, we will nevertheless have many things to face, the difficulties of raising a family, relations between men and women, husbands and wives, parents and children, one’s relations with family, and if one’s family are non-Muslims the complexities there, the simple matter of what one does in the world, and how one gains one’s livelihood. To expect someone to say the shahada, then give them a translation of Qur’an, some of which are poor and difficult reading, and then a poor translation of a volume of hadith, and that they will somehow make a success of it, that is a kind of madness. That said, there are now a number of excellent translations of Qur’an and volumes of hadith and classical works of Islam. Nevertheless, it is not recommended to entrust the education of people new to Islam to texts and books, and it is not our way to gain knowledge of Islam exclusively from books. It must be transmitted live from people of knowledge.
As to my becoming a Muslim, I met Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi, may Allah be merciful to him, and he invited me to come and live with the Muslims around him, and share in their lives and their practice, and at a certain point it became clear that I should say the shahada and take Islam as my deen. May Allah reward Shaykh Abdalqadir immensely, not only for that experience of mine, but the countless people who have come into Islam in similar situations and ways through him, and for the even larger numbers of people from Muslim backgrounds who rediscovered their Islam in new and dynamic ways.
Today, the number of Muslims in the West is increasing. Muslims, whose religious beliefs were once humiliated and ostracised in their own countries, perceived this situation as the collapse of the West, as a victory over the West. They even said that Islam was rising again from the West. But when we take a closer look, the situation of Muslims in the West and minority Muslims in general is more difficult. Family life, exclusion from the society they live in, economic difficulties, cultural atmosphere. Where are the Muslims in the West in the ummah? How can they contribute?
There is a matter in our thinking that we ought to be cautious about, which is a kind of triumphalism, of grand narratives full of victory and conquest, none of it backed by any real engagement with thinking and knowledge let alone action, for example, that somehow ‘the West’ is collapsing and that ‘Islam’ will take over.
There are complexities that are not faced. Many Muslims in the West are economic migrants. The central reason for their being in the West is economic, and, because they are Muslims, then they do the prayer, seek out halal food etc., establish mosques, and in general try to behave well. They do much that is important, such as treating neighbours well and people they transact with. But the deen is a secondary consideration. This is not my narrative, but the narrative that many such Muslims will tell you: “We are very bad Muslims; we only came here for the money.” However, I heard Shaykh Abdalqadir saying to a community of Muslims in Slough in England words to this effect, “You say that you are bad Muslims who only came here for the money, but Allah brought you here to establish Islam in lands it had never been in before.” This is the challenge that must be taken up: getting out of one’s own autobiographical narrative, and seeing the Hand of Allah in one’s affairs and in affairs in general. This brings success.
You start with this key word “numbers”. There is a feeling that something changes with numbers, that more is better, more powerful, more successful. However, the Muslims’ first battle, Badr, was won by a small group against overwhelming odds, and the battle of Hunayn was almost lost when the the Muslims were numerous because of the great numbers of people who had accepted Islam, particularly after the Opening of Makka to Islam. Any historian can tell you of events in which small forces defeated significantly greater ones. And conversely, our Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, in a hadith, which for me is a proof of his Prophethood, foresaw a day when the nations would invite each other to dine off the Muslims. The Companions were appalled, and asked if that would be because of the small numbers of Muslims, and he, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, that no, the Muslims would be many at that time.
So the numbers of Muslims in the West are irrelevant. Entirely. Just as is the case in the world at large. The Muslims are between a fifth and a quarter of all humanity, and yet are entirely ineffective in any real way, although I do not underestimate the impact Muslims have on the world in their everyday relations with neighbours, travellers and so on, as I mentioned earlier. And yet the Muslims are the midmost nation, a sleeping giant waiting to be awoken. However, triumphalist and cultural thinking are self-defeating. As Shaykh Dr. Abdalqadir as-Sufi said: Islam is not a culture but a filter for culture. We are not here to revive Baghdad of the Abbasid Caliphate. That is a fantasy. We should look away from any idea of a ‘Golden Age’, whether of the Abbasids or the Ottomans, and look again to the source: the Madina of the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, and his Companions.
The other issue is the preconception that “the West” is the enemy. In my view, the history of the West is its journey towards Islam, which has been thwarted twice: first, by the Church, the Roman Catholic church, which first falsified the teachings of Jesus, peace be upon him, and then lied about the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace; second, the global forces of capitalism and their media which daily lie about Islam, and thus prevent the spiritually hungry people of the West from reaching it.
The narrative of “Islam versus the West” is not a healthy one. Even without the guidance of revelation many Westerners are reaching out for what they don’t know but which many find to be Islam. One of the factors that can sometimes prevent them is our presenting Islam to them in a formulaic way, in readymade narratives, whether as something called “shari’a-law”, or the “Islamic state”, or a religion of Islam which is beautiful and peaceful, etc.
And even so, many people are accepting Islam. But they can’t become Turks, Pakistanis, Moroccans or Arabs. Nor will they become “German Muslims”, for example, because that would imply that there is a different Islam for different peoples, but they will become “Muslims in Germany”.
On the other hand, Muslims in the West are not uniform either. Neither religiously nor ethnically. Some Muslims in particular distinguish themselves from immigrant Muslims. They attribute a secret superiority to themselves. How do you think Muslims in the West should define themselves?
I don’t know about these “some Muslims” who distinguish themselves from immigrant Muslims. How could I without wide experience and meeting lots of people? It is not a particularly significant theme in the Muslims I know in the West.
As to defining ourselves, definition comes from the word “finite” and it means, to put a limit on something, as it does also in Arabic, limit being hadd, and definition tahdeed. It seems to me that in the encounter with the Infinite – the meaning of al-‘Adheem – limits are removed. Allah really has power over everything, meaning that He is able to do anything of the possibilities – the mumkinat. That is something one must bear in one’s heart when one supplicates Him. You must know in a deep way that what seems very difficult or improbable to us, is not so for Allah.
We should not define ourselves, but just ‘be’ Muslims and act. Action is twofold: acts of worship, and ordinary transactions. For both we need fiqh-understanding. That is obligatory upon us. Fiqh-understanding is threefold: it is in Islam, in outward behaviour; it is in Iman, the inward landscape we have; and it is in the sciences of the heart and character that are Ihsan, called variously tasawwuf or tazkiya–purification, meaning purification of heart and self.
But let us not overlook that first thought: ‘being Muslim’. Being is the great forgotten matter of the age, West and East, the latter having come under the Western worldview that stems from the Greeks and Romans. We Muslims have also inherited the forgetfulness of Being intrinsic to the Western worldview – and ‘Being’ is capitalised only to distinguish it from ‘a being’. This forgetfulness of Being is not natural for Muslims.
When it comes to Muslims in the West, there is talk of integration. Concepts such as German Islam, British Islam are discussed. Muslims do not want to lose their own culture. What do you think such definitions of “identity” mean?
This idea of identity is a part of the sickness of the age, causing the deflection of our focus from matters that really matter to secondary issues. Thus race, colour, cultural differences, sex, all come to the fore, but the issues that genuinely confront us, we ignore.
The idea of “losing one’s culture” is misleading on various levels. For example, take Denmark. The Danish People’s Party is concerned about Danes losing their culture and values, but, for example, they don’t read Søren Kierkegaard and many of the key people of Danish thought and culture, and if they are Christians they know nothing whatsoever about Christianity and its origins. Incidentally, there is a new category in the West of “cultural Christians”, people who are actually atheists and materialists, whose espousal of Christianity in this way only shows their complete inability to think. Culture for the Danish People’s Party comes down to a particular type of schnapps (like a kind of whiskey) and a few other inconsequential ritualised cultural practices usually around the dinner table, which although quite charming are of no great importance. If Danes reflected they would find that what robs them of their culture is usury-capitalism, not the immigrants they blame, and this is the same throughout Europe and the West.
I have got to meet and know a large number of Muslims in Denmark, who genuinely like the Danish people, and, in fact, feel that the Danes are very close to Islam because of their values. These Muslims are completely integrated: they have ordinary jobs, they have neighbours they interact with and engage socially with. The reality is that most Muslims integrate to a much higher degree than others, because Westerners are afflicted with the alienation that bedevils capitalist culture, whereas Muslims are used to looking out for their neighbours no matter what their race, culture or religion. It’s normal behaviour for them.
Indeed, quite ordinary Muslims are not going to get terribly upset at people’s moral failings, and will treat all people well, because they understand that what should matter with people who have not known the light of revelation is only their Iman or unbelief. We do not need to approach the moral teachings of Islam until people have accepted the twin pillars of tawhid and risala – the Message. In that sense, each person we meet is one of those about whom Allah says, that which means, “And I have not created Jinn and mankind but to worship Me.”
Most of us are faced with the issues of earning a living. But we live in a schizoid way, because we think that we can worship Allah with our ‘ibadat but then we can live according to the mores of capitalism. It doesn’t even occur to most people that this is not acceptable. The best that happens is that people worry about interest on bank deposits, and how do we buy a house? That is selfish. Life comprises not only our individual choices – a particularly Western phenomenon called ‘liberalism’ – but also the affairs of the common good, the general welfare of the society, Muslims and non-Muslims. It is not acceptable merely to be concerned about whether the biscuits we eat are halal or not. We must also have a wider concern.
In fact, one cannot engage in any activity, whether acts of worship or ordinary transactions, without knowing the fiqh involved, and fiqh means understanding. There few who even think that that might concern them. The young are sent to universities to become doctors, engineers, and, shockingly, bankers. There are many Muslims whose personal piety is unquestioned – although we would have to differentiate piety from taqwa because the latter is that which would make a person at least think before becoming a banker – but who are engaged in professions that are entirely usurious. Banking is a special case, but by and large, we have come to accept the idea of ‘jobs’ which intrinsically serve a function in a global economic and political system that is iniquitous. Employment is only one part of a traditional Muslim economy, and not the most important part. But often in the world today we appear to have little choice, except that we forget how generous Allah is and that He will always provide a way forward for whoever sincerely wants it.
So this is a kind of schizoid condition that lies at the root of all our problems, East and West, political and geopolitical and so on. Famously, Allah declares war on usury in the Qur’an, but actually this is not true: He, glorious and exalted is He, declares war on the believers who do not give up usury. Does anything more succinctly explain our political and geopolitical misfortunes of the last two centuries? We have engaged in usury, and the Lord of existence has declared war on us. It is not necessarily about the Zionists or ‘the West’. That sounds like a bleak note, but the truth is that this is the beginning of success, for, having correctly identified the issue, we can address it, and we can turn our situation around, may Allah help us to do that, and grant us success in it.
Today, even many marginalised leftist movements cannot raise the issue of usury. As a Muslim in the West, why do you centre on this issue? or example, you could develop a more spiritual discourse. After all, doesn’t it mean being marginalised within the capitalist system?
There are two aspects to the answer: the first is our knowledge of economics (without being economists), politics (without being politicians), and of the history of the two back to their roots in ancient history and early states such as Sumer, Babylon, through Greece and Rome, up to our time, and the emergence of the modern state in phases such as the English Elizabethan age and the French Revolution, and from there its capture of Muslim civilisation. To understand that, you have to see the integral nature of the state, usury commerce, temple, priesthood, taxation, debt and the slavery that results from unpayable debt, and usury debt is ultimately unpayable. Thus this model ends up with enslaved masses and a small oligarchic élite. This is wisely recognised now in the West, America, Britain and Europe. See the discourse today on the unparalleled wealth of “1 %” and the corresponding impoverishment of the remaining 99%.
The second matter is seeing the revelation to our Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and the revelations to all the Prophets. Ibrahim, peace be upon him, is probably located somewhere in that epoch of the emergence of the first states with their mass coercion, taxation and usury debt. He walked away from it. The Egyptian Pharaonic state had the same character. Musa, peace be upon him, then stands over and against this powerful state, Fir’awn and his coterie, his magicians and priests. The Prophetic model has always stood against this. The rabbis of the Children of Israel incurred the anger of the Divine because, although they had the same revelation prohibiting usury as we do, they learnt usury in Babylon and practised it – not among themselves but using it as a weapon against their enemies. However, like us, they were duty bound to call their enemies to tawhid and the Prophetic message, not to live off them as parasites.
Then it came the time of our Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and at the beginning of his mission in Makka, the enslavement of debtors was abrogated, and at the end of his life, peace be upon him, the ayats prohibiting usury totally and finally were revealed as almost the last revelation of the Qur’an, as well as the ayats regulating debt and credit, which became a part of the positive foundation of Muslim commerce.
Similarly, in the Last Khutbah, the absolute prohibition of all usury was repeated, and at that time all usurious debts were cancelled starting with those owed to the uncle of the Prophet al-‘Abbas ibn ‘Abd al-Muttalib, may Allah be pleased with him. It’s absolutely clear cut. And al-Khulafa’ ar-Rashidun continued insisting on it, as did the people of Madina of the first three generations as recorded in the Muwatta. Remember this book the Muwatta is not a madhhab book but a sahih hadith collection and a record of the practice of the People of Madina in acts of worship and ordinary transactions and in the market place, in all of which the first generations of the salaf embodied the Prophetic commands and prohibitions in practice or extrapolated from them. It was always, and is still, a resource for how we do commerce. And the Muslims had a successful global commercial practice until we fell for usury. And now we have disaster, and the bankers have taken everything and are in the process of taking almost everything that remains.
A part of the story is that in recent centuries a false fiqh grew up that separated credal matters and acts of worship from ordinary transactions, effectively making a ‘religion’ out of Islam rather than a deen. This said that in the affairs of the world almost anything goes. No, this is a deen and it encompasses both the acts of worship and ordinary transactions.
As to being ‘marginalised within capitalism’ such a statement assumes too much, that capitalism is an immutable matter and one with success. In fact, what I prefer to call usury-capitalism is a very recent phenomenon, which is clearly already in serious trouble, and which brings trouble wherever it goes: war, civil war and strife, marital breakdown, gargantuan pollution, the destruction of the species one by one, the poisoning of the oceans and our water supplies. In fact, we are responsible before Allah for conniving at this even if we somehow think we are forced to do so by circumstances. Yes, the person who is coerced has some excuse, but, for example, if you are told that either you must kill someone else or we will kill you, you have no excuse if you kill the other person. You must not do so.
The idea of a ‘spiritual discourse’ in the midst of capitalism is a deception, that one can cultivate sanctity and a reputation for it, and of course we all know that showing off and reputation are two destructive traits. It is impossible to separate such matters from the realities of life. Muslims traditionally recognise two broad aspects: haqiqa – reality, and shari’a – law, and they are like spirit and body – it is impossible to separate them. That is why in what is one of the great masterworks of tasawwuf, the Meaning of Man by Sidi Ali al-Jamal, may Allah have mercy on him, he emphasises the interplay between these elements, but in the end says that the shari’a and its people of knowledge have priority. In other words, if you want spiritual experience you must engage with the shari’a and outward action. Is that anything other than the reason we perform the prayer, pay the zakat and so on? They are outward actions, but we hope for their inward fruits. It is the same with outward actions in the world.
People regard matters that are permissible as neutral without reward or punishment, but this is a mistake because even a permissible action like eating is rewarded by Allah if one undertakes it desiring to strengthen oneself for His worship and for jihad in His way. But no one disagrees that usury is utterly prohibited and that there is a punishment for doing it, unless Allah forgives one, and a reward for giving it up, should He accept our doing so.
But do not think that the discourse on usury in the West is ‘marginal’. The West has a long history of people who have opposed usury and who oppose usury capitalism and banking today. There are many people with a sophisticated critique of usury and banking in all their forms and, indeed, a principled opposition to them. Regrettably it is people from Muslim backgrounds who seem defeated and who are too impressed by the apparent power of bankers, who have actually become devotees of something that is quite repugnant, neglecting the way revealed by Allah, exalted is He, and embodied and demonstrated in practice by the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and his Companions in Madina, and then on down through the ages in Muslim practive until quite recently. Many many Westerners are waking up to the evil of banking and usury-capitalism and repudiating it, just as many are waking up to the deen of Islam. So this is exactly the right discourse in the right place at the right time. And indeed, many more Muslims are now waking up to this issue. May Allah bring many non-Muslims into Islam, into our ummah and may He give success to all the efforts of Muslims to renew the deen.