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Why Muslims Are In The State They're In, Hamza Yusuf On Human Psyche

hamza yusuf zaytuna sandala blog islam slave history

Religious Superiority Is A Disempowering State.
"The spirit of the law often gets lost with the letter of the law. Islam is a tradition that is really trying to unify the idea of both. You cannot have one without the other.

With too much justice there will be wrath, if there's too much mercy, you end up with a type of social chaos.

The problem with modern Islam is that there is a massive focus on wrath, on anger. And this is what would be termed in the manichean world view as 'slave mentality of resentment'. That the oppressed suddenly has a special status within human society, because of their human experience of suffering. They will think,
"I am suffering, you are not, therefore, I am (ipso facto) better than you."
This is a real trap in the human psyche. It's the idea that because you are suffering in a way nobody else is, you are better than them. In this view, there is no moral superiority, none of superiority in action (Islam has spiritual ranking). There is a superiority only by the condition of suffering. And this is a trap.

Author Olivier Roy said as long as Muslims stay in this framework, who stay in this mentality, they can't pull themselves up. It's a completely disempowering situation to be in. {The Failure of Political Islam, Olivier Roy}

Warith Deen Muhammad (Nation of Islam) once said about this culture, where the African-American were demanding reparations, and saying 'I've got 400 years of injustice and I'm not going to do anything unless you rectify the wrongs that have been done to me'. To this, WWD said, "this is like a man who's literally been mugged, left dying on the floor, but when a man comes and offers him a hand to pick him up, he says: No. I'm not getting up until the guy that did this comes back and apologises to me".

The guy that did that is most likely not going to come back. You will wallow in your self-pity because people are not going to help you up. And this is the very context the Muslim condition is in."

- Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, lesson on The Concept Of I

More by respected Hamza Yusuf:
Murabit al-Hajj
Hamza Yusuf's Family interview | Zaufishan
Quote Gems From #Rihla2011 In Bursa, Turkey


  1. Great post Sis! Love the animation of Sh. Hamza too!

  2. Alhamdulilah, dua request for our teacher, yo. I just said yo. Ya Allah.


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