A central reason Muslims have never yet flourished on a large scale in the West is our almost wholly negative attitude towards shari'a or sacred law. Negative shari'a should pivot on clear red lines, not a paranoia about whether or not everyday life is "halal."
The real purpose of sacred law is in any case positive; it provides principles for maximized human flourishing in accordance with the lofty vision of human nature that has been revealed to us, not a raft of complexes and prohibitions.
The true Muslim's natural assumption when encountering a new situation is not only that it is "halal", but that its halal status need not even be investigated. God created all that is in the earth for you; everything on this earth was created for our benefit, in order to help us in actualising the holistic flourishing demanded by our nature; it was not created so that we could be suspicious, uneasy, and paranoid about every unfamiliar thing that we encounter.
Instead, in everything you do be faithful and loyal to the haqa'iq and the sha'a'ir, the spiritual realities and the outward symbols of the din. It is that deep spiritual orientation and the pursuit of the corresponding truth, beauty, and goodness in all things which will keep you on the Straight Path, the path of closeness to Allah, not an unhealthy and morally lazy dependence on a "mufti" who has lost all touch with reality.
He created all that is in the earth for you is indeed one of the proof texts for the fiqh maxim "the default assumption is permissibility." We should combine it with the hadith, "Seek the moral judgement of your heart," and recognise that a pedantic and partisan fiqh madhhab calculus is rarely the right way to achieve the maqasid of the din in this time.
From the
ضروريات
to the
تحسينيات
the purposes of sacred law are configured to facilitate the cultivation of truth, beauty, and goodness in the life of each individual believer. Social and cultural non-participation, the self-incarceration of authentically Islamic creative energies, and our defaulting to "halal" medicine and engineering, and thus becoming grey, lifeless non-presences in Western societies that we should be transforming with light, is the price our communities pay for our lazy (and unislamic) legalism.
You bring me 100 incels, 10 of them have never touched a woman and seek blessing of St Hamudi, half of them are redpill goyim and hopecel goyim. And the other ones are khilonim - gymcel over here, 5'9 over there, tactical soap. 20-30% are looksmaxxers. They make fun of norwood
“The uniter of all the human types, the full scope of the human experience, mystic, warrior, lawgiver, trader, husband, father, friend. The harmoniser of majesty and beauty in all of those human types”
This — the Light of Muhammad ﷺ — is the heart of SAIF theory
The structural movement of feminism is to break open a taboo under the banner of freedom and women's rights and to then, once the taboo is removed, move into the opposite direction and condemn men for engaging with the now no longer taboo phenomenon.
Porn is a great example of this. Despite its proliferation it was, until roughly the late 2000s or so, still seen as something unbecoming to participate in most of Western society. Everybody watched porn but to be a porn actress or even adjacent to it was to be in a different world that the normal world largely looked down upon, even if it consumed it.
From the late 2000s until somewhere in the late 2010s the entire discourse surrounding onlyfans and similar issues was to try to remove the stigma attached to it, to make it so that a girl having an onlyfans (and thus making porn) was just a normal thing. Liberals were having insane discussions about how a guy who did not want a girlfriend who did onlyfans was insecure.
Women were free to do what they wanted with their bodies and if so many men consumed porn, then how could they look down upon pornstars? Of course along with this came all the ridiculous euphemistic language changes (its now no longer prostitute or whore but sex worker etc.)
Once that idea became mainstream enough, the move into the opposite direction started. It is now fine for women to be pornstars or even to be "sex workers", but men who consume porn are actually gross and disgusting.
As said, this is what feminism has done consistently throughout history. It is not the breaking down of taboos so much as flipping the thing on its head in what is largely just an obfuscated power grab through moral discourse.
There’s a strange romance to walking. The world gives itself differently depending on the eyes that meet it. A man who has walked the same path a thousand times may drift through it almost like a ghost, led more by memory than by sight, barely being stirred by things that mightve once moved him
Then someone else comes along and walks that same road for the first time, and suddenly everything feels alive again. The hush of the trees. The way the evening light leans across the path. The slight trembling of leaves. The birdsong overhead, etc. That quiet, intimate feeling that comes from standing before something that hasnt been worn down by familiarity
The path itself hasnt changed, and yet somehow it has? Beauty is rarely just in the thing we look at; its also in the freshness, softness, and wonder with which we receive it
Maybe thats the hidden sadness of familiarity. For all its intimacy, it can become a veil, laid slowly over enchantment. With this, we can take walking as a gentle kind of lesson, reminding us that the world doesnt withhold its loveliness from us. More often than not, we're the ones who, with time, forget how to see it
I've completely been subsumed by other projects, but I must announce: the new edition of my debut novel that many of you have loved, Blood of the Levant, is finally out in paperback:
https://t.co/X2UJUuREem