Anglo-American Philosopher | 2nd generation Muslim | Qur'an reciter | Dean of BT Academy | Anti-Neotrad LARPing League | Sometime musician and composer | Rifa'i
Cambridge, UK
Joined May 2026
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It seems inevitable that the revival of Islam in the latter days will take place within Western cultural forms.
This will surely involve a transformation of the very highest of Western cultural forms,* as illuminated by the “Prophetic breeze" foreseen 200 years ago by al-Rawwas. Yes, in a (hitherto insufficiently well-known) visionary experience, the great Rifa'i saint Imam al-Rawwas saw that at the very height of the West's dominance and enmity towards Islam, an effusion from the Prophetic Presence ﷺ would bring large numbers of Westerners into Islam, who in virtue of that effusion, would be blessed with an extraordinarily profound understanding of the dīn. More recently, the great Moroccan saint Shaykh Muhammad Ibn al-Habib also foresaw that the revival of Islam would take place at the hands of individuals from the West.
Much of the Muslim presence in the West has failed. I will seek to avoid inciting defensiveness by mentioning names, but many of the initial forms in which the establishment of Islam was sought in the Western world were some or all of
1 formalistic and legalistic
2 narrow-mindedly ethnocentric
3 subordinate to economic concerns, with "Islamic" observance largely no more than a cocoon employed (despite the almost complete absence of an authentic Islamic worldview) to justify fear of a half-understood host culture, and thereby validate insularity, as well as to establish rigid family control structures.
4 intellectually fideistic in a manner that ironically played into the hands of default scientism and positivism
5 devoid of continuity with the historically normative twofold structure of . self-mastery and . purification leading to inward tasting and illumination.
Thus personally incapable of presenting a profound vision of Islam to our Western hosts, we became the skulking, sullen intruder whose presence makes no sense. Hence identitarianism, self-ghettoisation, and burning resentment.
To the contrary, to be sufficiently acknowledged by the ascendent cultural hegemon to be able to begin to transform it, Islam has to make deep, uniquely intelligible sense as vessel of sanctification, as both the redeemer and liberator of human nature, and as the spiritual, intellectual, and emotional consummator and fulfiller of the human journey through this world, embracing all human types.
Meanwhile, the West of advanced modernity has reached unprecedented heights in developing the apparatuses of techne capable of serving as multifarious vehicles for this supreme vision of human nature. But it lacks the cohesive, holistic, integral metaphysical worldview able to provide deep-rooted meaning and content to match that highly enriched matter; it lacks content, that is, beyond hedonism and an ultimately futile and bleak, nihilistic (but still highly arresting) depiction of the drama of human life.
And yet let's face it, we are utterly mimetically subordinate to these cultural forms; we cannot see outside them; and we cannot fully see inside them either. Hence our dismal creative weakness and lack of compelling narrative.
What we need most urgently of all as an Umma, is the return to the prioritisation of that Prophetic Presence ﷺ in all things. What could effect this transformation but the Presence of the Perfect Man ﷺ?
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, such that the Four Caliphs, the most complete of human beings, were but facets of his perfection ﷺ ?
The many of you who think this impossible, thank you, we don't need you. And if this has proved impossible hitherto, it is thanks to the likes of you.
For those who believe in the transformative power of the revelation to the Last Prophet ﷺ know that all is possible in the One God who sent him.
TBC ...
In an upcoming post I will set forward some possible solutions to replace the inadequacies I have outlined here. In the meantime, I'd be interested in your thoughts on all this, including 1-5 above.
* i.e., the transformation of Western e.g., literary, artistic, music, institutional, philosophical, and even religious forms.
Incidentally, @movetomuscat Anwar’s spoken Urdu is better than his English (or any other of the five languages he is fluent in, for that matter)
@movetomuscat states his English isn't that good. How good is your spoken Urdu?
Not to mention, the Mufti literally has published an English translation of the Qur'an because he has studied English.
This and the he's almost senile comment make this hard to take seriously.
1/2
Tonight I find myself in the unenviable comparative metaphysical position of trying to read these four books at the same time.
The Mental Health Crisis and Postmodernism as Mass Psychosis
The mental health crisis of the past fifteen years is now so ubiquitously to be encountered that it can no longer be denied (even if over-diagnosis and the widespread affectation of mental health crisis as fashion statement remain deplorable).
But what is it about this time that has brought on such a torrent of severe inward imbalance? It is only as recently as the 2010s that the trickle-down from the multifarious insanities of postmodern academia, primarily diverse derivations of Nietzsche and Marx, finally reached sufficient critical mass to have truly comprehensively informed the common customs and "wisdom" of the "average man or woman in the street."
For the hoi polloi now believe that the denial of hierarchy and the inversion of essences reflects truth and reality, while simultaneously (and ironically) being taught to deny any truth and reality but "my" truth and "my" reality. The trouble is, it is strictly speaking impossible to consistently deny that there is truth and reality transcending individual self-creation. Psychosis is defined exactly as the loss of contact with reality; postmodernism can thus be classed, with no small precision, as an ideological contagion that by its intrinsic nature engenders mass psychosis.
Mental cohesion certainly begins to deteriorate when, revelling in the delusory conviction and certainty that reality is an inverted hierarchy (in which, for example, morality is subordinate to arbitrary desire and power), the recognition of truth, beauty, and goodness, which makes us human, is dismissed as the exercise of power interests and/or wish-fulfilment and the suppression of desires. How is a consistent personal identity or picture of larger reality possible when all stable standards have been rejected a priori?
We all now know well, given just how widespread the crisis of mental health has become (we all know someone) that it does not merely afflict those of evil disposition. Mental deterioration is also seen to result in those who combine pure heartedness and personal weakness, primarily because the inverted order has made life immensely difficult (family, isolation, work, maintaining religious observance in unbearable conditions, etc.). This state of affairs has left the basic categories of coherence, integrity, order, justice, and intelligibility needed to maintain a baseline of inward balance so eroded in our formative experiences of the world that in the absence of a sufficiently strong spiritual disposition and intellect, mental breakdown is almost inevitable.
Metaphysics has consequences.
Hasan Spiker retweeted
I run a female's only madrassah/community center in Laghman, Afghanistan. 350 students. 3 teachers. My yearly cost is about 5600$. I am confident I am doing more than Malala Fund in Afghanistan.
After a certain revenue model, all non-profits are for-profits. I am sure Malala is not corrupt (she is a useful idiot and a coward, but that is a separate story). There is a scamming consultant class with a revolving door to UN, think thanks, Hollywood etc who hijack prospective organizations, and milk the hell out of them. After a certain point you are just a spectator to their policies. When they say "jump", you say "how high?"
@MalalaFund is the best-known name in Afghan girls’ education. I had @claudeai go through its audited financial statements, IRS Form 990s and its own grant announcements to see what it has actually funded for Afghan girls, and what changed as a result. 🧵
Tradition is the transfiguration of human activity, in all its multifarious domains, into a vehicle for the presence of the Divine, or it is nothing.
If you're a younger man perceived as successful, beware of envy. Some of its most vicious forms come from resentful older men who feel that they haven't made their mark. If you ever see me desperately trying to become a "big shot" after 60, please do the kind thing and shoot me.
Hasan Spiker retweeted
The Forgotten Muslim Genius Who Shaped Ottoman Scholarship youtu.be/KAFWRw9-6WE?is=hEp6… via @YouTube @RealHasanSpiker
This 18th century Ottoman poem by Erzurumlu İbrahim Hakkı is worth all the endless blather and attention seeking on the 2026 internet put together:
Don't say: "Why has it happened like this?"
That it is thus is exactly as things should be.
Look to the outcome, and practice patience -
Let us see what the Lord does.
All that He does, He does beautifully.
Deme şu niçin şöyle,
Yerincedir ol öyle,
Bak sonuna sabreyle, Mevla görelim neyler?
Neylerse güzel eyler
Hasan Spiker retweeted
While this is easier done in European and Western countries, doing so still relies on the legitimacy of this Hanafi dispensation.
Also, arguments like — "would you want this for your own daughter" are emotional deflections. For one, as in the case above, you should never be such an irresponsible and secularized father who allows the very conditions that lead to such dispensations being necessary in the first place.
If you are, you are at fault. If you aren't, then such dispensations aren't even necessary to begin with and there are coherent and contextual social and moral grounds for deep disapproval for such avenues being taken. Note, even in the case above, the couple tried to work with the woman's dysfunctional family for quite some time.
What then of those who don't seek to try and work with upright fathers who are competent and willing to facilitate the marriages of their daughters?
Other issues, like what happens in the case of divorce overlook the graver problems of oppression that some women seek to overcome, that methods to minimize haphazard marriages even without a competent wali exist (like via third party intervention), or that an incompetent and deeply secularized father or matriarchal mother who hates Islām doesn't protect one from divorce to begin with (if anything modelling after them only increases its preponderance).
In Western countries, there are safe guards when such marriages are registered as well. And, many such wo/men are committing zina as is (often even publicizing their illegitimate relationships on social media).
Much more could be said, but this is what came to me off the top of my head for now.
Hasan Spiker retweeted
A simple case study reveals why you are overlooking the hikmah behind the Hanafi school's flexibility and nuance on this matter:
A Muslimah from a highly oppressive secularized family becomes practicing and wants a legitimate way out of her oppression (which practicing Islām triggers in her life). She connects with a decent, competent, and financially stable man from an upright family. The man initially tries to convince her father who turns out to be a pussy cat who remains silent as her matriarchal and mentally unstable mother runs the show. The mother likes the dunyawi benefits this man brings and initially says yes, so the father says yes too. Later, she randomly flips and is unable to produce a single clear reason as to why. The father then gets cold feet. Their daughter is unable to get them to even agree to mediation with a third party. The man remains patient and tries to communicate with them for over a year to no avail. Eventually, the woman's mother becomes violent and is witnessed beating her for still trying to marry the man. The man seeks counsel from his own family and his Shuyukh. Verifying the circumstances, they encourage him to proceed. He successfully marries the woman, without her family's presence although they are invited to attend. The woman appoints a wakil, who represents her. She receives the mahr she wanted. Her life is dramatically improved on all fronts. They are still happily married nearly a decade later.
Is this a true story? Yes, and I have firsthand experience with it too. Also, I have worked with multiple other cases similar to this. They're relatively exceptional, but that's exactly how I see this Hanafi dispensation as well: one apt for such exceptional but nevertheless real world cases.
This is precisely why, while the concerns that you are highlighting are important considerations and definitely apply in many other cases, other such cases that involve a woman's life quite literally being saved — cannot be overlooked.
This 👇. Many modern Arabs - even (or especially) when they think they are "traditional" and have a smattering of idealised knowledge (that leads them to proudly tell all who will listen that we "must take the harder position in order to be 'scrupulous'") - tend to be so entrenched in their (often highly suffocating) social norms and context (which are much more specific to e.g., the Levant than they realise) that they are simply unable to clearly imagine or conceive of circumstances that many real Muslim individuals, often of excellent character, find themselves in today.
For many others in the modern age, especially in the West, however, these circumstances constitute ever-present realities and dilemmas which only someone afflicted by a slightly hysterically prim pseudo-conservatism could possibly be so blind to.
It should be evident to all who truly believe in the sacred revealed law that the diversity of rulings within our great schools exists as a mercy exactly because there are more things (and people, and circumstances) in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Waraʿ is not always taking the idealised 'scrupulous' ruling; sometimes circumstances dictate that the on-paper 'scrupulous' ruling is in fact the furthest thing from scrupulousness and safety. Stop treating New York as if it is Homs or Hama.
What is more, the rulings of the great schools must not be treated as quasi-accidental byproducts of a methodological calculus, which are thus technicalities that God forbid we should ever apply. That is to make a laughing stock of the revealed law, and is precisely why fiqh practitioners have so often given fiqh a bad name.
A simple case study reveals why you are overlooking the hikmah behind the Hanafi school's flexibility and nuance on this matter:
A Muslimah from a highly oppressive secularized family becomes practicing and wants a legitimate way out of her oppression (which practicing Islām triggers in her life). She connects with a decent, competent, and financially stable man from an upright family. The man initially tries to convince her father who turns out to be a pussy cat who remains silent as her matriarchal and mentally unstable mother runs the show. The mother likes the dunyawi benefits this man brings and initially says yes, so the father says yes too. Later, she randomly flips and is unable to produce a single clear reason as to why. The father then gets cold feet. Their daughter is unable to get them to even agree to mediation with a third party. The man remains patient and tries to communicate with them for over a year to no avail. Eventually, the woman's mother becomes violent and is witnessed beating her for still trying to marry the man. The man seeks counsel from his own family and his Shuyukh. Verifying the circumstances, they encourage him to proceed. He successfully marries the woman, without her family's presence although they are invited to attend. The woman appoints a wakil, who represents her. She receives the mahr she wanted. Her life is dramatically improved on all fronts. They are still happily married nearly a decade later.
Is this a true story? Yes, and I have firsthand experience with it too. Also, I have worked with multiple other cases similar to this. They're relatively exceptional, but that's exactly how I see this Hanafi dispensation as well: one apt for such exceptional but nevertheless real world cases.
This is precisely why, while the concerns that you are highlighting are important considerations and definitely apply in many other cases, other such cases that involve a woman's life quite literally being saved — cannot be overlooked.
Family control (the etymological meaning of patriarchy before it was co-opted by radical feminists) only has binding authority if it is guided by and in conformity to Islam. If parents reject a match based on non- or anti-Islamic criteria, and/or would prefer fornication to the societal "shame" of a marriage that doesn't meet their criteria, then "patriarchy" (family control) construed as unnegotiable and absolute authority, becomes a form of jāhiliyya, in that it recognises (and thereby in a meaningful sense worships) an authority that it considers to be higher and more important than Islam; and this must be absolutely rejected, including if in certain special circumstances this necessitates marrying without parental consent, in accordance with the one hundred percent valid Hanafi position, that has been established for more than a millennium and also constituted one of the recognised positions of some of the greatest amongst the salaf.
Hasan Spiker retweeted
Family control (the etymological meaning) only has intrinsic authority if it is guided by and in conformity to Islam. If parents reject a match based on non- or anti-Islamic criteria, and/or would prefer fornication to the societal "shame" of a marriage that doesn't meet their criteria, then "patriarchy" (family control) construed as unnegotiable and absolute authority, becomes a form of jāhiliyya, in that it worships an authority that it considers higher than Islam; and this should be absolutely rejected, including if this involves marrying without parental consent, in accordance with the 100% valid Hanafi position that has been established for more than a millennium.
I recently appeared on the Shajarat al-Nūr podcast and hugely enjoyed the experience. Shajarat al-Nūr is an interesting initiative "dedicated to reviving traditional cognitive frameworks embedded and influenced by the science of the heart – 'iḥsan.'"
The blurb from the talk:
This talk explores how Muslims can move beyond religious formalism, legalism, and defensive identity towards a deeper recovery of Islam’s intellectual, spiritual, and metaphysical vision. In a modern culture increasingly detached from its spiritual foundations, Hasan Spiker will reflect on the Islamic tradition’s integrated understanding of truth, beauty, and goodness, and on the cultivation of the whole human being through spiritual wayfaring and inner transformation. Drawing especially on the metaphysical and spiritual heritage of Sufism, the session will consider why the renewal of Muslim life must begin not simply with outward conformity, representation, or social contribution, but with a renewed encounter with the lived ḥaqāʾiq - the deeper realities - of the religion. It will ask how recovering this dimension of the tradition can enable Muslims to become a source of meaning, beauty, healing, and spiritual uplift in the contemporary world.
youtube.com/watch?v=e2Ev2jjc…
