Don't Colonize Yourself: Mohamed Ghilan Speaks on The Colonizer And The Colonized

Albert Memmi is a Jewish Italian-Tunisian who lived during colonial Algeria and wrote a book on his observations from his unique position in society: between colonizer and colonized. Mohamed Ghilan, a Canadian of Yemeni-Sudani origins who studied Maliki fiqh in Mauritania and has a PHD in neuroscience, discusses the relevance of the revolutionary (in the literal sense) text to the modern day secular-liberal-atheistic ethos. The book offers a perspective of the mentality of the European colonizer and contrasts it with the perspective of the colonized. 

Do watch the video!

Beast mode activates at 9:20 in the video.

Summary and Analysis of the Video

At 9:30, He illustrates the following argument that the materialists present us with:

• The church propagated beliefs that prevented science and advancement and lead to the dark ages.
• Since, Islam has similar beliefs to Christianity
• Therefore, Islam prevents science and advancement.

But that's false; just look at Islamic history and even European history! Ghilan says that it was European priests, theologians, and monks that used to perform science!

You as the average Muslim sit back and think, "Well maybe they have a point, maybe we are backwards because of our religion!"

It's very informal and invalid, but it's effective in the minds of the 'colonized'. With the internet and globalization, this cultural colonization has become all so more potent.

So one response of the colonized Muslims is that they adopt the colonizer's deen- way of life-  by unsuccessfully adopting their: religion (in extreme cases, agnosticism, atheism), their value system (the harm principle, western feminism, secularism), their names (Mo, Zach, Ryan), traditions (birthdays), their holidays (Christmas, New Year's, Halloween), their music (Kanye, say no more), their behavior (YOLO), their language (SWAG), their skin (idk a nose job maybe), and even their clothes (wearing Western clothes). They do this because they are ashamed of their religion or they want the same success that Western societies have or because of peer pressure. However, the religion of Allah is obviously superior  to any deen so you should not be ashamed to display it (that's why you follow it, you dummy). This mentality is common in the West and even in the Muslim world seeing the rise in secular movements.

OR

The second option that the colonized Muslims adopt is making their religion a "reactionary religion". This is the far more uncommon, passive aggressive option. These Muslims practice the religion for the sake of keeping their identity; its a practice of nationalism rather than a practice of faith. They go out of our way to grow beards, wear hijab, wear a thob, pray in the mosque, go overboard on eid and weddings, basically do anything that asserts their Islamic identity, and losing the "dynamic spiritual nature" of the religion (note that this doesn't mean to change the laws of the religion, but just realizing that Islam isn't just its physical practice, but also its internalization). They practice Islam in an outwards display to show that they arrogantly reject the colonizer's way of life (i.e. flipping off your bully), rather than practicing Islam for Allah.

That's a summary of Ghilan's video on the book. 

Random thoughts

I started to read it; the colonizer section is somewhat relevant to the citizen/expatriate class system in Saudi Arabia. I liked this one quote that can be summarized by "an expatriate will never go to his home country if that means cutting his living standards in half and the only way he would ever leave is that he would be fired". However in the case of expatriates, the subjugated ones are the expatriates: they must live according to the whims of the ones of the native country. It's really an amazing parallel, anytime a massive amount of people entered a country it was to colonize it, but not in Saudi Arabia. This is because the natives invite folk who are in a financially inferior position than themselves. That's the difference between the story of the Native Americans and the Saudis. 

Conclusion: Don't invite people to your home if they might potentially buy it.