Introducing Muslim Minds Redefined

Today, it is imperative that the new generation of Muslims begin to think and see the world in a different way than what we have been taught. The scholars for dollars, the imams who speak the line of money, the elders who immerse their culture into Islam, these are not the ones we should be listening to or following. A new way of thinking has to be found if this Ummah is to survive intact and with sanity remaining. Muslim Minds Redefined signifies this step towards approaching Islam from a unique perspective.

Some Muslims say that they want to see change and they want their communities to be more inclusive and more equal, yet the things they may practice are not Islamic. Rather than turning to our own standards and criteria, they turn to that of western culture operating under an inferiority complex. They feel that Islam is behind and backwards and that Islamic law is no good or at least it is secondary to the western ways. These kinds of Muslims aren’t working for a betterment of Islam, they are working for the induction of the west while saying they are Muslim and want ‘Islamic’ law. This is not what we are working towards. We are interested in practicing Islam and with no inferiority complex in what we do.

We are those Muslims who are coming into the scene with an entirely different frame of mind. Our source of knowledge is the Qur’an and what we come across in readings and teachings and talking. We do not work within the framework of sectarianism. While some of us may individually claim to be Sunnis and others may individually claim to be Shi’as we can easily work together and with one another without being condescending towards one another. Every one Muslim is entitled to his and her own opinion and madhabi interpretation. Interpretation will be different based on human and life experience but if we can agree to disagree then the problems faced between us will be minute. Stressing our differences and separating ourselves from one another has done nothing and will do nothing to better our standing in this world and in the hereafter. Working on a common ground will be what gets us to a much better status in this world and is what will strengthen our Ummah.

Muslim Minds Redefined is an effort to revitalize this diin within a new generation of Muslims. Shed off the extra fat and the extra weight that has been holding us down. Sift through the mud and muck. Cultural practices that are passed off as Islam, blind devotion to ‘leaders’ and entities who do not have the best interest of their followers at heart, these things and others are what MMR seeks to correct insha’Allah. Too many generations have failed their offspring by silently being complicit with the wrongness being perpetrated and the failures being purposefully performed against the Muslim public by those in seats of power and knowledge. To sit by idly while such things go on is to commit a wrong. And even if we, MMR, are not able to affect large change in our communities for the better, at least we would have tried and with each step drawn closer to pleasing Allah. Our intention is what matters most and the intention of MMR is to return ourselves to Islam without the weights our societies and histories have placed on it and on us.