It’s not that the rosy picture of Islam as love, kindness and mercy painted by some da’ees and scholars is inauthentic. Peace, love, and mercy are indeed an important part of Islam. The trouble is when public figures representing Islam omit or minimize the aspects of the Islam that are incompatible with the Masonic secular ideals of liberalism.

This approach actually destroys the religion completely, because Islam, like everything else in creation, is held together by positive and negative polarity. If these forces are not in balance, it will disintegrate. This is the condition of Islam in the West.

Struggle is the basis of unity. Identity is formed by shared experience; the more intense the experience shared, the stronger the common identity. This is why tribes in Africa and elsewhere have intense and sometimes very painful initiation rituals. The same applies to gangs, which will sometimes use intense beatings as an initiation ceremony.

While shared experiences establish the basis of a shared identity, it is mutual support that maintains it. This support may be material, emotional, or spiritual. For example, while the rich support the poor materially, the poor support the rich emotionally by their happiness and gratitude, and spiritually through their du’a.

Supporting one another through mutual defense is one of the strongest bonds that can be forged between humans. This is why nationalistic rituals are so bound up with militaries, and why so many people regard nations and flags as something sacred. This is also one of the benefits of the prohibition on taking the kuffar as awliya. A pact of mutual defense builds an emotional link, and emotional links have a spiritual element. Therein lies the reason why the Muslim community in the West is in a perpetual state of disintegration.

No matter how much the Muslims profess their beliefs with their tongues, in our present situation, we get extremely limited material utility from Islam. Islam is no longer the bond that holds our societies together and inspires us to defend and serve our community. Islam, as a bond of community, has been replaced with nationalism.

This realization is what ultimately made me give up on da’wah in America. When I invited people to Islam, I realized that even if they accepted, I could not in good conscience hand them over to the American Muslim community, because the masajid, in their function as community organizations, were essentially Islam-flavored churches.

My understanding of Islam as a political system was instrumental in my journey to realizing the divine origin of the Quran. As such, a form of Islam that submits and conforms to secularism and nationalism did not seem to be any Islam at all, so how could I ask people to integrate themselves into this mutilated version of Islam? At the same time, Muslims who already profess and love Islam in are in desperate need of assistance.

Islam is more than just a set of intellectual arguments and beliefs— it’s a way of life. Islam as the sahaba, radhi Allahu anhum, lived it, requires sacrifice for the security and well-being of your fellow Muslims. In Arabic, Islam literally means submission, but it also means peace and security; spiritual security in the first order, but also security of life, honor, family and property.

The Prophet ﷺ said:

وَاللَّهِ لَيُتِمَّنَّ هَذَا الأَمْرَ حَتَّى يَسِيرَ الرَّاكِبُ مِنْ صَنْعَاءَ إِلَى حَضْرَمَوْتَ، لاَ يَخَافُ إِلاَّ اللَّهَ أَوِ الذِّئْبَ عَلَى غَنَمِهِ، وَلَكِنَّكُمْ تَسْتَعْجِلُونَ ‏”‏‏.‏

“By Allah, this religion (i.e. Islam) will prevail till a traveler from Sana (in Yemen) to Hadrarmaut will fear none but Allah, or a wolf as regards his sheep, but you (people) are hasty.”

Sahih al-Bukhari 3612

This illustrates that one of the effects of the true and authentic implementation of Islam is material security, and with this material security comes economic prosperity.

The ideal is to have security in all areas, but if one is forced to choose between material and spiritual security, spiritual security must come first. The societies of the kuffar provide security with regards to the lower priorities, at the expense of the higher priority, and this is in reality no safety at all. A concrete example you can see in any city in America is those who become so focused on financial security that they destroy their emotional life; the emotional void then takes a toll on their health, and as they lose their health, eventually causing them to lose their financial security as well.

The Muslims in America do not rely on each other for safety, but rather on the kuffar. This is a very tangible method by which the bonds that hold the ummah together are broken, and replaced with bonds that bind us to the kuffar. When the body of the ummah is dismembered, compassion and mercy among the believers no longer has any practical benefits, because we are not defending one another.

Instead, we struggle to earn money to pay taxes to disbelieving militaries which “protect” us by murdering our brothers and sisters. Even if we live in a country that is not directly at war with the Muslims, it’s likely that they somehow pay tribute to or assist the nations that are. This is visible in the example of the economic, political, and logistical ties between Europe and the United States. Like the workaholic who destroys his health, we achieve material safety at the expense of our spiritual safety. Sooner or later, this will catch up to us and destroy our material safety as well, either in this life or the hereafter.

Compassion and mercy for the believers and harshness toward the kuffar are two sides of the same coin. We can go astray by abandoning either of these. The khawarij lost their compassion for the believers and ended up fighting the Muslims instead of the mushrikeen. Likewise, many modern Muslims living under the protection of the kuffar have abandoned struggling against the mushrikeen, and have lost their mercy for the Muslims.

If they had mercy towards the Muslims, they wouldn’t expend their energy to be part of a society that is openly waging war against Muslims from the East to the West. They would not wish to support or be near people who are too cowardly to fight face to face, such that they bomb schools, weddings, and masajid and write it off as acceptable “collateral damage.”

Before we can be serious about inviting people to Islam, we need to have a community we can be proud to invite them to, a community based on mutual love and support and protection. The level of mutual support and defense we provide to each other will always be in proportion to our opposition to and hatred of those that threaten the community of believers. The love that binds the ummah together cannot increase without a proportional increase in hatred toward those who seek to attack and destroy our religion and community.

So the real test of sincerity of someone who claims to have compassion for the Muslims is to look for their enmity towards those who attack the Muslims. If they do not have hostility towards the enemies of Allah, they do not genuinely possess compassion for the Muslims. And Allah’s help is sought.