Political Analysis and Global Affairs: morality

I’ve noticed something odd in how people respond when a Muslim publicly condemns violence.

They don’t argue the condemnation. They relocate it.

They say things like: I admire your humanity, but don’t credit Islam for it.
Or worse: Your prophet sanctioned worse. Your conscience comes from somewhere else.

It sounds polite. Almost generous.
It isn’t.

It’s a way of saying: You may keep your morality, but only if you surrender your faith at the door.

That trade has always bothered me.

The compliment that quietly erases

When I wrote about October 7, I expected disagreement. Anger. Even accusations of betrayal.

What I didn’t expect — but perhaps should have — was the insistence that my revulsion had nothing to do with Islam at all.

That it sprang from some neutral, secular “common humanity,” detached from the tradition that shaped my moral instincts in the first place.

This framing flatters the individual while condemning the inheritance.
It allows critics to say: You’re decent. Islam isn’t.

It’s neat. And it’s dishonest.

The accusation that never cites

“The Prophet sanctioned all this and more.”

That sentence gets thrown around casually. Rarely with references. Almost never with context.

Islamic history, like Christian or Jewish history, is not free of violence. Neither is secular history, which managed world wars, industrial slaughter, and nuclear terror without a prophet in sight.

But Islamic moral teaching is explicit on certain things:

civilians are not targets
prisoners are not to be abused
rape is a crime, not a tactic
humiliation is not resistance

I didn’t learn that from NGOs or modern activism. I learned it from elders, teachers, sermons, and texts. Long before Gaza. Long before social media.

To deny that requires ignoring vast parts of Islamic jurisprudence while spotlighting its worst violators.

The false choice

There’s an unspoken demand beneath comments like these.

If you want to be seen as moral, you must distance yourself from Islam.
If you insist Islam shaped you, then your morality must be suspect.

I reject that binary.

Condemning Hamas was not an appeal to secular approval. It was a refusal to let criminals hijack faith, and a refusal to let critics erase it.

Blind loyalty is not faith. Moral responsibility is.

Who gets to define Islam

If Islam is defined only by its worst actors, while every other tradition is allowed reformers, critics, and internal debates, then the verdict is decided in advance.

Extremists don’t get to define Islam for me.
Critics don’t get to hollow it out either.

When I said October 7 was wrong, I didn’t step outside my faith.
I stepped into it.

The quiet discomfort

The real tension isn’t that Muslims condemn violence.

It’s that we do so without renouncing who we are.

People want the condemnation, but not the source.
The courage, but not the tradition.
The humanity, but not the faith.

That says less about Islam.
And more about how selectively “universal” morality is applied.

Maybe that’s the problem.

It began with that awkward handshake — Trump smiling too wide, Xi standing still. I watched it on my laptop one evening while the ceiling fan in Karachi hummed and the city lights flickered after another power cut.

In Munich, my daughter Fareha texted that they were keeping the heating low again. Baby Salar was asleep in his cot wearing a wool cap, though it was only October. She joked, “Baba, we live like monks with a mortgage.”

The handshake was supposed to calm markets. But what it really showed was a planet run by men who mistake showmanship for wisdom.

Maybe Fareha is right. Maybe we are governed by algorithms, not adults.

When the Courts End at the Border

Inside countries we still pretend there are limits — laws, courts, the idea of justice. But between nations, no such thing exists. There is no referee, no father to say “enough.”

Trade wars, sanctions, embargoes — they are modern words for the oldest game of domination. A few months ago, I overheard a trader in Bolton Market muttering over shipping rates as if reciting a prayer. His profit depended on how two distant men smiled in Seoul.

That is what global order means now: one leader’s tantrum, another’s patience, and a shopkeeper in Karachi forced to double his prices overnight.

The Moral Decay of Superpowers

Both Washington and Beijing talk about values. Both really mean leverage.

The United States has turned friendship into an investment — expendable when returns fall. Kissinger once said it was dangerous to be America’s enemy but fatal to be its friend. China, on the other hand, wraps power in the language of national humiliation and revenge. Two empires, two myths, one absence of conscience.

Trump’s tariffs and Xi’s stillness were not opposites; they were reflections in the same mirror. Power without empathy.

My son-in-law in Munich recently learned his firm would cut hours again because components from Shenzhen were delayed. One email from a supplier in Guangdong meant one less grocery trip that month. The empires never notice such arithmetic.

Chimpanzees With AI

A reader wrote to me, “We are still on chimpanzee level.” I think he’s right. We have built machines that can imitate wisdom but not practice it.

China speaks of the “century of rejuvenation.” America chants about “freedom.” Both confuse destiny with dominance. And the rest of us, the middle nations, translate their ambitions into inflation and anxiety.

When Fareha told me they now measure baby formula by the scoop, it struck me how grand politics becomes intimate pain. That is globalization in 2025 — a sleepless mother counting grams, a father watching the news half a world away.

The Century of Nobody’s Father

There was once a time when people believed in some moral North — the UN, human rights, a code larger than markets. Now it feels like those ideas have been sold for short-term gain. Institutions talk, missiles fly, currencies tremble.

When no one is wise, the market becomes God. Countries behave like corporations; citizens become data points. Artificial intelligence will only amplify the noise.

We are clever, not kind. Fast, not wise.

And yet, hope lingers in small places. In Salar’s laugh when Fareha video-calls from Munich. In Karachi’s evening breeze after the first rain. Maybe his generation will rebuild what ours has squandered — a sense of restraint, a touch of humility, a moral language larger than GDP.

Until then, we live in the century of nobody’s father.

Political Analysis and Global Affairs

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