I wanted to love America

How October 7th radically changed my geopolitics

Prior to 10/7, I would frequently tell other Muslims that, lacking a viable superpower, our countries had to triangulate or otherwise decide how to navigate between, American, Chinese, and to a lesser extent, Russian spheres of influence. And, in the ideal, if these were our only options, surely we should want the United States in a stronger position. Russian or Chinese rule just instinctually felt drab and authoritarian to me.

But seeing the United States wink while Israel vaporized 30,000 Palestinians in a matter of weeks snapped me out of it, perhaps permanently. I realized that those ranting uncles from the masjid whom I used to ridicule were actually right. Right about America, right about Europe, right about the 🧃, right about the West. These duplicitous societies are factories producing pure demonic energy at every level. That I ever promoted the virtues of the West is a mark of shame for me.

But the fact is, I wanted to love America.

To realize you've been rollin' with the bad guys the whole time is deeply uncomfortable, even traumatic. What does it say about you if it was this very civilization which fashioned you and your constitution? Where you have happy memories of playing in the streets, of skating at roller rinks, of school assemblies dutifully reciting the pledge of allegiance?

You look back and see that almost every moment of your life has been subsidized by Muslim blood. Every year I helped my parents file their taxes, I helped spill Muslim blood. Every tank of gas, every penny of sales tax: Muslim blood. Iraq 1, Iraq 2, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Palestine: untold millions of dripping gallons of Muslim blood.

Both corrupt Western leadership and internal Muslim degeneracy have led us to this point.

An elite class who doesn't give a piss about the rotting state of American culture and infrastructure have captured the levers of power (mostly 🧃 and dopey Christians). Through their influence, they mire the USA in irrational wars for which there is zero national interest. In the process, the country is being parasitically hollowed out. Against this elite, the American people cannot be said to be fully sovereign.

We Muslims have played our part in this horror. Millions of us immigrated and continue to immigrate to the West for money and opportunity, losing din and brain-draining our native lands in the process. Through our economic activity, we dream of living luxurious lives. But these lives will always at some level be undergirded by the bones of dead Muslim men, women, and children. And we accept that. Very few indeed are those who come to the lands of kufr solely for da'wa or (non-kinetic) jihad—perhaps the only noble reasons for residing outside Darul Islam. And among those who have made this uncomfortable realization, there are only a precious few who, like myself, find themselves in a privileged enough position economically to go back to (highly imperfect) Muslim societies with an eye to build up our power in our lands.

Do not misunderstand me. I have not become some blasé anti-colonial ethnic raging against the West. I have been a child of the West since the moment I was born. I cannot extricate myself from it. But when I gaze back across the Atlantic from here in Istanbul, I do not see a home any longer. The America I at one point admired—a beautiful country of largely kind and generous people—has been taken hostage and held at gunpoint by henchmen of the Devil. And that's the tragedy of it all: I wanted to love America.

I do not know much about China or Russia, admittedly. And I am not under any delusion that these societies do not commit acts of violence. (Muslims countries are also far from innocent, of course). But I cannot see either of these states eager to swim in this much Muslim blood. China in Xinjiang or Russia in Chechnya or Bosnia or Syria or Afghanistan do not hold a candle to the rapaciousness of America, Europe, Israel, and its allies over the past 30-50 years. I am not blindly anti-West. I am just now recognizing that 99% of what I know about the non-West, and Russia and China in particular, has been conditioned by Western propaganda and English-language media. It is my intention to soon visit these places and speak to people and learn more to form a better opinion, on my own terms. (If you or anyone you know can make that happen, send me a message. I would love to write a travelogue).

Additionally, the idea that these states are uniquely authoritarian or brutal must at this point be recognized as a decades-long propaganda effort. No matter where you live now, we are all being surveilled and monitored or downgraded by the algorithm when the powers-that-be demand it. I am increasingly of the belief that whatever superficial notions of "freedom of speech" we supposedly have in the West are in fact soporifics by which liberalism degenerates the culture further. In a fundamentally illiberal way, I embrace the idea that a good society is one where you can't just say whatever you want, where there are red lines, where the sacred is off-limits, where ideas of respect and honor actually constrain individual behavior and expression, where you should actually fear being shamed or receiving a bad name (badnam, as we say in Urdu). And don't even get me started on journalists, the vast majority of whom deserve nothing but the deepest of scorn.

I wanted to love America, but she broke my heart too many times. It is now a threat to itself and to everything it touches. I see no other rational position for any self-respecting Muslim except to work to hasten the demise of West's ability to project power internationally in whatever way he can, if only for the safety of humanity. In the best scenario, the West recognizes that its national interest lies in domestic renewal in both material and spiritual terms, and not in forever wars for Israel.

But tragically, I don't think that will happen. There will be no course correction. America First sentiment will be snuffed in its cradle. I hope I'm wrong, but my prediction is that the West will continue this way for decades, likely killing millions and spending trillions abroad before finally imploding or taking us all down with it.

It thus behooves Muslims to shift their gaze eastward, where the new world is rapidly rising, and begin planning accordingly.

But God, I sure did want to love America.