Nationalism and the Tribes

The next of the lessons: fighting nationalism. Nationalism is an enemy of Islam, and Muslims need to stand against it — this ʿaṣabiyyah: al-Muhājirūn, we're going to fight with al-Anṣār; al-Aws, we're going to fight with al-Khazraj. But the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) steps in and stops that; in Jābir ibn ʿAbdullāh's narration of the quarrel (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 4905), when he heard the two cries he said, "What is this call for, which is characteristic of the period of ignorance?" and then, "Leave it, for it is a detestable thing." So this is an enemy that shayṭān is using against us to sow the seeds of discord among the ummah. So we need to be very aware, be very careful, of this thing of Arabs and Pakistanis, and British Muslim or American Muslim versus the immigrants. See, all of these titles, or label tags, shayṭān can use to bring disunity among the ummah. We are Muslim; we are one. And these different nationalities that we belong to, or different countries that we belong to — the word "nation" is avoided here, because a nation could be a political thing that is completely not recognised by Islam altogether. But Islam does recognise that we belong to tribes:

See, with this thing of current nations — these nations, many of them were drawn up by some drunk British and French men who met after the World War, World War One and World War Two, and divided the Middle East and made it in such a way. And if you look at the map of the Muslim world, you can see some straight lines in there that were drawn by a ruler. That's not a natural border. But we do have tribes; we do belong to tribes: wa jaʿalnākum shuʿūban wa qabāʾila li-taʿārafū. Now, the reason we were created into tribes is for us to know each other. Because imagine if we were all copies, carbon copies, of one another — imagine that everyone is equal in the way you look and from where you belong to — then how would we recognise one another? But see, we look different, and we have different names, and that is so that every one of us would have an individual personality, and that is how we can know one another. Otherwise, how would we know one another if we're all exactly the same? Number one, number two, number three — we would be numbered, and that's it. Nobody will have this individual personality that we have. Everyone is unique; Allah has created everyone unique. And there are different tribes, and every tribe is unique; and different ethnic groups, and these ethnic groups are unique.