Being less bad Muslims does not sound inspiring. It is, however, a fair starting point for many, especially if you are in your late teens and early twenties.
The reason is, you are at that mercurial stage of figuring out who you want to become. And wanting to become good Muslims can be emotionally expensive.
Firstly, because when you think of ‘good Muslims’, your mind conjures up images of the Prophet’s companions or great Muslim scholars.
And they seem to be way up there, while you can’t even get yourself up for Fajr.
Admittedly, compared to them, you can never be good Muslims. You can never get to where they are.
Or secondly, your cynicism kicks in. In your social media feed, you see all these ‘good Muslim’ idols or celebrities. They are so attractive — maybe you can be like them instead. So you follow them and consume their contents.
But then your heart senses that something is off.
Some celebrity preachers make Islam sounds painfully unclever. Some influencers use Islamic-sounding words as marketing tools, promoting fashionable items that bring your heart, not closer to God, but closer to worldly desires.
Some entrepreneurs go even further, building conceptual idols from Islamic sources.
For example, they use Qur’anic terms like ‘ḥalālan ṭayyiban’ when describing their highly processed, deep-fried food.
As you develop your critical thinking as students, you realise that when the Qur’an uses ‘ṭayyiban’, it does not refer to food that drains your health and energy.1The term ‘Ḥalālan ṭayyiban’ means ‘what is lawful and good’, a distinction made in the Qur’an. See 2:168. Food can be lawful but not good. Many highly processed food would fall into that category, causing physical and even mental harms. See Fuhrman, J. (2018). The hidden dangers of fast and processed food. American journal of lifestyle medicine, 12(5), 375-381; Lane, M. M., Gamage, E., Travica, N., Dissanayaka, T., Ashtree, D. N., Gauci, S., … & Marx, W. (2022). Ultra-Processed Food Consumption and Mental Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies. Nutrients, 14(13), 2568.
Navigating all of these makes you emotionally tired.
It feels emotionally less expensive to live secularly, to not think of your actions in relation to Islam. Because being good Muslims seems to point to either unattainable ideals or unreliable idols.
Be Less Bad Muslims Instead
Instead of abandoning the quest altogether, we can aim to be less bad Muslims.
Yes, you feel like an embarrassment to the Ummah. You neglect your responsibility to study, you miss prayers, you watch things you know you shouldn’t watch, you eat things you know you shouldn’t eat. You lie (or exaggerate truths), you offends your friends, you free-ride group assignments, and so much more.
Even thinking about it now can make you hopeless.
Hopelessness often masks itself as ‘I don’t care’. If you don’t care about being a good Muslim, and just ‘enjoy life’, you think life will be easier.
Because caring forces you to confront that burden of responsibility.
It is easier to abandon hope with ‘I don’t care if I’m a bad Muslim’, even if you sense it’s taking you to a dark path.
Yet, it is at those moments where hope is exactly what you need; that spark of light, the only chance to move away from the dark.
Remember, you get this bad because of the series of actions you took in the past. If you make a new series of actions now, you are forging a fresh path, a new direction. You probably still won’t be a good Muslim, only a less bad one.
And, for now, being a less bad one is enough.
Because, along this new path, you will be at a better position a year from now than where you are today. You will be further away from darkness than before. You don’t need to be perfect. All you need is to stay on that straight path — and keep moving forward.
To aid this resolution, consider the following:
Stop Worshipping Islam
In one of his lectures, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf talks about Muslims who worship Islam instead of God. When I first heard it, it was an opening: a moment in learning when a small data input triggers a colossal change in the way we think.
Some Muslims wrap their worldly desires in religion. Islam becomes an external label, nothing more.
They apply this label because their target communities (potential customers, social media audience) value Islam highly.
So they wear the ‘Islam’ label as a tool of attraction. Perhaps, to gain the attention of a group of people (to get money, influence). Or maybe, to get the attention of one girl or guy they have a crush on.
This ‘Islam’ label becomes an object of power, a functional resource, like money. They worship it, equating this label with their egos: When they hear ‘real Muslims’, they think of themselves.
There are signs for it. For instance, in public, if you criticise them, they react as if you criticise Islam.
And they often lose control, summoning Qur’anic verses or Hadith narrations, not to find the truth, but to win arguments, to make you look dumb or anti-Islam.
Yet, in private, they do little to purify their soul.
When there is no audience, they don’t pray or fast that much.
When reading or watching Islamic materials, if they see descriptions of goodness, they’ll say ‘See, it’s talking about me’. If they see descriptions of corruptions, ‘It’s talking about my opponent, my enemy’.
‘I am Islam. Islam is me. Therefore, what I want is what Islam wants.’
Thoughts and Actions under Different External Labels
To stop worshipping Islam, pay attention to what is beneath the external labels.
When the Qur’an uses ‘Muslim’ or its derivations, it may refer to two meanings:
- Members of Prophet Muhammad’s community. It is close to what we think about today when we say ‘Muslim’.
- Ones who submit their egos to God. This includes those who do not wear the Arabic label ‘Muslim’ (think of the generations prior to the Prophet Muhammad’s mission).
The first definition is the ‘label’, the second is ‘real’.2I do not mean that the label ‘Islam’ is not important. It certainly does, especially in jurisprudence (Fiqh). So another way of conceptualising it is this: The first definition applies legally (Sharīʿah). The second applies as a feature of reality (Ḥaqīqah). We conduct our social and legal interactions using the first definition. Yet, we never know the reality of every person we meet. That is why it is forbidden for Muslims to say a specific person is going to the Fire, even if outwardly that person is not a Muslim.
To be less bad Muslims, our intention must go beyond the ‘label’. Go for the ‘real’. Evaluate how much of a Muslim you are based on how much you successfully submit your impulses, desires, and behaviours to God.
In practise, try these:
- Better private acts of worship.
‘Better’ as in you do more high-quality prayers, studying and fasting when you are invisible, more than when you are with others.
- Spending at most 1% of energy on correcting others.
Spend the other 99% on battling your addictions. It includes ‘major drugs’ like alcohols, painkillers, pornography, gambling; and ‘minor drugs’ such as social media, food, TV shows, gaming, or even working.
- Fix the five pillars. Your whole spiritual structures will collapse with weak pillars.
Be less bad at it. For example, you’ve been praying only one prayer a day (just Maghrib). Now, make it a mission to pray two (add Isha’). Don’t leave your prayer mat until Isha’ time comes. Make a pact with yourself that you won’t go below two prayers — you’d rather die than dropping below two.
When you get that mastered, level up to three prayers, and so on.
Additionally, when you are on social media, separate the external labels and the thoughts and actions.
- The external labels
It means how a person, a product, or an idea is portrayed. Pay attention to the words they use in adverts and speeches, such as:
- InshaAllah
- Halal
- Ḥalālan ṭayyiban
- Alhamdulillah
- Tawakkal
- Allah
- Sunnah
- Science
- Research
- Arabic-sounding words
- Scientific-sounding words
Pay attention also to the non-verbal elements, for example:
- Wearing clothing typically associated with Islamic images
- Hiring or collaborating with Muslim models, influencers, preachers
- Using Arabic letters or Roman letters in Arabic-style typography
- Embedding Islamic symbols like Masjid, star and crescent, Arabic-looking calligraphy
Those are the external labels. Contrast that with the thoughts and actions:
- The thoughts and actions.
Observe how Islamic the thoughts and actions really are, independent of the external labels. Naturally, you should also include the tangible outcomes of thoughts and actions, such as:
- Products or services
- Public statements
- Lifestyle tips
And it is more than about money.
You will find influencers who ask for money, whether through Patreon donations or selling products or online courses.
That alone does not mean they are exploiting Islam.
They need financial support to upgrade equipment, to hire teams, or to make that Islamic project their full-time career.
So regardless whether they ask for financial support or not, consider their thoughts, actions and tangible outcomes:
- Do they bring you closer to genuine physical, intellectual and spiritual health?
- Do they bring you closer to God, instead of your worldly desires?
- Do they bring you closer to freedom rather than to your addictions?
If they don’t, stay away from them, even if it doesn’t cost you money.
Unfollow them, report them, or block them. Ignore the Islamic-looking labels that they mask themselves with.
If they do, embrace them. Vote them up, like them, and share their contents.
Consider donating or purschasing their products or subscribing to their services. Give them financial resources to help them compete against those who take people away from God.
Be Less Bad Muslims by Aiming for the Real
As an Ummah, we have so much work to do.3This work requires our willingness to sacrifice. See The Sacrifice: Lessons from Prophet Ibrahim for Young Adults.
We need to protect ourselves and non-Muslims in our country from oppression. We need to lift ignorance, to alleviate unnecessary sufferings emerging from poorly informed decisions.
For that, we need to be stronger. We need cohorts of young women and men, including students like you. And to gain that strength, you need to aim towards being real, not just being the label.
For this to work, you don’t need to be a good Muslim, just a less bad one.
- 1The term ‘Ḥalālan ṭayyiban’ means ‘what is lawful and good’, a distinction made in the Qur’an. See 2:168. Food can be lawful but not good. Many highly processed food would fall into that category, causing physical and even mental harms. See Fuhrman, J. (2018). The hidden dangers of fast and processed food. American journal of lifestyle medicine, 12(5), 375-381; Lane, M. M., Gamage, E., Travica, N., Dissanayaka, T., Ashtree, D. N., Gauci, S., … & Marx, W. (2022). Ultra-Processed Food Consumption and Mental Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies. Nutrients, 14(13), 2568.
- 2I do not mean that the label ‘Islam’ is not important. It certainly does, especially in jurisprudence (Fiqh). So another way of conceptualising it is this: The first definition applies legally (Sharīʿah). The second applies as a feature of reality (Ḥaqīqah). We conduct our social and legal interactions using the first definition. Yet, we never know the reality of every person we meet. That is why it is forbidden for Muslims to say a specific person is going to the Fire, even if outwardly that person is not a Muslim.
- 3This work requires our willingness to sacrifice. See The Sacrifice: Lessons from Prophet Ibrahim for Young Adults