Why This Muslim Is Pushing Back Against Andrew Tate

In late October, a video went viral on Twitter exhibiting former British kickboxer Andrew Tate file the right way to pray like a muslim from a good friend and fellow MMA fighter, Tam Khan. Days later, Khan confirmed Tate’s conversion to Islam.

It was a blow to Muslim ladies like me, and to folks and others locally who’ve breathed a sigh of reduction since Tate was banned from each main social media platform in August. Our huge worry: it’d increase his reputation amongst some Muslim males. It’s a priority that was solely bolstered by Elon Musk’s resolution to revive Tate’s Twitter account.

In one in all Tate’s most notorious movies, he talks about how he would react if a girl accused him of dishonest: “It’s whipping out the machete, punching her in the face and grabbing her by the neck. Shut up b**** … slap, slap, grab, choke,” he says. Tate beforehand stated in a tweet that “if you put yourself in a position to be raped, you have to take some responsibility”.

Comments like these have made Tate a central determine in digital crimson tablet tradition and its more and more violent undertones. The time period, “take the red pill”, is a popular culture reference taken from the 1999 science fiction film The Matrix; it means opening your eyes to the reality. What was really a transgender allegory based on the film’s creator Lily Wachowski, is now used to explain a digital motion of primarily white ultraconservative males who imagine they’re victims of feminism and mistreated by society.

What has been significantly regarding to many within the Muslim neighborhood within the West is that Tate has grow to be a task mannequin for some Muslim males, particularly after he expressed his admiration for Islam in this YouTube video. These males took to Twitter, in a nook of the social media platform that some locally have nicknamed MT, or Muslim Twitter, to align themselves with Tate and his views.

But many Muslims – each men and women – are additionally pushing back against this pattern, warning of the dangers concerned if the poisonous materials peddled by individuals like Tate positive aspects acceptance amongst wider sections of the neighborhood’s youth.

As highschool instructor Nadeine Asbali wrote within the New Statesman in August, Tate’s content material “hooks” Muslim boys, a few of whom share his content material on social media. “Figures like Tate even praise Muslims, who apply their own patriarchal ideas to a faith based on the opposite,” she wrote.

Leading Muslim intellectuals within the West – similar to writer Khaled Beydoun and Shabana Mir, professor at Chicago’s American Islamic College – have additionally publicly expressed concern concerning the rise of crimson tablet tradition amongst younger Muslim males.

Others have been extra direct in condemning the misogyny of males like Tate and in explaining how their phrases and actions contradict the teachings of Islam.

Bilal Ware, professor of historical past on the University of California at Santa Barbara, posted a sequence of Instagram posts criticizing da’wah influencers who Tate featured on their podcasts and in YouTube movies. “Giving platforms to unrepentant misogynists, whether converts or lifelong believers, sends a clear message: abusers welcome.” He additionally took a stand against poisonous masculinity, saying: “The Muslim ‘manosphere’ has grow to be a spot for emasculated, intimidated males to play hardball by bullying ladies. This is not Islam.”

Joseph Lumbard, an affiliate professor of Quranic research at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha, tweeted to problem the suggestion that Tate’s popularity was absolutely rehabilitated by changing to Islam – regardless of no condemnation of his violent misogyny . “Too many Muslim men try to give him a pass and claim ḥusn al-ẓann [having a good opinion] and that Islam wipes away all sins,” Lumbard tweeted on October 29. “These are indeed important Islamic principles that apply in the vast majority of cases, but not when they are used to excuse violent misogyny, grief and all kinds of fisq. [wickedness] and facade [corruption] those ATs [Andrew Tate’s] social media platforms continue to promote.”

This backlash from inside the neighborhood – and particularly from lecturers and students – is vital as a result of Tate’s reputation represents a broader pattern of crimson tablet tradition taking maintain amongst some Muslim males.

In current years, digital platforms similar to Twitter and Reddit have given rise to what the Muslim on-line neighborhood calls “mincels” – Muslim incels. They use Twitter and Redditt threads to troll Muslim ladies on-line, blame single moms for the ills of society, say {that a} man has the fitting to beat his spouse, name for the return of feminine concubinage and advocate ‘ a “no-strings-attached”. nikah”.

The irony is that a lot of those that unfold crimson tablet tradition on-line belong to a white, ultra-right worldview that is usually overtly Islamophobic.

I’m each cautious and skeptical about Tate’s conversion as a result of I query what it was that attracted him to my religion. Watch his earlier video, the place he responded to Will Smith’s “red table conversation” along with his spouse Jada Pinkett-Smith about her infidelity by saying that watching the clip made him convert to Islam as a result of she was in a Muslim nation would have been stoned to the purpose of boredom. I think that it is white Islamophobic and Orientalist misperceptions of Islam as a faith that permits violence against ladies that is the idea for Tate’s conversion. “I’m going to get me a nice Islamic wife and build up a big pile of rocks in case she gets hot,” Tate says on the finish of the video.

I’m involved that Tate is profiting from his reputation amongst various Muslim males to rehabilitate his picture and rebrand himself.

We as a neighborhood should admit that we’re additionally partly accountable for Tate’s reputation amongst a few of our male youth. Our madrassas, Saturday colleges and households are sometimes missing in the case of educating our Muslim youth about wholesome relationships and about respect for women and girls from a younger age.

We want increasingly Muslim males to hitch us in pushing back against misogyny in all its kinds – on-line, on campus, at residence, on the road and within the mosque.

The opinions expressed in this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial place.