Summary of the Book "The Dominant Culture Authority"

Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Sakran’s insightful intellect shines once again in his captivating book, The Dominant Culture Authority. He brings attention to a critically important phenomenon, one whose repercussions are undoubtedly felt by the Ummah, necessitating a precise diagnosis of its symptoms and an effective remedy for its dangers. The book is structured with an introduction, a theoretical framework, three chapters, and a conclusion. It is the product of discussions on questions raised locally, written by the author between the years 1431 AH and 1433 AH.

As is typical of Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Sakran in addressing sensitive topics in his studies, he introduces his research with an elegant preface on the phenomenon of “The Dominant Culture Authority”. This phenomenon was observed by the early scholars and leaders of Islam and was masterfully summarized by Ibn Khaldun in his unparalleled theoretical text; he captured it distinctly in the twenty-third chapter of his Muqaddimah when he said:

“The vanquished always want to imitate the victor in his distinctive characteristics, his dress, his occupation, and all his other conditions and customs. The reason for this is that the soul always sees perfection in the person who is superior to it and to whom it is subservient. It considers him perfect, either because it is impressed by the respect it has for him, or because it erroneously assumes that its own subservience to him is not due to the nature of defeat but to the perfection of the victor. If that erroneous assumption fixes itself in the soul, it becomes a firm belief. The soul then adopts all the beliefs, manners, and practices of the victor, thoroughly assimilating itself to him… This is the nature of imitation. This goes so far that a nation dominated by another, neighboring nation will show a great deal of assimilation and imitation.”

The author further explores the phenomenon of psychological defeat in the context of Western dominance, a trend that began to take shape nearly two hundred years ago during the time of Rifa’a al-Tahtawi and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani. This trend mirrored previous historical behaviors, specifically the reinterpretation of religious principles to align with the dominant culture. This was particularly evident through the process of infusing traditional terms with Western content to facilitate their assimilation into the new cultural context.

After presenting numerous examples of the phenomenon of submission to the dominance of the prevailing culture, the author addresses a crucial question:

“Why has the attempt to adapt Islamic law to the dominant Western culture failed to achieve revival and protect Muslim youth from atheism?”

Sheikh Ibrahim summarized his response by drawing on the insights of a group of prominent Islamic thinkers, whose profound answers included the key idea that a sense of inferiority does not inspire revival—a point repeatedly emphasized by Malek Bennabi.

The major players on the global political stage today understand that their strategic interests and international influence can only be secured by taming all major religious discourses, injecting them with the virus of submission to the dominant power, and eradicating any capacity for resistance within them, so that they ultimately align with the demands of Western dominance.

This explains why contemporary Western imperial powers lavishly fund research centers, studies, and detailed, ongoing reports that monitor all areas of tension, with a particular focus on Islamic religious movements.

The author highlighted the abundance of provocative questions, the underlying premise of which—whether explicit or implicit—is the perceived conflict between Islamic rulings and the dominant Western culture. This issue reached its peak during the seven difficult years following the fall of Baghdad in 2003, up until the Tunisian revolution in 2010.

The Sheikh then delved into the theoretical frameworks, beginning with the comparison between political tyranny and cultural tyranny. After thoroughly exploring this concept, he concluded that many who fall victim to tyranny are often unaware of their condition, mistakenly believing themselves to be independent while they have been shackled in chains for ages.

Methods of Healing and Liberation

The author believes that the most crucial method of healing lies in instilling concepts of dignity, honor, pride, and the value of being a Muslim. Those who are raised within such a proud and confident cultural framework will reject submission to a political tyrant who doesn’t consider them worthy of participating in decision-making and merely expects them to extend their petitions. Likewise, they will resist a cultural tyrant who dismisses their worth and demands that they abandon their own legal system, humiliating them into adopting his, compelling them to embrace liberal freedom and democracy, and reinterpreting the texts of Allah and His Messenger, peace be upon him, to conform to the dominant Western culture.

Among the theoretical approaches, the author included valuable chapters, such as the implicit submission to the dominant culture and the consequences of yielding to Western culture. He then elaborated on the reception of religious texts in a chapter titled “Isolating the Text from Human Experience.” Here, the author highlighted the issue of intellectual progression when some people adopt incorrect premises, quickly embracing them without first exploring their implications. They then strive to maintain consistency with these premises, committing themselves to consequences that, in their final outcomes, violate the boundaries of divine revelation. This leads to the concept of stripping Islam of its essence—treating the religious text as an abstract idea. The essence of these arguments is that Islam is not connected to any human experience. As a result, they often echo statements like, “The sacred text must be freed from unsacred history,” or “The text is absolute, and human understanding is limited; the limited cannot dictate the absolute.”

Their argument ultimately led to the claim that those who have studied linguistics, hermeneutics, philosophy of language, and literary criticism—which are the foundational disciplines of semantics in Western thought—are more knowledgeable about the meanings of the Quran and Hadith than Abu Bakr, Umar, Ibn Abbas, and Ibn Mas’ud. This was considered a grave heresy.

The point is that the reverence for the early generations (Salaf) and adherence to their understanding of the religious texts is rooted in these texts themselves. However, many who are captivated by the dominant culture fail to recognize the consequences of abandoning this fundamental principle. The author then addressed a matter of great importance: the exploitation of the concept of moderation, which is undergoing intense and sudden overuse in our local cultural discourse.

The calls for moderation have surged, yet those advocating for it seem to have overlooked that the Quran presents two types of moderation—one that is commendable and another that is rejected!

After careful reflection, the author identified a common intellectual technique that has created the divide between all these ideological trends (secularists, liberals, enlightenments, and leftists) and the people of the Sunnah. This technique offers a clearer understanding of the fundamental difference in the process of knowledge formation between the schools of the dominant culture and the people of the Sunnah.

These four groups share a common intellectual thread, or a shared mental mechanism, that has led to their divergence from the people of the Sunnah in their approach to understanding Islam. This mental mechanism can be termed the “fragmentation of revelation.”

The outcome of this analysis is that the intellectual schools that have fallen into the trap of the dominant culture all employ a selective approach in their dealings with the texts of revelation. By doing so, they achieve a degree of inner reassurance that they are still connected to Islam, that they are operating from within the framework of Islam, and that their issues do not stem from Islam. This serves as an emotional bandage for the feelings of methodological deviation.

And because the dominant culture will inevitably clash with certain religious principles, contemporary intellectual schools have popularized mechanisms to minimize or discard these religious principles, such as restricting Shariah to only what is definitively established and clear in meaning. The popularity of this idea stems from the use of legal terminology (from Usul al-Fiqh), which allowed those with corrupt ideologies to subtly introduce their flawed thinking.

Under the heading “The Consequences of Abusing Dispensations,” the author expounded on the issue that Islamic tradition is rich with a multitude of scholarly interpretations. If we were to compile and archive every scholar’s dispensation, we would have a ready-made file to justify and legitimize the demands imposed on us by the dominant culture.

He clarified the difference between the dispensations granted by Allah and those granted by scholars—the distinction between genuine scholarly work and patchwork reasoning. As Suleiman Al-Taymi said, “If you follow every dispensation—or slip—of every scholar, all evil will gather in you.”

In essence, the reliance of contemporary intellectual movements on the mechanism of selectively following dispensations to legitimize certain aspects of the dominant culture that contradict religious texts is a reliance on shaky, unscientific foundations.

Under the title “The Authority of Western Taste,” the author shed light on how those ensnared by the dominant culture attempt to employ the concept of renewal, or what they call the renewal of Islamic jurisprudence, to align it with contemporary times. This effort, however, is merely an attempt to alter and modify religious rulings to fit the dominant culture, where Western taste subtly becomes the underlying authority and reference point for these rulings.

The author concludes that the idea of renewing Shariah to align with contemporary taste is inherently contradictory and unworkable. It leads to an endless cycle, applied arbitrarily and inconsistently. Those who have attempted it selectively apply it to issues like women’s rights and jihad but refrain from applying it to other matters when confronted with the unsavory consequences. There is a vast difference between the nobility of divine revelation and the degradation of Western taste. Therefore, the true obligation is to elevate contemporary taste to align with the divine revelation.

The author presented examples of how the dominant culture pressures religious practices, using the Solar Eclipse Prayer (Salat al-Kusuf) as a case study. The purpose of examining this example is to expose the profound ignorance among many who exaggerate the influence of the dominant culture and their haste in adopting positions that are both religiously and historically incorrect.

In the second chapter of the book, the author delves into normative sciences, beginning with a section titled “Modifying the Semantic Framework.” Here, he explains how Islamic scholars clearly distinguish between beliefs and rituals, considering them fixed and non-negotiable, while viewing civil matters as open to interpretation. A Muslim is not permitted to hold beliefs about Allah (in matters of creed) or worship Him (in matters of rituals) based on anything that is not explicitly prescribed. The intellect is not allowed to invent a new belief about Allah or create a new form of worship.

As for civil matters and sciences, they are open to interpretation, allowing the intellect to innovate and create, with only one condition: that these innovations must not contradict divine revelation.

The author then addressed the issue of focusing on prolific narrators, criticizing some for objecting to the numerous hadiths narrated by Abu Huraira (may Allah be pleased with him). He also discussed various related concerns and questions.

One of the strategies employed by those who acquiesce to the dominant culture to rid themselves of the texts, in order to avoid psychological discomfort within themselves and social discomfort with others in their community, is to broaden and distort the concept of “textual criticism,” particularly of the Hadiths of the Prophet Muhammad.

Their goal in rejecting the Hadiths that contradict the dominant Western culture is to claim that they are merely defending the Prophet and not criticizing him, insisting that they do not wish to attribute anything detrimental to him “peace be upon him”. This is a worn-out excuse they use to justify distorting the Shariah to align with the values of the dominant culture.

Thus, the rulings on jihad, women, and non-Muslims are nullified in the name of defending Islam from being misrepresented in Western perception.

In his discussion, the author shed light on a fundamental difference between the concept of renewal in religious sciences and that in civil sciences. He presented two exemplary figures: Al-Shafi’i, representing religious sciences, and Einstein, representing civil sciences. Both are icons of creativity in their respective fields. The author highlighted the essential difference between the two models, where innovation in civil sciences is regarded as a desirable sign of creativity, while in religious sciences, it is seen as an indicator of decline and deterioration.

There is no doubt that the misguided influence of reading the history of civil sciences, such as philosophy and scientific theories, and attempting to impose the idea of revolutions, theories, and radical conceptual shifts on religious sciences, is a fatal mistake.

Effective Strategies

Under the title “The No-Alternative Strategy,” the writer explains that life is built on the confrontation of two wills: a human will and a divine will. The intellectual elites, who are beholden to the dominant culture, suffer from the constant clash between their human desires and the Shariah will of Allah. This leads them to attempt to alter Allah’s intended purpose, bringing them into the zone of ultimate danger—the transgression against the Divine Self.

The writer explains that the proponent of the “no-alternative” strategy does not offer you, for example, a meaning of the text to discuss and balance with interpretations of Sunni doctrinal discourse. Instead, they tell you that the text has an infinite number of interpretations and leave it undecided. This is their approach in all the battles and conflicts that arise between these defeated individuals and Ahl al-Sunnah.

In the third chapter, the writer discusses the system of relationships, starting with distinctions in relations with those who differ. He begins by addressing the general principles of Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jama’ah (the Sunni community) regarding their stance on dissenters. He highlights the core flaw in the three proposed slogans—liberalism, freedom, and the stance on dissenters—which lies in the reinterpretation of Shariah rulings that oppose liberal freedom for those who differ. However, the slogans vary in interpretation and in the extent and limits of that reinterpretation.

The writer distinguishes between apparent and interpretive matters, between fundamental issues and minor slips, and between concealed opinions and well-known views. He also differentiates between the context of preaching and the context of forbidding evil, as well as the purposes of statements according to the individuals involved. He discusses a range of opinions that reflect Sunni distinctions in relations with those who differ and examines certain expressions laden with liberal content, which have gained popularity due to the pressure of the dominant liberal culture of freedom.

The writer addresses the deconstruction of the concept of sectarianism, where some have made it a standard by which they judge people. He concludes that the term “sectarianism” is a modern innovation and not an Islamic principle by which people should be judged. Criticizing groups that have strayed from aspects of Shariah is an Islamic obligation and a Qur’anic duty, yet they have turned it into a flaw and a source of disgrace!

Under the title “Liberalization of Loyalty and Disavowal,” the scholar addresses the issue of the need to reassess the concepts of loyalty and disavowal, including issues like hatred of disbelievers and a wife from the People of the Book, and other related matters.. All of these are interpretations that openly aim to reduce the substance of loyalty and disavowal to align more closely with the liberal theory of freedom. He emphasizes that the actions of those influenced by the dominant culture, in liberalizing the concept of loyalty and disavowal, are among the clearest examples of prioritizing ambiguous texts over clear ones and complicating exceptions. This means turning the exception into the rule and the rule into an exception. Allah commanded the hatred of disbelievers and permitted marriage to women of the People of the Book, yet they have taken the exception and used it to undermine the rule. They continue to prune and trim Islam to serve the purposes of appearing agreeable in superficial conferences, deceiving themselves before deceiving others.

The discussion also addressed the paradoxes of liberalizing disagreement, where it highlighted the contradictions of those who are subjected to the dominant liberal culture of freedom. These individuals frequently speak about the freedom of dissent in ways that contradict Shariah, while at the same time violating the very rights of those who dissent according to Shariah. This was vividly portrayed by a third-century scholar who said, “One of them attacks those who insult him but makes peace with those who insult his Lord.”

The writer highlighted the phenomenon of breaking the exclusivity of Islamic holidays, which has spread widely with the modern communication revolution and the increasing interaction with non-Muslims. The dominant nations’ lifestyles have seeped into our vulnerable societies, influencing our clothing, food, and celebrations, including the adoption of non-Muslim holidays. These cultural and social intrusions have been driven by these contemporary communication changes.

Due to the pressure from these dominant Western traditions, there has been a rise in voices attempting to legitimize the celebration of non-Muslim holidays by reinterpreting Shariah provisions that prohibit participating in such holidays. However, the festival (Eid) is a distinctive religious observance, and it is not permissible to celebrate the holidays of the dominant non-Muslim nations.

Regarding the verses on conquest and jihad, the author discusses how those who have succumbed to the dominant culture’s authority attempt to distort the concept of jihad and twist the interpretations related to offensive jihad, reducing it solely to defensive jihad. The author concludes by emphasizing the importance of preserving Islamic legal (shar’i) concepts against the distortion that occurs due to the diverse and overwhelming pressure of Western culture on Arab systems, aimed at enabling domesticated intellectual and religious discourses that align with the demands of American influence.

One of the most egregious applications of liberal freedoms discussed by the sheikh, and adopted by some local writers, is their commitment to the principle of freedom for dissenters, to the extent that they argue that insulting the Prophet (peace be upon him) should not be punished but rather countered only with ideas.

Through the principle of the intellectual sequence, successive deviations emerged in the expansion of liberal freedom, eventually leading to the grotesque extent of granting freedom to those who insult the Prophet (peace be upon him).

The writer presented examples of how Muslim scholars, jurists, and judges dealt with those who insulted the Prophet (peace be upon him)—a matter in which there can be no compromise whatsoever, reflecting the profound reverence these Muslims held for the Prophet. Let us compare this with the regard he is given by the victims of Western liberal freedom.

The writer concluded his discussions, which consisted of examples and samples that reveal how the dominant culture influences the interpretation of Shariah rulings to subject them to its dominance. Anyone who studies these questions and examples will be convinced that the central axis around which contemporary thought revolves is “The dominant culture authority.”

What we have presented is not a complete account of the book’s details, but rather a summary of what the author included in its engaging pages. The book presents a distinctive approach, adorned with an easy-to-read style, supported by vivid examples, balanced analyses, and golden conclusions. May Allah reward Sheikh Ibrahim Al-Sakran abundantly on behalf of the Muslim Ummah and benefit others through his knowledge, dedication, and brilliance.

Excerpts That I Liked

“I do not blame the Westerner for evaluating matters according to what his bluish eyes perceive. But I do blame the Arab for evaluating matters with bluish eyes.” p. 36

“The source of all innovation in the religion of Allah arises from a ‘lack of reverence for the Salaf’ in their profound knowledge and complete piety. Similarly, the correctness of a person’s religious practice and guidance in the religion of Allah is dependent on reverence for the Salaf and the belief that they were more complete in religion and knowledge than we are.” p. 53

“What is meant is that those imprisoned by the dominant culture distort Shariah rulings to create a middle ground between the understanding of the Salaf and Western thought. They present this as the praiseworthy moderation that the Quran advocates, whereas in reality, it is the condemned form of moderation that the Quran criticizes.” p. 61

“Anyone who tells you that we must adapt the rulings of Islam to suit contemporary taste is implying something hidden within their statement—namely, that they believe contemporary taste is superior to the rulings of divine revelation!” p. 103

“Islam is not a fragile religion that we should fear for it in the face of doubts. Rather, it is the hearts of human beings that are fragile, and it is for them that we are concerned. We do not fear that the souls carrying the divine revelation will lose it due to a fleeting doubt.” p. 184

“This was the way of the Imams, jurists, and judges of Islam; they did not consider statements that diminished the status of prophethood as a matter of ‘intellectual disagreement’ or ‘differing viewpoints’ to be discussed at the dialogue table. Rather, they viewed it as a case to be brought before the sword of Shariah justice, through lawful means, and executed by the ruler without delay.” p. 235