And yet, we often hear that for most of his life—especially after he was chosen as a Prophet—he and his family lived with great modesty. They sometimes went hungry for days, and his bed was no more than a simple mat on the floor.

The fact that Prophet Muhammad lived such a modest life is deeply inspiring. But it becomes even more remarkable when we remember that this was a chosen path—a path embraced by someone who was fully capable of living comfortably, but who chose Islam. As a result, he endured the economic hardships imposed by the Quraysh elites: boycotts, confiscation of property, and persecution.

Allah says in Al-Hujurat:13

“Surely the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous among you.”

Nobility in Allah’s eyes comes from righteousness (taqwa), not from wealth or poverty. The true measure is not one’s net worth but one’s ethical stance and God-consciousness. Wealth itself is not shameful, nor is it the ultimate goal. What matters is whether it is hoarded for status—or mobilized for the Ummah.

We see a clear example in Khadijah (RA), one of Prophet Muhammad’s greatest pillars of support. She was immensely wealthy and used her fortune—earned in a male-dominated Quraysh economy—to sustain the early Muslim community. She provided food, shelter, and critical financial aid during times of persecution. Her backing was vital for establishing the early foundations of Islam when so many opposed the Prophet and the new faith.

From Prophet Muhammad we learn that being trustworthy—an essential trait in business—is also an essential trait of faith. Wealth, too, does not need to be shunned; but if Allah takes it away, we must be rida (content) and remember that it was never truly ours. Our priority must always be Islam and the Ummah. From Khadijah we see that immense wealth can be a powerful opportunity to uplift the Ummah, and that this responsibility is not limited to men, but women too.

This Friday (26 September), we will be launching the book Muslim Entrepreneur’s Guide to Venture Capital Fundraising. Let us come together, join forces, and become the economic engine of today’s Ummah through our contributions and integrity.

Grand Launching of Muslim Entrepreneur’s Guide To Venture Capital Fundraising Book

🗓 Friday, 26 September 2025

⏰ 19.30 Western Indonesian Time

📍 Live via Zoom

Join this WhatsApp group for the Zoom link:

https://chat.whatsapp.com/GbDoHLvszwf0F4GjoRFNcJ?mode=ems_copy_t

📞 Further info: +62 851-8478-9028 (Admin Ummah)

We are a nation threatened by disappearance.

-‘Isa and Yusuf Al-‘Isa, Filastin, 1914

That was written more than 100 years ago. The foreseeing that these Islamic scholars can do, right up to 2025.

“Disappearance” sounds very clinical, very clean, and instantaneous. Almost painless.

But in reality, disappearance means beheaded babies as Israel bombs pregnant women, a woman bombed so hard her baby was pushed out of her womb headless.[1] Disappearance means lacerated thighs of children after being hit by bombs specifically designed to split into a thousand deadly shrapnels.[2] Disappearance means a young man shot in the head by an Israeli sniper after walking 12 km on foot to the killing-field-disguised-as-aid-site GHF in hope of food for his starving family.[3] Disappearance means sexual assaults on women, men, and children in concentration camps—perpetrated by both Israeli men and women—and publicly defended in rallies demanding the “right” to rape in the name of God.[4] [5]

It is not clean. It is not instantaneous. It certainly isn’t painless.

The word “threat” also sounds so simple and singular. In reality it is the cumulative hard work of the world’s ruling class and their enslaved brightest minds. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) designed the blueprints and operationalized the killing fields of GHF— all for free! They said they did it pro bono. Is that even an excuse? [6] [7] Microsoft has its footprint on all major Israeli military infrastructure.[8] Elbit and Lockheed Martin are reaping a fortune producing war machines, paid for by American taxpayers.[9] The UK provides intelligence to Israel,[10] the EU political cover to Israel,[11] and the US —by God—the US gives everything it can to Israel: weapons, money, diplomatic power, legitimacy, and reputation.[12] [13]

It is despicable. It is breathtakingly abysmal. But we also must admit this is all hard work.

And it is only fair that they can only be defeated by hard work.

The Question of Unity

How? One thing is for sure: our Muslim ummah’s internal fragmentation is the biggest issue. And we must be honest—this fragmentation is not only our weakness. It is also the deliberate work of colonial powers, who carved artificial borders, inflamed sectarian divides, and propped up comprador elites loyal to empire instead of the ummah.

We have defeated cross-border enemies before. Saladin showed us the roadmap. One of his most striking strategies was to spend 75% of his time on internal consolidation.[14] Unity was not trivial—it was the key to victory.

The Power of a Few

History and strategy also remind us that it doesn’t take everyone, but it does take the right ones. Learning from Gia Josie’s webinar,[15] Dr. Tareq Suwaidan presented the critical nucleus theory: that only a small minority, if highly trained and consistent, can spark a movement. Political scientist Erica Chenoweth’s research confirms this: just 3.5% of the population actively mobilized is enough to reach a tipping point, where momentum becomes unstoppable.

For our ummah, this translates into something very practical. We do not need every single person to be ready from day one. We need about 2% of highly trained youth—the critical nucleus, around 1.5 million young people—and 3.5% of the general public—about 2.65 million people—to rise up and serve as active mobilization. That is the threshold where change begins to reverberate through the system and become unstoppable.

A Call to Work Together

So let’s connect. Let’s be kind to each other. Let’s be supportive. Let’s be candid but respectful. And since time is pressing—Gaza’s official death toll has reached 65,000 as we speak—let’s be practical and collaborative. Let’s have low-ego conversations, not attaching views to our pride, but judging ideas on their merit regardless of who presents them.

And from there let’s work. Hard.

May our fast tomorrow help soften our hearts and connect us better. May Allah purify our intentions and accept our deeds.

Written in preparation of Sunnah fasting on Monday, 30 Rabiulawal 1447 Unified Global Hijri Calendar (UGHC) / 22 September 2025 AD.

[1] https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/9/1/israeli-forces-kill-pregnant-woman-and-unborn-baby-in-gaza-city-assault

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/11/israeli-weapons-shrapnel-children-gaza-injured

[3] https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2025/7/31/ghf-whistleblower-says-boy-killed-by-israel-just-after-he-collected-aid

[4] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/rape-threats-by-illegal-settlers-against-palestinians-become-common-after-sde-teiman-incident/3313922#

[5] https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/video/newsfeed/2024/8/13/israeli-protesters-rally-for-the-right-to-rape-prisoners

[6] https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-consultancy-firm-involved-ghf-aid-scheme-modelled-plans-relocate

[7] https://www.bcg.com/news/6july2025-clarifying-bcg-involvement-with-aid-in-gaza

[8] https://www.972mag.com/microsoft-azure-openai-israeli-army-cloud/

[9] https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g25/094/40/pdf/g2509440.pdf

[10] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/aug/07/uks-surveillance-flights-over-gaza-raise-questions-on-help-for-israeli-military

[11] https://www.tni.org/en/publication/partners-in-crime-EU-complicity-Israel-genocide-Gaza

[12] https://www.state.gov/u-s-security-cooperation-with-israel

[13] https://news.un.org/en/story/2025/09/1165881#:~:text=18%20September%202025%20Peace%20and,this%20Council%2C”%20she%20said.

[14]

[15] https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1P0O0i2u4OfqynoTauTIl6xDuFR5zrsBj?usp=drive_link

The political elites are now busy, not with accountability, but damage control. Political parties now put some of their MPs in the House of Representatives as “non-active” to diffuse public anger. But “non-active” is not a legal term; it certainly does not have any legal consequences. Those “non-active” MPs, who have insulted the public calling them “morons” (tolol) and complaining about Jakarta’s traffic and, instead of fixing them, demanded a housing allowance tenfold of people’s wages, are still entitled to get paid salary and allowances. What are these “non-active” status then? Paid holidays?

Some of these MPs even ran away abroad, saying that they are “afraid” to come home. Afraid of whom? Indonesians? Who they are supposed to serve?

Amidst Indonesia’s recession, the difficulty of finding jobs, and the weakening of our purchasing power, some Members of Parliament still go on leisurely “business trips” abroad. When they encounter Indonesian students overseas, they avoid them. Who are they serving? Why are they afraid? Do we look like irrational people to whom they cannot be held accountable, cannot be reasoned with? Do you know who else thought that way about Indonesians? The colonizers — the Dutch in the 1940s.

President Prabowo Subianto labeled demonstrators as “traitors,” conveniently using the term “terrorism,” and unleashed police and military repression across the country. Is it a coincidence, then, who else is conveniently using the “terrorism” label? It is Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. He stood before Netanyahu’s cabinet and declared that volunteers aboard the Sumud Global Flotilla should be designated “terrorists.”

Indonesia and Palestine are bound together here by a common thread: the weaponization of “terrorism” as a tool to silence dissent, criminalize solidarity, and grant the state a blank check for violence. In Jakarta, the “terrorist” label justifies batons, bullets, and armored patrols against students. In Tel Aviv, it justifies naval blockades, prison cells, and the starvation of an entire people.

Western human rights institutions, meanwhile, limit the horizon of critique. On September 2, Human Rights Watch’s Asia director Meenakshi Ganguly called Prabowo “irresponsible.” The UN’s Ravina Shamdasani urged “dialogue.” Amnesty Indonesia’s Usman Hamid demanded “democratic means.” These statements may appear principled, but they reduce structural violence to technical violations. They speak the language of “restraint” and “professionalism,” as if repression were simply a matter of bad training, rather than the logical outcome of militarized capitalism in Indonesia and settler colonialism in Palestine.

This contradiction cuts deepest in Indonesia. In 1955, at the Bandung Conference, newly independent nations of Asia and Africa gathered to reject colonial domination and assert the right of peoples to determine their future. Indonesia stood proudly at the forefront of that movement. The Bandung Spirit became a beacon for anti-colonial struggles — including Palestine’s. Yet seventy years later, Indonesia’s own rulers deploy colonial tactics against their citizens: tear gas in campuses, police raids on activists, armored vehicles in shopping malls. The state has become what it once condemned.

Palestine today is the naked edge of colonial violence. The siege of Gaza — starvation as warfare, mass imprisonment, aerial bombardment — is a continuation of the same imperial logic Bandung sought to overturn. The Sumud Global Flotilla, now sailing against Israel’s blockade, is more than a humanitarian mission. It is Bandung’s unfinished project: ordinary people refusing the categories of empire, breaking blockades with their own hands, and declaring that freedom in Gaza is inseparable from freedom in Jakarta.

We don’t want peace; we want justice.

We are told to wait, to calm down, to be “reasonable.” But history shows that justice has never been granted to those who waited politely. It has always been seized by those who refused to bow.

And so we say it clearly: we will not settle for a peace of submission. We demand justice — in the streets of Jakarta, in the refugee camps of Gaza, and everywhere empire insists that people must be silent.

This Thursday, as we fast, we refuse to forget. Each hunger pang binds us to Rheza, Iko, Andika — and to every Palestinian under siege. We hunger not for peace without justice, but for justice itself.

Written in preparation of Thursday Sunnah fasting on 12 Rabiulawal 1447 Unified Global Hijri Calendar (UGHC) or 4 September 2025 AD

False Peace, Real Violence

In Indonesia, politicians awarded themselves housing allowances nearly ten times the minimum wage. Citizens, students, and workers rose up, torching parliament buildings in Makassar and blocking roads in Medan. The elite demanded “peace.” But what they meant was silence—order imposed through Brimob batons, bullets, and armored trucks. Affan’s death stripped away the euphemisms: peace without justice is merely violence renamed.

In Gaza, Israel frames its project as “security” and “peacekeeping.” Yet its logic is equally genocidal. By activating the Hannibal Directive, the Israeli state announced to its soldiers and to the world: we would rather kill our own than let Palestinians live with leverage. For Palestinians, “peace” is occupation, blockade, famine, and daily bombardment. As in Jakarta, “peace” is an order that defends only the powerful, not the people.

Justice as the Demand

When Indonesians chant and burn, when Palestinians resist with ambushes in Zeitoun, they are not rejecting peace itself. They are rejecting false peace—the quiet of hunger, dispossession, and militarized order. Their demand is justice:

• For Indonesia, that means dismantling elite allowances, reversing austerity, holding Brimob accountable, and redistributing resources to workers and communities.

• For Palestine, that means ending siege and occupation, recognizing sovereignty, returning land, and dismantling the settler-colonial system that denies life itself.

Both cases reveal the same truth: peace without justice is submission.

Global Resonance

The cry “We don’t want peace, we want justice” echoes across continents. It is heard in Jakarta’s burning parliaments and Gaza’s streets under bombardment. It is a rejection of Western liberal narratives that prize “stability” and “dialogue” while concealing the structural violence of capitalism, austerity, and settler colonialism.

Decolonial struggle insists on naming perpetrators—Jakarta’s politicians and militarised suppression mechanics, Israel’s military and state—and dismantling the systems that protect them. Only then can peace be more than silence. Only then can it be justice.

Monday Sunnah fasting

Tomorrow, as we observe the Sunnah fast of Monday, we carry not only personal devotion but collective remembrance. Fasting is discipline, patience, and solidarity with the hungry, the oppressed, and the dispossessed. It sharpens our awareness that true justice demands sacrifice and steadfastness.

The hunger we feel is a shadow of what Palestinians endure under siege, and what Indonesian workers endure under austerity.

May Allah gives us ease and accept our deeds.

Written in preparation of Sunnah fasting on Monday, 9 Rabiulawal 1447 United Global Hijri Calendar (UGHC) or 1 September 2025 AD

Shir Hever, an Israeli-born Jew and part of the military embargo campaign of the Palestinian BDS movement, said on The Electronic Intifada:

“The idea that international law and protests and BDS actions would convince the Israeli government to say ‘we are sorry, we made a mistake, we will now stop committing a genocide’ - this is not how things work. This is never been the plan of action and this is not how pressure works. The pressure is on the world. The pressure is on the governments around the world to stop enabling the genocide and to take action.”[1]

We need to be clear: genocidaires do not stop out of shame. Israel’s genocide in Gaza is not a mistake or a sudden eruption. It is the outcome of more than seven decades of Zionist settler colonialism: a project of racial hierarchy, militarized land theft, and ethnic cleansing—armed and financed by Western imperial powers who see Palestinian death as the cost of maintaining their world order. We are not at the beginning. We are at Stage 9: Extermination, in the Ten Stages of Genocide. And it is not only Israeli society that has gone through those stages. Western elites, corporations, and allied governments have normalized them, provided cover for them, and profited from them.

Shir is right: the pressure is not on Israelis—they are the perpetrators. The pressure is on the world. But we must be honest: in the past two years, no government has acted decisively to stop the genocide. Not Indonesia. Not Turkey. Not Qatar. Certainly not the Arab regimes who openly normalize with Israel like the UAE. And let’s not even talk about Saudi Arabia. Western governments, led by the U.S. and the U.K., continue to arm, fund, and provide intelligence for Israel’s extermination of Palestinians. Muslim-majority governments remain paralyzed or complicit.

So given this, I would like to take it further:

“The pressure to stop this genocide is on us.

The pressure to step up and step in to stop this genocide is on everyone of us with conscience. On individual level. Everyone of us.

I know some of us have already done a lot for Palestine—and I deeply appreciate you for it. This is not to dismiss those efforts, but a reminder, mainly to myself, that we must continue to step up, to do more, and to hold each other strong. Let us all do our part and strengthen one another, because liberation is a collective struggle.

Stop being shocked that the U.S. keeps arming Israel, that the U.K. keeps supplying intelligence, that Muslim governments remain silent or complicit. Empire has always chosen the side of colonizers. The real question is: will we step up and step in, together?

Those videos of Israel starving babies to death, those images of Palestinian mothers holding the broken bodies of their children killed by Israeli shrapnel, those reports of Palestinian men kidnapped and sexually assaulted by Israelis in Sdr Teiman concentration camp —those are not just testimonies of suffering. They are the direct evidence of a genocidal system. And they are also summons: calls for us to rise, act, and refuse to be complicit through silence.

To act.

To read Surah Al Isra every night before going to bed, in accordance with Sunnah.[2]

To support mutual aid campaigns that deliver food and medicine to Gaza.[3]

To study and be creative in perpetuating the Baitul Maqdis culture in our everyday life, for example by joining Al Maqdisi Protocol competition.[4]

To join brave initiatives such as Malaysia’s 1000 Watermelon Flotilla to break Israel’s siege of Gaza.[5]

To volunteer at initiatives that make tangible results like the Hind Rajab Foundation.[6]

To imagine a different world after Palestine’s liberation, where the global order is no longer shaped by Western hegemony, and to begin building independent collective infrastructure—such as a gold-backed currency as an alternative to fiat money—by joining Ummah International.[7]

You may not agree with some or all of the above initiatives. They may be ineffective, impractical, not urgent, or flawed for other reasons. But that is not the point. The point is: the pressure is on each of us to do something.

Perhaps the reason why you disagree with some or any of these initiatives is that Allah is directing you toward creating something else—something you are best placed to do. So, please do it.

Please do let us know and amplify your initiatives as well - we are here to chip in and help. Liberation is a collective struggle.

What Shir said is so simple but so profound to me, because it really changes my mindset of trying to convince others, who are outside of my control, and instead realising that the pressure is on me, and what I do is completely within my control.

So stop being baffled at how Keir Starmer does not flinch when he sees babies starved to skeletons, and instead channel that energy into waking up at 3 a.m. to read Qur’an and study. If this is hard for us, if this is not something we already do, then perhaps that is part of the reason why Palestine is not yet liberated. Again, I say this first and foremost to myself.

Surely, none of this is to say that Baitul Maqdis liberation is up to us - it is from Allah. But Allah will only help us if we do something.

There is a reason why each of us is made the way we are—our education, our wealth, our connections, our privilege. Use them, because we will be held to account for them.

May our fast on Monday help us along this journey.

Sources:

[1] Electronic Intifada video:

[2] Hadith for Sunnah reading Surah Al Isra every night: https://www.abuaminaelias.com/dailyhadithonline/2014/01/01/prophet-recite-quran-nawm/

[3] Mutual aid: https://t.me/+nn1E8G_C6rQ0MDJk

[4] Al Maqdisi Protocol competition: https://www.canva.com/design/DAGsYWH4CAw/hojre7xuUCWAlTRpF4kTPQ/view?utm_content=DAGsYWH4CAw&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=viewer

[5] Malaysia’s 1000 Watermelon Flotilla: https://watermelonflotilla.org

[6] The Hind Rajab Foundation: https://www.hindrajabfoundation.org

[7] Ummah International: https://www.ummah.international

Written in preparation of Sunnah fasting on Monday, 2 Rabiulawal 1447 Unified Global Hijri Calendar (UGHC) or 25 August 2025 AD.

This is part of our twice-a-week initiative to fast every Monday and Thursday, in line with the Sunnah, in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, and in our attempt to remember them, not only in our mind, but also in our bodies.

The image you are seeing above is an article from the New York Times dated 20 November 1945. We Indonesians remember this as the Battle of Surabaya, one of the bloodiest battles against colonialism in our long struggle for independence; while they, the colonisers, remember it as a disturbance incident where "Muslim Fanatics Fight in Surabaya".

For those of us who have been following, and trying to deconstructing, how the Western media has been dehumanizing Palestinians in the past more than 75 years, and even more so in the past 2 years, it is glaring how the language that is being used is eerily similar.

To quote a few from The New York Times article:

Religious Leaders in Charges Against Tanks

Frenzied attacks by Indonesian nationalists on British tanks in Surabaya, with 1,000 or more Muslim troops charging into a deadly crossfire

The Indonesian often were led into the fighting my Mohammedan religious leaders, and were charging upright into British machine guns without the thought of loss of life.

This is not poor journalism—it is imperial propaganda. It depicts us as irrational, suicidal, driven by religious intoxication. This is what Edward Said called Orientalism: the systematic production of the “irrational Muslim Other” to justify European domination. Our fight for liberation becomes a spectacle of chaos. Our martyrs are rewritten as bloodthirsty mobs. The Western archive cannot see dignity in our resistance—because it would indict itself.

But do you remember the picture of Faris Odeh, the Palestinian boy throwing stone against Israeli tank? Will they, the colonisers, understand the unbending determination to fight for dignity and independence, even when the entire system is designed to crush you, even when you are robbed of any fair chance to fight, even when the enemy is enveloped in armored tanks and all you have are rocks?

It is interesting to note that, on the same day this article was published, 20 November 1945, the West began the Nuremberg trial to prosecute Nazis. But while they condemned genocide in Europe, they were violently suppression liberation struggles across the colonised world - including ours in Indonesia. That’s not justice; that’s imperial hypocrisy.

On 17 August 1945, Indonesia declared independence. It was a Friday. Within an hour of the radio broadcast, Dr. Agus, a congregant at Masjid Kauman Semarang, climbed the pulpit and publicly announced the independence of Indonesia from Japanese occupation and Dutch colonialism. This act of defiance provoked an immediate response. The Japanese launched a search. Dr. Agus fled to Jakarta and never returned; he died in exile.

That mosque became more than a house of worship. It became a site of political rupture—a place where Islam and resistance fused. Out of six officially recognized religions in Indonesia, only one house of worship—Masjid Kauman—declared independence on the day itself. This is not incidental. Islam was not on the sidelines of revolution. It was its engine.

The colonial narrative erases this. It strips Islam of its liberatory history and flattens it into a private, apolitical practice. But we refuse to forget.

The West does not fear our beliefs—it fears our memory. It fears our refusal to assimilate. It fears that we do not accept the colonial condition of silence.

They dehumanize us in the media. They call us radicals. They frame our politics as extremism and our resistance as terror. But let us be clear: the same Islam they fear is the Islam that liberated us.

We were never the irrational ones. They were. It is irrational to believe that a people can be bombed, starved, colonized, and caged for 75+ years and not rise up. It is irrational to believe that we must apologize for existing.

I used to ask why Allah made Muslim women so visible—why we walk through the world marked so visibly in our hijab in a time of surveillance, hostility, and racial profiling.

Now, I understand.

My hijab is a refusal. It is a statement that I do not belong to the colonial order, and I will not be integrated into its false liberalism. When I enter a room, my hijab speaks before I do. It refuses to let the room forget what the empire wants to erase.

Be Muslim. Be proud.

Not the kind they find acceptable.

The kind they fear—because we remember.

They will call your resistance fanaticism.

They will call your mourning extremism.

They will call your faith backward.

They will call your Islam political—and they will be right.

It is.

And it always has been.

We fast for Gaza.

We fast for Surabaya.

We fast for ourselves.

And we do not fast quietly.

Written in preparation of Sunnah fasting on Thursday, 27 Safar 1447 Unified Global Hijri Calendar (UGHC) or 21 August 2025 AD.