اللَّهُمَّ أَرِنِي الْحَقَّ حَقًّا وَوَفِّقْنِي لِاتِّبَاعِهِ وَأَرِنِي الْبَاطِلَ بَاطِلًا وَوَفِّقْنِي لِاجْتِنَابِهِ
“O Allah, show me the truth as truth and guide me to follow it, and show me the falsehood as falsehood and guide me to avoid it.” – Umar ibn al Khattab
[Sharh al-Muntaha al-Iradat 3/497]
بِسْمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحْمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيم
Mankind is suffering through an unprecedented era of insanity. Entire generations are raised upon falsehoods and lack even the most basic understanding of the world. Our sense of reality has been deeply distorted by movies and television shows, people rely on disbelievers for the news, and whatever crumb of correct information we can get is inevitably processed through a materialistic western mindset. This must now be changed.
For most of human history, people used to get their news from locals that they knew and trusted, who could be questioned regarding the veracity of their stories. Liars were known and their reputation followed them. This all changed with the development of the printing press in the 15th century, which enabled the production of mass-printed pamphlets, newspapers, and magazines. Lies could now be printed and distributed widely, done behind false names and a professional façade. Thus began age of mass media in Europe with single sheet pamphlets, which were immediately used to stoke civil wars and religious conflict. The printing press had also reached Muslim lands early on, however the Ottoman government – for better or worse – decided to suppress it for nearly 300 years due to fears of heresy and disorder.
Yet the effects of print media pale in comparison to the effects of video. Visual media produces false memories that remain with the viewer for a lifetime. Movies and television shows offer us unrealistic and scripted interactions between people, filmed on purpose-built sets, made with combined footage from dozens of takes recorded over several hours. But this footage is presented to us as one smooth scene, and it becomes embedded in our brain as a memory. We later quote and imitate these interactions.
“When President Barack Obama won reelection in 2012, his staff wondered how to handle the traditional pro forma cabinet resignations. They knew that each cabinet secretary was supposed to submit a letter of resignation as a matter of courtesy, in order to give the president the option of shuffling his cabinet without the burden of having to fire anyone, but no one knew the exact protocol. Are the letters submitted on Inauguration Day, or on January 1, or at the secretaries’ individual convenience? Are any other department heads traditionally included? The White House cabinet secretary at the time, Chris Lu, asked his staff to look up the relevant precedents.
They discovered that the tradition did not exist. “Those of us who were thinking about this question had a feeling that the cabinet was supposed to submit their resignations, and we did some research and we couldn’t find anything,” Lu recalled. “At that moment, we realized we all must have been thinking about this episode of The West Wing [TV show] where Leo asks for the cabinet resignations.”
Lu is referring to season 4, episode 10, which features the first full cabinet meeting after President Bartlett’s reelection, during which Chief of Staff Leo McGarry does indeed request letters of resignation from everyone by the end of the business day.” [Helen Andrews, Boomers (2021)]
Even the most powerful bureaucrats in the world cannot tell the difference between TV and reality. Then what will it do to your children? To your wife? To your own mind?
Our understanding of the world is shaped largely by scripted videos. Modern perceptions of slavery are built on TV shows made in the 1970’s, our knowledge of World War 2 comes from some grainy black and white movies directed by Spielberg, and even the common Muslim understanding of the Crusades is based on a Hollywood film where Legolas plays a handsome young crusader knight.
RELATED: How Hollywood and Bollywood Are Negatively Impacting Our Societies
It would not be an exaggeration to say that our worldview is mostly based on footage that has been filmed in the last 50 years. And every single day, news broadcasts show us yet more deceptive footage, carefully edited to fit whatever narrative they have, all presented by handsome people in excellent clothes at a serious table where everyone is in complete agreement with the reporter.
But mass media does not directly tell you what to think. This was done early on, during the amateur era of communications. Now media gives you misleading information, inaccurate information, outright false information, and lets you arrive at the intended wrong conclusions by yourself.
Mass media does not directly tell you what to think. Instead, they tell you that everyone else believes a certain thing. They show you important people, rich people, common people, all declaring their belief in that certain thing, over and over, without allowing any contrary opinions to be voiced.
Or worse, media will show you some ridiculous, ugly, repugnant people that hold the contrary opinion. If these people do not exist, they simply arrange such people. With such techniques they form specific opinions in the minds of the apathetic, incurious members of the public, who get the impression that the entire herd already believes that particular narrative.
Humans are social creatures, and they have strong tendencies to follow their tribe without questioning. Broadcast news media therefore gives small controlling groups the ability to shape the opinions of the masses.
Furthermore, print and broadcast media are one-way communications, and there is usually no opportunity for the viewer to ask questions or point out falsehoods. As a result, it has been historically possible for small but powerful groups to gain control of the flow of information within nation-states and on the international stage. Only the development of the internet and social media has provided mankind with the ability to directly participate in mass communications, ending two centuries of centralized control that dictated what people were allowed to know.
RELATED: Invisible Strings: How Media Narratives Orchestrate Our March to War
Now we have interconnected computers in our pockets that we can use to communicate with each other. With this tool, the people of perception are able to break through the information blockade. Illegitimate governments and powerful groups no longer have a monopoly on our communications. They will make desperate attempts to re-establish control, but it is futile at this stage. The same infrastructure that handles all international trade and financial markets also carries our messages. It cannot be shut down entirely.
We now stand at the crossroads of history.
My proposition is simple. I believe that Muslims should evaluate the state of the world correctly, before undertaking any other initiatives. Any action we take without a solid understanding of our situation will result in failure. We should first establish what is the truth and what is falsehood.
We shake our heads in rejection when the TV tells us that men can become women, and that two men sodomizing each other is a marriage, but then two minutes later we believe their reports about the situation in Gaza. It has become abundantly clear that we should not be getting our news from insane people. We should not be naively taking our information from atheists and deviants. We should never believe what these liars say about us and our brothers.
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا إِنْ جَاءَكُمْ فَاسِقٌ بِنَبَإٍ فَتَبَيَّنُوا أَنْ تُصِيبُوا قَوْمًا بِجَهَالَةٍ فَتُصْبِحُوا عَلَىٰ مَا فَعَلْتُمْ نَادِمِينَ
“O you who have believed, if there comes to you an evildoer with information, investigate, lest you harm a people out of ignorance and become, over what you have done, regretful.”
[Surah Al-Hujurat 49:6]
Question everything you have ever been told by the media, by secular schools, by illegitimate governments. Do not let any idea into your heart without checking its origins. Achieve clarity of mind and clarity of thought once again. Return to the Quran and Sunnah.
May Allah show us the truth as truth and guide us to follow it, and show us the falsehood as falsehood and guide us to avoid it.
Assalamu’alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. Ma Sha Allah brother this is an excellent article. Indeed there are a lot of teachings we must hasten to unlearn. It is evident only the traditional Muslim society will succeed. As said in the comments by someone before, mankind is not meant to view images but critically think. We ought to read, discuss, and debate more.
one of the best articles on media deception
Assalamulikum please make an article on Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas de Caritat marquis de Condorcet The Man who invented feminism I actually learned about him when I was reading my history textbook for history class. And also make an article on how women are treated in the Yazidi Religion and what their scripture says about women.
This article is correct this Insane west duped itself not thinking minor marriage was a bad thing but minors having sex being promiscuous and being brainwashed in state sponsored brainwashing aka the school system was a good thing and all the science lied about the “harms”Of minor marriage the west is what I call “the lecturer who doesn’t act” as the west likes to lecture but not act upon their own rules they don’t even believe in their own rules and don’t hold their elties and accountable
And their own People
Not was supposed to be to
Subhanallah!!!!