What’s Your Identity?

What makes you do the things that you do on a daily basis? Is it because you’re Palestinian? Because you’re African? Because you’re white? Do you do things or think things or move in life a certain way because of your ethnicity or your race?

The people around the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ were called the companions and not the Arabs. We remember them and their courageous way that they were in battle and in humanity and in everyday life because of what was taught to them from the Quran and the example of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, not because they were Arabs.

The famous Omar Ibn Al Khattab once said:

“We were the most humiliated people on earth and Allah gave us honor through Islam. If we ever seek honor through anything else, Allah will humiliate us again.”

(Mustadrak Hakim, authenticated by Imam Al Hakim and confirmed by Hafiz Al Dhahabi, radiyallahu anhum)

Do you see what I mean? That was his identity. That he was a MUSLIM and not an Arab.

Our culture is the Quran and the Sunnah. Every decision that we make, and how we move in life and treat with people and deal with people and do business with people and our relationship with people and our creator is based upon this understanding. This identity that we are Muslims who follow a book and the best man on the planet to have ever lived ﷺ.

The faster you get rid of this nonsensical so-called identity that is attached to your skin color or your ethnic background or your tribal background, the faster you will develop as a man. Being an ethnicity or a color doesn’t make you good or better than anybody.

And it is for that reason a lot of us in current times in modern days are so divided. Because we see ourselves as Pakistani, white, black, Hispanic, fill in the blank, and not as Muslims who follow our book and the greatest man of all time ﷺ.

And so we are slaves of our ego and our delusions based upon these nonsensical attachments to our ethnic and racial so-called identities. I don’t even want to call it an identity.

Here is the reality. When you stand before Allah on the Day of Judgment, He is not going to ask you what tribe you came from or what color your skin was. He is going to ask you what you did with what He sent down. He is going to ask you how you followed His Messenger ﷺ. That is the only ledger that matters. Build your identity around that, or spend your whole life defending something that will not defend you when it counts.

The Quran is your culture. The Prophet ﷺ is your example. Islam is your identity.

Everything else is noise.