Asabiyyah - The Cancer of the World

In Islam, a lot of people may think they know what they are doing but in actual fact many are actually clueless and are following what everyone else does. If you don’t start educating yourself, you wouldn’t know whether whatever you are doing are in accordance with the Quran and Sunnah or not.

The causes and the diseases that have weakened the Muslim ummah are many, but the asabiyyah (racial discrimination) attitude with all its kinds and forms is one of most deadly disease that have weakened the Muslim ummah in the past as well as today.


The once unified, merciful, and cohesive Muslim ummah has transformed into differing, conflicting, warring entities due to this disease. For this reason, it is a must for us to know what asabiyyah with all its forms is and to know what Islam says about asabiyyah and why Islam has fought it, and how we can rid ourselves from it.

The drive that causes asabiyyah is the feeling of being better than others, and that others are at a lower class. So, the person that has this feeling of asabiyyah thinks so highly of himself and of those to whom he belongs, and thinks that other people are as good as his own people.

This kind of thinking is corrupted, and it is in fact a kind of arrogance that comes from the mentality of Iblis, which led him to disobey the command of Allah when He ordered him to prostrate to Adam. Iblis said, "I am better than him, You created me out of fire and you created him (Adam) out of clay."

The Prophet (pbuh) warned us when he said, "No one enters Paradise if they have in their heart a grain weight of arrogance." The prophet (pbuh) defined this arrogance in two things: "Rejection of the truth and looking down on people."

The asabiyyah, in Jahiliyya time before Islam turned the Arab tribes into enemies and made from their Arabian Peninsula a battlefield. Allah SWT told us about their situation before Islam in Surah Al-Imran, verse 103:

"And hold fast, all of you together, to the Rope of Allah, and be not divided among yourselves, and remember Allah’s Favor on you, for you were enemies one to another, but He joined your hearts together, so that, by His Grace, you became brethren (in Islamic Faith)…" (QS 3:103)

This kind of situation is not restricted to the Arabs, but is actually plagued all nations including Malaysia to be disunited and fight against each other because of this asabiyyah attitude. Due to this reason, many once great nations was destroyed in the past.


Wallahu'alam