Like the proverbial cockroach, the ‘popular Dawah’ industry appears to be designed to outlive nuclear destruction. In recent years alone, it has absorbed the controversies of the tellingly abominable temporary one minute nikkahs, McDonalds as Mehr fall outs and several instances of predatory behaviour. The unfolding dialogue concerning their reprehensible attitudes towards divorced women and single mothers, may be the red line we needed to finally cut the oxygen of publicity to this increasingly depraved space. As an industry which thrives on controversy, this latest episode which has also seen the welcome intervention of a well-known London mosque, has revealed how these sinister and damaging macro ideologies play themselves out on a personal level. The fall out from this event also exemplifies how paradoxical our collective response to the discourse and practices propagated by these men truly is, and how complacent large swathes of the Muslim community have become about them.

It’s no surprise to any of us that Dawah bro-engineered spectacles, and the many exposés which reveal the dark underbelly of this populist movement, almost always embroil women. That a class of attention-hungry, publicly adulated men feel entitled to use their counterparts in faith as ideological punchbags, is something they undoubtedly need to take up on a therapist couch somewhere. But as a community we must grapple with what it says about us as a generation of consumers that we are both drawn to and supportive of what would be totally fickle and inane content were it not so dangerous. This entire industry’s click-bait fodder is premised on the idea of women as ‘less than’. And this reveals much about how some Muslims perceive our faith, and who we deem as necessary collateral damage for our spiritual entertainment. It also reveals who we deem worthy of being heard, as instances where women have rightly called out these men and their online and offline behaviours are largely ignored because of the very misogyny that created these monsters.

Recent episodes have reemphasised how divorced Muslim women and single-mothers are perpetually the target of this industry’s ire. This, we can only assume, is because they do not appear to have a central and qualifying ‘male’ figure in their lives. And for an ideology which claims the primacy of men as believers, this is an unforgivable sin. We assume this because of course there is unequivocally no basis for this sentiment in Islamic scripture. To the contrary, divorced women and single Mums feature prolifically in Islamic history and the Qur’an itself as esteemed figures. The twisted irony of course being that while many propagators of this dawah also deem these women as vulnerable for this very reason, they appear to have no qualms in exploiting that vulnerability both individually or ideologically in promoting ‘misyar’ or temporary, convenient marriages to divorced women as though they are mere ‘fillers’ for men in a wider quest for an ‘unspoilt’ bride. Much of their conversation denigrating Muslim women is built upon this perverted assumption regarding legitimate and worthy women, which places divorced women and single mothers on the unworthy and illegitimate end of this imaginary scale. This puritanical and archaic attitude that attributes social shame to the end of a marriage, and furthermore forces women alone to carry the burden of that shame, is a convenient tool for men who like to degrade female existence and appear to revel in lewd and illicit conversation.

Constantly reinforcing this idea that legitimate marriage is between two first-time partners, this erroneous attitude is presupposed on the idea that divorced women are ‘spoilt goods’ and the very nature of the debates that surround it suggests they are both more open to such an idea, and willing to entertain such crude and disrespectful advances. The perennial feature of such debate that such arrangements can be kept ‘hidden’ from society, also unearths one of the most pernicious strains of thinking concerning divorced women and single mothers; that they are less worthy of public respect and undeserving of the ‘legitimacy’ and sense of being ‘seen’ that these men attribute to the institution of marriage. It exposes both the unIslamic nature of their thinking and their circular and perverted ideology.

This strain of discourse is not isolated to the Dawah scene, rather it is an unfortunate reflection of, and indeed is dependent upon, a broader cultural sentiment that is at odds with Islam. Ironically for a Dawah industry that spuriously stigmatises divorced women in particular, it appears to be secretly advocating for divorce as a natural consequence for the ‘muttah’ like arrangements, in the many coarse and tasteless hypotheticals they publicly obsess over. We appear to be living in a constant cyclical trend of dawah debate which salaciously centres on the many fantasies these men hold, to twist and distort Sharia to justify exploiting women for their own gain. These men, who rely on false and punishing cultural assumptions regarding women’s standing in marriage, use the figurative divorced Muslim women as the ultimate receptacle for their misogyny.

Muttah, a form of temporary marriage, is, according to mainstream sunni scholarship which many of these figures advocate for, impermissible. The obvious reason for this is it rids women of all the safeguards inbuilt to the nikkah arrangement. It leaves them, and any potential children, vulnerable to exploitation.

The constant suggestion coming from this industry that divorced women and single mothers are more compatible for such an arrangement also breeds an unforgivable cultural attitude which asserts that women who were once married are ‘fair game’, leading to a perceived cheapening of their worth. ‘Misyar’, an accepted form of marital contract in which a woman gives up certain rights, is only permissible when it meets the conditions of a valid marriage, one of which is public announcement. There is, therefore, no legitimate religious grounds for the highly sensationalist talking points that have shaped this form of Dawah.

Even beyond this unfortunate episode, this faction of the Dawah industry’s rabid obsession with circumventing religiously mandated safeguards for women is well documented. There is a mercy and hikmah in the very public nature of Islamic marriage which acts as a kind of guardianship for Muslim women in this public form of protection, a fact that exemplifies both the beauty of Islam, and how tragically far from it we have strayed as an Ummah. We are all publically bearing witness to a discourse that increasingly berates and victimises Muslim women, with no end in sight.

In constantly obsessing over the availability and disposability of divorced Muslim women, as a precursor to their ‘legitimate’ marriage with an eventual ‘first time’ bride, Dawah bros also expose their own narcissism. That they feel divorced men are exempt from such ‘spoiling’ and indeed that men themselves remain ‘pure’ and ‘untainted’ by that same standard with which they denigrate women. A hypocrisy and double standard which is premised on the thinking that men are innately worthy of a ‘second chance’, indeed perennial first chances according to this logic. That men are perpetually pure, chaste and incapable of fault – they do not face the same stigmatisation as divorced Muslim women, and appear to be unrestricted by the same mores and ethics. Religious laws, it bears worth saying, that are incumbent upon both men and women in Islam.

Sparked of course by this real instance in which a single Muslim mum was unceremoniously and covertly propositioned, this latest episode is different to others in which Dawah figures have dishonoured and disrespected Muslim women through their discourse, and appears to have finally united much of the Muslim community in condemnation. We can generously assume that this is a direct result of how we as a Muslim community perceive these ideologies in the abstract versus how they impact individuals, often vulnerable women. That is, though these ideas have been doing the rounds in the ideological wilderness of internet Dawah unimpeached, being able to conceptualise the material, real life impact of this on a woman and her child has (I hope) awoken us as a community from this passive sleepwalking into dangerous religious territory. In any instance, it has drawn a much needed line in the sand, and exposed those obscure and divergent voices that we as a community need to excommunicate from religious discussion and thinking.

It has also revealed how good natured and legitimately Islamic thinking and practice are often exploited in the name of the popular Dawah-bro industrial complex. As Muslims who have a rightful affiliation with fiqh, and who will be intellectually drawn to how elements of Sharia, much of which is specific to its context in revelation, nestle into our contemporary existence, Muslim Dawah bros have been able to camouflage a whole host of vile and misogynistic ideas and practices due to our religious curiosity and appetite.

Almost always presupposed on the idea of the woman as an insentient object, these figures are becoming more and more bold in how they speak about and frame Muslim women in their work, and divorced women in particular. Situated entirely in secular and pre-Islamic concepts of relationships, which position women as mere accessories for men’s social and physical gratification, this damaging strain of thinking privileges male bodily pleasures and exonerates men of any sense of duty to the women in their lives, and indeed of any blame – both of which are antithetical to Islam.

In fact, as we all know, Islam was revealed to put an end to them. Worst still, they are giving Muslim men the tools and a pseudo Islamic language to carry out those vile and misogynistic practices themselves. They are effectively instigating and green lighting the perpetual abuse of vulnerable Muslim women, under the cover of religious legitimacy.

Often these Daees use marriage as a kind of rotten carrot to contrast the stick of an unIslamic lifestyle. As though their reward to ‘pious’ women is a commitment in marriage. The same Dawah industry which has just stopped short of publishing actual guides on how to subjugate their wives and deny them any of the spousal support mandatory in Islam. And despite promoting such abusive behaviour in Muslim men, the accountability of divorce will always be placed with women.

Inherently misogynistic, and rotten to its core, this strain of the Dawah industry tells on itself time and time again; there is no qualifying feature a woman can assume, Islamic or otherwise, that grants these figurative women they frame as ‘marriage worthy’ the honour they position themselves to bequeath. In fact, it is based entirely on a kind of man-worship which is posited on the very idea that specifically a man’s feelings and thoughts are what grants women status in religion. As though their very approval is what authorises women’s success in religious terms.

Indeed this sense of man-worship and spiritual narcissism, is evident in the totally unapologetic nature of Dawah figures despite instances where legitimate scholars have had to intervene to reign this wildly flailing discourse in. This industry appears to be made up of men who are unable to see both the religious fault, personal misgiving and damage caused to the women who are implicated in their work. This toxic mix of untethered, often unqualified Dawah boys club it has created, and the public facing nature of it which encourages adulation and praise, means that often these figures equate Islam with their very person. They deem an act religiously qualified on the basis that it’s something they’ve done, and not on the objective body of religious scripture that is designed to filter out these very harms. And as faithful audiences many Muslims willingly appoint these men and their rhetoric as guides in our lives, we buy the snake oil that warps Islamic edicts to fit our material desires and cultural prejudices. We are living in the kind of dystopia that means the metric for religious legitimacy is follower count, rather than any kind of religious intelligence or spiritual humility. If we take ikhlas as a measure of someone’s worth as a Daee, then the obvious insincerity, attention farming and bad faith acting of these figures alone should be cause for serious concern.

This unfortunate incident also exposes our binary thinking when it comes to our faith. Islam was sent as the perfected and final message to all of mankind. Very often this Dawah scene will unquestioningly adopt erroneous misogynistic and punitive practices and attitudes we sadly see in many Muslim majority countries (which deny women a basic education, for example) as the barometer for gender relations, not Islam itself. Stigmatisation of divorced women is a cultural attitude as old as time, which does not have its origins in our scripture. This blanket acceptance of these practices is presented as though it is an honourable and courageous defence of religious tradition and orthodoxy, in the face of contemporary criticism and corruption. The fighting against a ‘western’ culture these men ostensibly claim to be engaged in is equally done in a senseless and blind manner. This is despite this industry being entirely embroiled in all of the certified anti-Islamic elements of western culture; in this case promiscuity and multiple relationships with a false veneer of Islam. Indeed, the very notion of men lewdly boasting of the acquisition of women is entirely secular-liberalist in nature, and has no basis in our religion. In the warped and surreal simulation of these men’s world, that we have been increasingly drawn into,they are defenders of the faith from the nebulous influence of western culture. In reality, they have skilfully weaved the unIslamic elements of both western and eastern cultures, while maintaining the PR of Muslimness, by exploiting the binary ideas we have concerning both worlds.

Perhaps most insultingly, much of this work and the content produced is claimed to be done to save the Muslim home, when in reality these men are the greatest contributors to its downfall. The divorced woman, and single mother who is left to maintain this home, are ideologically flagellated for their ‘crime’ of sitting outside it. As we see increasing declines in marriage and fertility rates, a trend which threatens global dominance and which will not spare Muslims in the west or east in the long term, the very idea of the wife, marriage and home are increasingly contested. Rising misogyny is abjectly one of the major contributors to this trend. Moral grandstanding, and perpetuating harm to married and unmarried Muslim women does nothing to further their stated cause.

The Prophet (ﷺ) was not only a keen defender of women’s honour, dignity and rights, but he (ﷺ) embodied a secure, integral and responsible masculinity that could not be further from what we see exhibited on the screen today, in his (ﷺ) name. Equally, the examples Allah (SWT) has laid out for mankind in the Qur’an, and the illustrious women that make up our religious history, consist of women for whom divorce and single parenthood were not rare. That we perceive it a kind of anachronism, and exceptionalise our own time in history, exempting ourselves from the responsibility we all owe to women who are raising children alone, is another telling feature of our increasingly skewed and ahistorical narrative concerning Islam.

As a community of Muslims who are now paying attention to this industry’s harms, we need to assert those prevailing truths of the Sunnah in uncompromising ways, and that means standing by the very women these men feel emboldened to defame, and voting with our thumbs. Time to unfollow these men both literally and figuratively, and relearn our faith outside of their sensationalist perversions.