Nationalism and Racism in Muslim Communities

What Islam Said

The Prophet ﷺ said in his final sermon: "No Arab has superiority over a non-Arab, and no non-Arab over an Arab. No white person has superiority over a black person, and no black person over a white person, except through righteousness."

This was not a general statement of goodwill. It was a direct dismantling of the tribal hierarchy that had organised Arabian society for centuries. The Prophet ﷺ made Bilal (a formerly enslaved African man) the first muadhin in Islam. He gave Salman al-Farisi (a Persian) a place of honour among the companions. He married into and created alliances across tribal lines deliberately.

The Quran states: "O humanity, We created you from a single male and female and made you into peoples and tribes so that you may know one another. The most noble of you in the sight of God is the most righteous." (49:13)

The diversity of humanity in Islam is not a problem to be managed. It is a feature: designed for mutual knowledge, not hierarchy.

What Muslim Communities Do

Pakistani families that oppose marriage to Arab Muslims. Arab families that look down on South Asian Muslims. Turkish nationalism that treats non-Turks as lesser. Arab racism toward Black Africans, including in some Arab Muslim communities, that directly mirrors the pre-Islamic asabiyyah Islam condemned.

None of this has Islamic basis. All of it contradicts explicit prophetic teaching. A Muslim who holds racial or national superiority over another Muslim (or over any human being) is holding a pre-Islamic belief that the Prophet ﷺ explicitly came to destroy.

Nationalism Specifically

Nationalism (the belief that loyalty to the nation-state takes precedence over Islamic brotherhood) is a modern political ideology with roots in post-Enlightenment Europe. It entered Muslim-majority societies through a mixture of indigenous reform movements and colonial administrative practice. Whatever its origins in any given country, its effect on the ummah has been the same: the fragmentation of a single Muslim political identity into competing national ones, which colonial and post-colonial powers have repeatedly exploited.

A Muslim whose primary identity is their nationality, who would side with their nation against fellow Muslims, who would support their government's oppression of Muslims elsewhere because they are "not our people", has replaced Islamic identity with a colonial substitute.

This does not mean Muslims cannot love their homelands. The Prophet ﷺ loved Mecca. It means that love of place must not become a loyalty that overrides Islamic brotherhood or that assigns human worth based on origin.

It is also worth noting how arbitrary national identity actually is. The borders of most Muslim-majority countries were drawn by British or French administrators in the 19th and 20th centuries: often with a ruler across a map, with no regard for the peoples living across them. A Muslim born one village to one side of such a line carries one passport and national identity; born one village to the other side, a completely different one. The accident of which side of a colonial border one was born on is the foundation on which nationalism asks Muslims to build their primary loyalty. The ummah (a community defined by shared belief and obligation) is a more coherent basis of identity than a line drawn by a colonial officer.

The Prophetic Definition of Asabiyyah

The Prophet ﷺ said: ‘He is not one of us who calls to asabiyyah, fights for asabiyyah, or dies for asabiyyah.’ (Abu Dawud). The classical scholars defined asabiyyah as supporting one’s people in wrongdoing, distinguishing it from natural affection for one’s family or homeland, which is permissible. The line is drawn at the point where group loyalty overrides justice.