(interpreting faith in the world today, discussing gender, identity, culture, politics and contemporary issues in the world today)
I don’t think it makes much difference on these issues that Muslims are living as minorities or as majorities. The culture that we confront, and resist is pervasive across the world: Pakistanis in Lahore are only a bit less affected than Pakistanis in Bradford. The only difference is more means for more people in England than Pakistan to be distracted from what is good and necessary for them.
The heart of the matter is that we should ‘think things through’, i.e. think through the consequences of particular life-styles. Essentially, the this-worldly benefit of belief in the judgement hereafter is precisely to remind and train us to ‘think things through’.
Obvious example: if a culture promotes forms of sexual gratification which are entirely divorced from the possibility and responsibility of producing children and raising them properly, then the necessary consequences are that your population will cease to grow and after a couple of generations collapse fully, and, no less important, the value of sexual relationships is degraded, the future of those relationships is shortened, the range of feelings within them is narrowed. Overall, the meaningfulness of those relationships is altered so that sexual pleasure and satisfaction become more important than anything else, and that gradually ruins all the psychological, emotional and sociability training that ensues (directly and indirectly) from having children to look after, wider family commitments, a sense of community, etc.
Focus on what you know from Qur’an and hadith about personal responsibility, on being answerable to Allah. The purpose of Islam was and remains to bring people to full consciousness of their Creator, and to worship Him according to the ways taught by its Messenger. In other words, the crisis of the ummah is the deficiency of the Muslims in their iman and islam, not the efficiency of the enemies of Muslims.
Doing things for Allah means doing things ONLY because they are right to do, not because they bring you some present or future advantage, in terms of pleasure or profit or status or power or the like. A believer knows that his life is important because it is a gift from Allah. That makes it important, serious, interesting, valuable. Take that away, and all we are is insignificant matter, infinitesimally small particles in an impossibly vast creation; whether we come and go, live or die, to good or do harm, matters not all: nobody cares. Except that, that is NOT how we feel about ourselves. We do not name raindrops or particles of sand. But we do name our children because their personhood is recognised by that name, they are important to themselves and to us. Even when there is no-one else around, every believer is aware that Allah is near, and Allah cares that you do not refuse or reject or waste His gifts, of which sexuality is just one.
People bring their problems to me — the difficulty of finding a marriage partner, of sustaining a marriage, etc. –and they tell me their stories, how great their desolation is, and how strenuous and uphill is the task of providing consolation, relief, of maintaining hope. Sometimes, there is no hope; it is only then that faith is fully tested, and if you can still desire to do the right things that are in your power to do, and do not neglect the effort to do them, consistently and systematically, then Allah will not fail to provide you with an inner strength that preserves your dignity as a believer.
If you want to see the reality of this inner strength, and its fruits, look to Gazza and its people. And if you want to see the opposite, the absence of that inner strength, and its fruits in real humiliation, look to those places, where the big men say forcefully and very loudly and very often what they most certainly will not do. And you know what Allah has said in His Book about one who says what he does not do.
