Why They Should Stop Doing So, and Some Simple Ways to Live With and Benefit From Those Disagreements
1. Debates vs. Conversations
Having a debate with someone you disagree with and having a conversation with them are not the same thing. People perhaps think that a debate is just the same as a conversation with the addition of a few rules and procedures. For example, whereas speakers in a conversation stop and start spontaneously, adjusting to each other and to different topics as they go along, speakers in a debate take turns to speak for a fixed duration, and must stick to a specific topic. That is broadly true, but there is more to the difference.
A debate is usually a public occasion; what is said is meant to be overheard by the general public, and is intended to get their attention, approval, and applause. What is said in a debate is not intended for the benefit of the person or the viewpoint being debated. Rather, the main purpose and pleasure of debating is to defeat the person or viewpoint you disagree with. The purpose is to bring the other down, to win at their expense. Some debates even have an audience “vote” at the end as a way to show which side won, which got the most “likes.” In this respect, debates are, like sporting contests, an entertainment. Debates may claim to be educative, but in reality they are not.
1.1 Consequences of Debating to “Win”
Since winning or losing is the desired result, it hardens the differences between the viewpoints and hardens the divisions between those on “one side” and those on the “other side.” As people generally prefer to be on the winning side, winners can expect some listeners to move to their side and then claim these listeners were persuaded. But no genuine persuasion happened; only the perception of one side having won and the other having lost on that particular occasion.
Losers will almost always feel that the conditions of the debate were somehow unfair and will dispute the win, wanting a re-match. Debates done this way rarely, if ever, resolve disagreements; they usually extend and harden them. They do not relax differences so that people can live with them amicably or even peaceably. Worse, they often cause disagreements to get heated, and the shallow pretense of reasoned argument soon gives way to mockery, abuse, and insults.
1.2 The Spiral of Hostility
Eventually, both sides determine that the other is worthless and should not be engaged with at all. That is not the end: winners and losers typically go on attacking the other’s viewpoint while speaking only to their own side. Thus, the differences become institutionalised as social divisions, hostile factions that take pride in never listening to the other.
By contrast, a conversation is usually a private occasion, with no audience or public to entertain. A conversation is ideally a small number of people exploring each other’s thoughts, often wandering from topic to topic. Because conversation is open-ended, not committed to ending in a win over another, it is possible for it to proceed as if the speakers had begun by saying:
“Before we start, let us list all the relevant matters that we more or less agree about.”
Then, one person can say:
“Now, I think X, and I know that you think Z. Help me to understand why you think Z.”
Even when viewpoints X and Z are diametrically opposed, the speakers affirm their common ground, making it possible (at least theoretically) that this common ground will grow as the conversation proceeds. Some degree of learning happens, and something, however small, is better understood than before.
1.3 The Outcome of Good Conversation
Even if disagreements remain, the common ground is not destroyed. Differences do not harden into permanent social divisions—an “us” versus “them.” A good conversation ideally preserves or enlarges common ground and enables differences to be managed. The points of disagreement remain but their significance is put into perspective, with details often adjusted on both sides.
A good debate, by contrast, ideally ends in reducing or destroying common ground: “winning” or “losing” means the loser’s space is shrunk or transferred to the winner.
2. Disputes and Debates on Social Media
The business model of social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) depends on attracting and selling human attention. Advertising revenues are tied to the number of people “subscribing/following” or “liking/disliking” whatever is on the platform. Nothing attracts more regular attention [2] more easily than winning or losing. For the business model, it does not matter who or what wins or loses; what matters is that something is “trending,” i.e., getting the most attention right now.
2.1 Exaggeration and “Bigging Up”
To catch and hold attention, winning or losing must be “bigged up.” So, it does not work to say:
“Mufti X disagrees with Mufti Z”
No, you have to say:
“Mufti X proves Mufti Z wrong,” or “X crushes Z,” or “X destroys Z,” or “X owns Z: Boom!”
I have oversimplified only a little; everyone recognizes this pattern.
Thus, the social media business model intensifies the process whereby disputes decay into bursts of mockery, abuse, and insult. What is best for the business is shifting groups of people being extremely agitated about someone’s reputation or about what someone did or said. In simpler terms, these platforms make the most money out of people exchanging extreme opinions.
2.2 The Suspension of Natural Inhibitions
Because it all happens on screen, the natural inhibitions about saying hurtful things to a person’s face are suspended: you can write or speak your abuse without seeing its effect on the other’s face. This is beyond not listening; it is not caring how the other thinks or feels—very much in line with the business model’s spirit of ignoring external costs.
Hurt and hate are not all you find on big social media platforms. Many people use them to share knowledge, skills, solutions, lectures, ideas, images, in a civil manner. However, these do not generate large profits or huge “followings” because they provide real services, not strong opinions. So, the technology itself is not evil; rather, the business model in which it is embedded is evil in its conception and external costs.
Allah has said about wine (intoxicants) that the evil in it is greater than the good. This analogy does not justify calling social media platforms haram, nor does the argument that they can be addictive—intoxicants necessarily rob you of the ability to think clearly and act responsibly, whereas social media platforms do not necessarily do that.
3. How Should Muslims React to Disagreements With Other Muslims?
The line between “same” and “different” is where information is presented to sensation, then processed by our sensory and nervous systems as perception and representation. This processing, which we experience as simultaneous with initial sensation, is how we judge properties of things (e.g., color, ripeness). None of that can happen without a recognition of both sameness and difference.
Allah has said that He created human beings different (in colors, customs, languages, and male/female) so that they may know each other. Being Muslim does not eliminate this necessity of sameness–difference for acquiring knowledge, experience, and forming judgments. This necessity applies at all levels of knowing, including knowledge of our religion.
3.1 Expecting Differences in Beliefs and Practices
The first thing is to expect other Muslims will not agree with you on everything. If you assume they will disagree about some things, you can handle it without becoming extremely agitated. Historically, Muslim scholars have always differed in their understandings of the religion—even about its source-texts. They differed about priorities, applicability in practical life, and how flexibly to apply those texts. We have abundant reports of differences among the Companions and their Followers, yet rarely do we see them opposing each other in ugly or abusive ways.
3.2 The Early Example of Conduct
Their way, meant to be our ideal, was: support each other where they agreed and not oppose each other where they disagreed. They valued their common ground as weightier than their disagreements. In everyday matters, they followed the imam—pray as he prays—and, entering a different town, respected and followed the practice accepted there before privately exploring why it differed from their own. This approach preserves and deepens solidarity, teaches flexibility, prevents self-righteousness, and encourages learning from one another. All that was said about conversation vs. debate aligns with this approach.
3.3 Present-Day Reality: More Disunity and Obstacles
Some may object: that was then, and now Muslims are weaker in commitment to Islam and unity. Political quarrels, distances, and other factors obscure common ground. We find multiple groups constantly disagreeing and attacking each other. Indeed, it seems the new “common ground” is disunity.
In summary, questions arise:
- Must we not challenge misguided or harmful ideas to prevent people from being misled?
- In a town with multiple mosques and practices, which do we follow?
- Are we not being passive partners in misleading people if we do not engage in dispute?
Yes, there is some truth in these objections. But if an ideal is difficult, does that justify abandoning it altogether? Allah forbids despair. It may be hard to find common ground, but not impossible. Failing most of the time is no reason to stop trying.
3.4 Why Public Disputation Is Unproductive
Next, on what basis do you sustain the judgment that others are misguided and that you can correct them via public disputation? Public disputation, especially on social media, fosters mockery and abuse. As one group gains “popularity,” some people may switch allegiance but without any deeper persuasion.
People most adamant that their group is correct often do not know why they hold those positions or how their leaders arrived at them. They remain equally ignorant about others. Debate does not and cannot resolve this; it only aggravates the division.
There are no short-cuts. Abusing those who abuse us may bring brief emotional relief but makes matters worse. The long, slow road is listening to and learning from the other, the way of conversation. Leaders could meet privately, affirming common ground, then politely explore each other’s positions. If that is not feasible, their deputies could do so. Ultimately, they might publicly confirm what they agree on, what they disagree about, and affirm that Allah will resolve differences hereafter so that no rancour remains.
3.5 The Question of “Saving the Misguided”
Some say if we do not engage in dispute, we deny the misguided a chance of salvation. But that is misaligned with Qur’an and Sunnah. Only Allah guides. The Messengers preached; they did not bring about guidance themselves. Salvation depends on Allah’s forgiveness and grace. We do not have the authority to condemn individuals or groups in the final judgment; that is Allah’s prerogative, based on comprehensive knowledge of all inward and outward realities.
This is not merely good manners but about our conception of God and human relation to Him. Even the chosen Messengers struggled with their inability to persuade unbelievers, including relatives. They had to endure some measure of separation from kin and homeland to re-orient people’s relation with Allah.
4. The Tension Between Belonging to a Group and Belonging to Allah
Understanding “we belong to Allah and are returning to Him” [4] sometimes requires loosening ties with other than Allah. We owe deep loyalty to family, teachers, home, friends, etc., but the Qur’an says all such ties have no value on the Day of Judgment when each soul answers to its Creator.
4.1 Risk of Injustice When We Put the Group First
Both family ties and membership in religious/confessional groups can clash with total loyalty to Allah. Failing to see that tension can cause us to lose His help and mercy. We might lapse into injustice, not seeing our wrongdoing because it seems good to us. We easily notice faults in outsiders yet defend the same faults in our own group leaders, thus wronging our rivals and ourselves.
4.2 Striving for Cooperative Coexistence
We cannot dispense with group belonging but can remain willing to relax group loyalties for peaceful, amicable relations with other groups. Sadly, many today enjoy launching scathing attacks on rivals while affirming their own rightness. This is worsened by social media. How far indeed from “we belong to Allah and are returning to Him”! Would it not be wiser to avoid such public disputation? Even if one person is “saved” from misguidance by our criticisms, how many are repelled, becoming disgusted with Islam?
No short-cut addresses misguidance. The slow path of conversation is safer. The means and ends must both be halal: conversation and consultation are commended means, while public taunts and harsh challenges find no precedent. Indeed, theological wrangling angered Allah’s Messenger, who condemned it. Sectarian in-fighting among Muslims is harmful, no matter how well-intentioned its participants may be. It recalls pre-Islamic clan feuding that left the Arabs weak and subservient to foreign powers.
4.3 Choosing Not to Engage in Futile Debates
Some might see these reflections as too mild, but our miserable reality need not complicate our personal relation to Allah. Sometimes not taking action is not only not negative but actively positive, in that we refrain from adding to the harm. Such refusal is consistent with the early generations’ practice: by not joining destructive debates, we withhold support from them while being willing to support those same Muslims in what they do right.
5. What Religion Is For: A Reminder
Many say religion gives meaning and weight to life, helps cope with ups and downs, and provides discipline and guidance. All true. Yet these “purposes” could also be served by non-religious means. So they seem secondary to the primary need for God.
5.1 The Need to Be Seen, Known, and Cared About
A grain of sand is infinitesimal compared to Earth. Who sees or cares about it specifically? We might notice it briefly in a general sense, but who sees or knows that one grain? Allah says in the Qur’an (Yunus, 61; Saba’, 3) that nothing, not an atom nor anything smaller or bigger, escapes His writing. This warns us not to be heedless of our words or deeds. It also helps us grasp belonging to and returning to Allah. Our entire life, down to each unconscious moment, is continually returned to Him.
When we ask, who sees or cares about this one human life, far smaller than a grain of sand by cosmic scales, the answer is: Allah. That need—to be seen, known, cared about, in relationship—is what religion is for, primarily. Other questions (who am I, where am I going, why am I alive) are secondary expansions of that primary need.
People do not need me to quote all the Qur’anic verses affirming that Allah knows each male and female, inside and out.
Notes
[1] I am using the word “debates” to mean the public challenges and arguments which present-day Muslims throw at each other on issues where they strongly believe they are right and the other is wrong. I do not mean the carefully structured and often recorded “debates” that Muslim fuqaha’ (legal scholars of the same or different Sunni schools of law) held in past ages, which served to test the validity of legal reasoning on particular points. Those debates were held away from rulers’ courts to avoid political influence, were conducted with civility, and shared a commitment to improving legal reasoning—very different from the destructive wrangling now common on social media under the heading “munazarah.”
[2] At any hour, mass attention on social media drifts to catastrophes (volcanoes, earthquakes, wars) that threaten massive loss of life. Regular attention (repeat visits) focuses on win/lose scenarios—sports matches, abrupt shifts in celebrity reputation, etc.
[3] The universality of the Prophetic experience can be sensed in many cultures’ origin-myths about someone born without a human father; yet only the Messiah, `Isa ibn Maryam (peace upon him), is confirmed as such in the Qur’an without compromising God’s perfect transcendence.
[4] Usually translated “returning to” can equally be “being referred or called back to,” in the sense of carrying a question to the authority who answers it.
