“It’s not just about the Islamic world and Islamic civilization; I’m also deeply interested in the rise of China. I’m currently working on a dissertation about the rise of China. Going back to Harris’s discussion on pre modern ideas, I’m exploring how pre modern concepts of sovereignty and culture influence China today in its quest for global hegemony and how this will impact international relations. The main takeaway I’m trying to derive is how we, as Muslims, can move beyond the politics of the past 100 years. For too long, our approach has either been to imitate the West in terms of modernization or to react against anything associated with Westernization. What I’m trying to do is find a foundation where we can build an independent civilizational discourse based on our own rich pre-modern Islamic traditions. Alongside my research on China, I’m also examining how the Chinese have developed confidence in their own beliefs and their place in the world. I hope to inspire Muslims to adopt some of that confidence and to understand the tools China is using to ascend to power. It’s not about revolutions, propaganda, or wars; it’s a slow and steady buildup, a war of position. They’re building their economy, their cultural output, and doing so with full sovereignty. In contrast, the Muslim world is struggling to emulate this kind of independent outlook from the West. If we look at countries like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and even Turkey to some extent, they remain dependent on Western political and economic discourses.” “The main issue with groups like Muslim Brotherhood & Hizb ut-Tahrir is that, in essence, they simply mimic Western understandings of the state and its role. They take Western institutions and Islamize them. For example, they adopt the Western separation of powers and say, “We have an Islamic judiciary and an Islamic legislative body.” But this isn’t a holistic response to modernity; it’s an attempt to Islamize an identity that is inherently Western. This approach is bound to fail. The Muslim Brotherhood, for instance, was initially created as a grassroots organization for bottom-up change. Its founder was actually against the idea of capturing the state and using it to transform society because he understood that the state could never truly be Islamized. At its core, the state is a Western construct, built on secularized, atomizing principles that are antithetical to the Islamic paradigm.”