In late October, a video went viral on Twitter, exhibiting former British kickboxer Andrew Tate learning the best way to pray like a Muslim from a good friend and fellow MMA fighter, Tam Khan. Days later, Khan confirmed Tate’s conversion to Islam.
It was a blow to Muslim ladies like myself, and to oldsters and others locally who had been respiratory a sigh of reduction since Tate was banned throughout each main social media platform in August. Our large worry: this may cement his recognition with some Muslim males. It’s a fear that has solely been amplified by Elon Musk’s choice to reinstate Tate’s Twitter account.
In considered one of Tate’s most infamous movies, he talks about how he would reply if a lady was to accuse him of dishonest: “It’s bang out the machete, increase in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up b**** … slap, slap, seize, choke,” he says. Tate has beforehand stated in a tweet that “in the event you put your self able to be raped, you have to bear some accountability”.
Feedback like these have made Tate a central determine in digital purple capsule tradition and its more and more violent overtones. The time period, “take the purple capsule”, is a popular culture reference taken from the 1999 sci-fi film The Matrix; it means opening your eyes to the reality. What was truly a transgender allegory in keeping with the movie’s creator Lily Wachowski is now used to explain a digital motion of primarily white ultraconservative males who imagine that they’re victims of feminism and are mistreated by society.
What has been notably worrying for a lot of within the Muslim group within the West is that Tate has develop into a job mannequin for some Muslim males, particularly after expressing his admiration for Islam on this YouTube video. These males have taken to Twitter, in a nook of the social media platform that some locally have nicknamed MT or Muslim Twitter, to align themselves with Tate and his views.
However many Muslims — each ladies and men — are additionally pushing again towards this pattern, warning of the dangers concerned if the toxic materials being peddled by the likes of Tate good points acceptance amongst broader sections of the group’s youth.
As secondary college instructor Nadeine Asbali wrote within the New Statesman in August, Tate’s content material “has its hooks” into Muslim boys, a few of whom share his content material on social media. “Figures akin to Tate even reward Muslims, inflicting their very own patriarchal concepts onto a religion that’s predicated on the very reverse,” she wrote.
Distinguished Muslim intellectuals within the West — akin to creator Khaled Beydoun and Shabana Mir, professor at Chicago’s American Islamic School — have additionally publicly expressed worries in regards to the rise of purple capsule tradition amongst younger Muslim males.
Others have been extra direct in condemning the misogyny of males like Tate and in explaining how their phrases and actions contradict the teachings of Islam.
Bilal Ware, professor of historical past on the College of California in Santa Barbara, posted a collection of Instagram posts criticising da’wah influencers who’ve been internet hosting Tate on their podcasts and in YouTube movies. “Giving platforms to unrepentant misogynists, whether or not converts or lifelong believers sends a transparent message: abusers welcome.” He additionally took a stance towards poisonous masculinity by saying, “The Muslim ‘manosphere’ has develop into a protect for emasculated, intimidated males to play robust by bullying ladies. This isn’t Islam.”
Joseph Lumbard, an affiliate professor of Quran research on the Hamad Bin Khalifa College in Doha, has been tweeting to problem the suggestion that by changing to Islam, Tate’s status is totally rehabilitated — regardless of no denouncement of his violent misogyny. “Too many Muslim males are searching for to provide him a go, claiming ḥusn al-ẓann [having a good opinion] and that Islam wipes away all sins,” Lumbard tweeted on October 29. “These are certainly vital Islamic rules that apply within the overwhelming majority of circumstances, however not when they’re employed to excuse violent misogyny, grifting, and all method of fisq [wickedness] and fasād [corruption] that AT’s [Andrew Tate’s] social media platforms proceed to advertise.”
This pushback from throughout the group — and particularly from academics and students — is vital as a result of Tate’s recognition represents a broader pattern of purple capsule tradition taking maintain amongst some Muslim males.
In recent times, digital platforms like Twitter and Reddit have given rise to what the Muslim on-line group calls “mincels” – Muslim incels. They use Twitter and Redditt threads to troll Muslim ladies on-line, blaming single moms for the ills of society, saying {that a} man has the fitting to beat his spouse, and calling for the return of feminine concubinage and advocating a “no-strings-attached nikah”.
The irony is that lots of these spreading purple capsule tradition on-line belong to a white, ultra-far-right worldview that’s typically brazenly Islamophobic.
I’m each cautious and sceptical of Tate’s conversion, as a result of I query what it was that attracted him to my religion. Think about his earlier video, the place he reacted to Will Smith’s “purple desk speak” along with his spouse Jada Pinkett-Smith concerning her infidelity by saying that watching the clip had made him wish to convert to Islam as a result of in a Muslim nation she would have been stoned to dying. I think that it’s white Islamophobic and Orientalist misperceptions of Islam as being a faith that allows violence in the direction of ladies which are the premise for Tate’s conversion. “I’m going to search out myself a pleasant Islamic-a** spouse, and construct up a giant pile of rocks in case she will get contemporary,” Tate says on the finish of the video.
I fear that Tate is profiting from his recognition amongst alt-right Muslim males to rehabilitate his picture and rebrand himself.
We as a group must acknowledge that we additionally maintain a part of the blame for Tate’s recognition amongst a few of our male youth. Our madrassas, Saturday colleges and households are sometimes missing in terms of educating our Muslim youth on wholesome relationships and on respecting women and girls from a younger age.
We’d like increasingly Muslim males to hitch us in pushing again on misogyny in all its kinds — on-line, on campus, at residence, on the streets, and within the masjid.
The views expressed on this article are the creator’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.