u/Fair_Bar1139

I need to get this off my chest, because what I witnessed has been eating at me, and I don't know who else to turn to.

Our masjid is one of the most beautifully diverse places I've ever prayed in. Brothers from every corner of the earth, Arabs, South Asians, Southeast Asians, Africans, etc.

But there is one man who has been quietly poisoning that atmosphere. A committee member. Middle-aged, well-established, Middle Eastern background. The kind of man who carries himself with authority and knows it.

For a while, I noticed a pattern. He seemed to single out brothers of Bangladeshi, Rohingya, and Malay background. Small jabs, subtle digs, things you could almost dismiss as coincidence. I told myself I was reading too much into it.

Then I overheard him speaking in Arabic.

He didn't know I understood Arabic. I'm not Arab, so I suppose he assumed I was safe to speak freely around. What I heard him say about subcontinent people, the contempt in his voice, the disgust, removed every shadow of a doubt. This wasn't randomness. This was racism. Cold, deliberate, and hiding in plain sight inside the house of Allah.

Here's what makes it cut even deeper.

This man walks around wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh. He has the Palestinian emblem on his cap. And I support that cause. How could any Muslim not grieve what is happening to our brothers and sisters in Gaza? But the very reason Palestinians are being brutalised, dehumanised, displaced, treated as lesser, is racial supremacy. The belief that some lives matter less because of their bloodline.

And here he was. Doing the exact same thing. To Muslims. In a masjid!

The moment that broke me happened recently.

A group of Rohingya brothers had gathered in a corner for reading the Book of Ta'leem, a practice of the Tablighi Jamaat. I have my criticism for the Tablighi Jamaat group but I know that these people are generally pacifists and avoid confrontations.

One of them was reading aloud in a distance corner, slightly louder than usual perhaps, and some dirt had shaken loose from his clothes onto the carpet floor. He probably didn't even notice. His white thawb was also not so clean.

This committee member noticed.

He descended on them like a storm. Loud. Humiliating. I don't want to repeat what he said here, but it was basically racism.

These brothers didn't fight back. They didn't argue. Some of them looked frightened. They just sat there absorbing it, and the silence of the room made it worse. It felt like no one was going to say anything.

So I stood up.

I confronted him. And he turned on me. What he said to me in that moment I won't repeat, but it left me shaken. Genuinely shaken. For the first time in my life, I didn't want to return to the masjid. My masjid. The place I come to find peace.

I want to escalate this to the higher committee. But here's the bitter irony: the committee is dominated by people from his background. I'm afraid this will go nowhere.

So I'm asking, what would you do? Has anyone navigated something like this before? Because right now I'm caught between my love for that masjid and the feeling that I no longer belong there.

May Allah guide us all and protect the weak among us. Ameen.

I'm generally confused with this.
Islam is clearly ONLY Quran and Sunnah.

However.... why do some practicing Sunni Muslims can't accept this? Isn't this clearly straightforward?

Why follow something else such as innovations or wrongful Maulanas/Pirs when the way of the Quran and Sunnah can be easily sought today?

Maybe in the old times people can say that they were not informed or were misled but today we have access to Youtube, and many Salafi online resources. There is no excuse for ignorance.

Just food for thought...

I first started becoming a more practicing Muslim after an encounter with Tablighi Jamaat. This group made me closer to Islam (This is the only credit I'm going to give them here). I was with this group for some time but later decided to leave because I felt their approach to dawah made no sense.

I'm not here to discuss about their innovations. What I want to address is how ineffective their dawah methodology is. Let me explain why:

1. Their method of dawah makes no sense.

They approach people who have no interest in listening. They go house-to-house, door-to-door. But most of the time no one is home.... Even when someone does answer the door, you can tell from their expression that they have no interest in their Daw'a.

Why give dawah to people who don't want to hear it? What's the point?

What's even worse is when they venture into places like parks, hookah lounges, and nightclubs, etc. These are places where people are in a state of sin and Ghaflah. Yet their expectation is that people will stop and listen? Well guess what? Hardly anyone listens to them. People would out right say "I am not interested". I also witnessed firsthand a situation where we were scolded and kicked out of a hookah lounge while giving Dawa there.

What is the point of all this? If people are not ready to listen, why give Dawa to them?

2. Their results are terrible.

Imagine a business that is not making a single profit. That is essentially what Tablighi Jamaat is. It's only the same people showing up time and again. I once asked one of their Amirs about their results (i.e how often do new people join their Khuruuj). He said that they get roughly one new person a year.

One person per year? Are you kidding me?

Compare that to a YouTube channel or a public lecture, where hundreds or thousands of people are actually subscribing, listening and benefiting. They're effort is an enormous waste of time and effort.

3. They are too timid and passive.

Most of them are very timid and none of them are scholars. None of them have any credentials or seek to gain such credentials. They always remain in the background. They have no desire to capture the microphone, take the masjid mimbar, or step forward to speak.

Compare this to other effective callers to Islam. They stand at the front, speak with a strong voice and engage the crowd. Tablighi Jamaat callers, on the other hand are extremely passive, just hoping that people will somehow come to them. And guess what... no one does! People walk past them, brush them off, or ignore them entirely.

These are just a few of my complaints. There is much more that could be said but my focus here is specifically on their methodology of Dawah which is highly ineffective.