Just to give you an idea of how weirdly some of your “Islamist leaders” understand the religion…
Can you believe that I was once chatting online with one of the so-called party leaders from Egypt , and at one point he sent me a “thumbs up”, and then immediately said that it was a mistake, he hadn’t meant to send it, because the “thumbs up” is a Kafir gesture. And he went on a long tirade about how this constitutes imitating the Kuffar and adopting the culture of the West, and it is completely un-Islamic.
I mean….seriously?
I mean…the same guy squeezes himself into tight jeans, prays at home in a sleeveless singlet, and continued to shorten and combine his prayers, and skip Salat-al-Juu’ah as a traveler long after he was already renting not one, but two apartments, and had a residency visa here in Turkey; but he is taking an “Islamic” stand against the “thumbs up” button on Facebook Messenger? Like the “thumbs up” is equivalent to making the Catholic “sign of the cross” gesture or something. Talk about mixed up priorities!
There seems to be massive confusion among a lot of Muslims between “western” culture and religion. As if everything “western” automatically means “Christian”; it doesn’t. Ibn Taymiyyah said that Islam is not supposed to destroy any culture where it spreads, but it is supposed to polish those cultures. Whatever has not been specifically prohibited in these areas is permitted; it is very simple. Cultural differences exist, from region to region, and here is nothing wrong with that. We don’t have to deny this or suppress it or try to impose homogeneity. We did not do that historically, and we shouldn’t do that now.