Asalam Alaikum❗️ Do you have any advice on how to not be a nationalist? Sometimes I feel too proud and have too much love for my country and culture. I feel it is wrong, since I should only be that proud of islam and being Muslim, alhamdulillah 🤲 But sometimes I just forget, and idolize my culture and country too much astaqfiruAllah. In shaa Allah any advice brother?

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

I don’t really feel that anything good can come from nationalism. I think the best way to avoid such feelings is to focus on your soul and your relationship with God, knowing that regardless of your country and lineage your soul is exactly like everyone else’s soul, and its only superiority can be through how pious and virtuous you are. I recommend doing what is necessary to be really close to God, such as by reading the Quran for an hour every day, and inshaAllah that will make it easy to forget about nationalism.

Salaam. How does Islam view Nationalism and Patriotism?

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

There is no issue with loving one’s own nation and working for its good. But there is a problem when this becomes an ideology that promotes arrogance and pride toward one’s own nation so that a person views other nations as inferior, disliked or hated, as is common among many nationalists. Muslims should instead recognize the equality of all humans before God and should take to heart the Quran’s statement that:

The most honorable among you are the most God-fearing. (From verse 49:13)

According to the above verse, we should view people of other nations as superior to some people of our own when they are more God-fearing.

Source:

• Fatwa from IslamWeb (Arabic PDF)