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1/ Is wokeness or "cancel culture" the most important thing in the world? Of course not. Is it important? Yes. I& #39;ve struggled with how to respond. Initially, I considered just staying out of it. Recently, I& #39;ve been reflecting on why I care about it more than others who I respect
2/ First, even though I& #39;m not the most religious person, I am a believer. For me, that means being suspicious of secular claims to religious certainty. I discuss this in greater detail here:
https://wisdomofcrowds.substack.com/p/how-anti-woke-should-you-be">https://wisdomofcrowds.substack.com/p/how-ant...
https://wisdomofcrowds.substack.com/p/how-anti-woke-should-you-be">https://wisdomofcrowds.substack.com/p/how-ant...
3/ I wasn& #39;t sure, at first, that my belief in God was directly related to my discomfort with woke posturing. But I kept on coming back to the religious mimicry of it all. At a gut level, it just felt very wrong, even if I couldn& #39;t always describe why
4/ The other part of it is also quite personal. As a Muslim, an Arab, and a brown person, it always grated on me when people would assume things about me merely because of my "identity," largely an accident of birth
5/ I cared about being Muslim and being Arab, and I was proud of my heritage. But that didn& #39;t mean that I stopped being an individual. I was a writer who happened to be Muslim, not a Muslim who happened to be a writer. I spoke about my community, but not for it
6/ That I, as an individual, would somehow be responsible to and for a group identity that others insisted on constructing for me seemed odd. But not just odd. It dawned on me more and more that it was anathema to what I held dear and what I thought about human worth and dignity
7/ My belief in the individual and my belief in God are related (and, for me, it& #39;s less about Islam and more about monotheism). We are individuals who are responsible in the eyes of God. We are *not* responsible—in any ultimate sense—to any one group or collective identity
