Badr’s Lesson: Choosing Your Ground in the Battle of Ideas

There’s a story from the Seerah, the life of the Prophet, about the Battle of Badr. It is just a small footnote to the battle, really; an exchange between Rasulullah and Hubab ibn al-Munthir in the run-up to the battle. Rasulullah selected a location for the Muslims to set up their base camp, and Hubab asked if this location was selected by Divine Revelation, or if it was just chosen by the Prophet based on his own opinion; Rasulullah said it was just his idea. So, Hubab suggested a different location, a more strategic location, which would see the Muslims set up camp next to the active well of Badr, which would give the Muslims access to the water, and deny access to the water for the Quraysh. OK, this was a decisive change. It is fair to say that this decision actually changed the course of history.

There are more lessons to be drawn from this incident than I can list, to be honest; and maybe I will actually try to do a series of talks exploring some of the things we can learn from it — because, as with any event in the Seerah, you can unfold a tremendous amount knowledge and guidance, if you really think about it deeply.

But maybe the starting point here is to just talk about how important the starting point is. Where you start from, where you begin; where you set up your base camp; what vantage point you come from, and so on. This was crucial at Badr, and it is crucial as a fundamental principle in any sort of engagement, in any sort of interaction, and of course, in any sort of conflict or confrontation. Where you set up your base camp will be decisive in determining how well that engagement goes, how successful that interaction will be, and whether you enter that conflict or confrontation from an advantageous position or a disadvantageous position.

Now, I am talking about this in terms of intellectual engagement or conflict; if you are operating from a base that is already compromised, that is in a compromised position intellectually; you’ll fail. And I think that too many of us are doing just that. We enter into our engagements with the West from an intellectual base that, in and of itself, represents surrendered territory. In other words, we are not actually even selecting our own location — intellectually — of where we set up our base camp, but rather, we — from the beginning — allow them to decide where our base will be. And that means, for example, when we get into discussions or debates about Western Liberalism, democracy, and so forth, Capitalism, or what have you; we start from a base of accepting that any of these things are truly Western values, and that they truly exist in the West. And then we argue against them, like they are even real — when they’re not. So, in fact, we have already conceded ground, we have already given them the victory they want — which is to affirm that the West IS liberal, democratic, and so on; and that Capitalism is what they say it is; we affirm that they are what they say they are — and that means we have already lost the battle; because the whole battle is nothing but a battle between truth and falsehood; so when we affirm that their false claims are factual, well, we have already lost, and we have let the truth down. We have not performed our duty.

If we are going to deal with the West, it cannot be from within their own paradigm. We have to approach them from the position of objective truth, unbiased truth, we have to rise above their paradigms and propaganda, and set up our base camp on higher ground, to where we can look down on all the facts from an elevated position of intellectual autonomy and detached objective judgement. So, for example, you should always start by rejecting whatever they claim about themselves, claim about their so-called civilization; because they have been able to get away with everyone going along with their claims for far too long, to where they have never had to prove anything; they have never had to prove anything because no one even asks for proof. They just say something like it’s a fact, and then we deal with it like it’s a fact; which means you already lost that argument, because all they are really trying to do is establish their claims as facts, and you just helped them do it.

So, take any claim they make, for example Capitalism lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. You hear that all the time. Well, don’t treat that as a fact. There are so many things in that claim that need to be challenged, challenged and corrected. If you start doing this with all their claims, I think you will find very quickly that they are pathological liars.

First, let’s break down so-called Capitalism. What is it anyway? Trade and transactions and markets have existed from time immemorial. Adam Smith didn’t invent markets and trade. But they act like the West invented trade under the philosophy of Capitalism. Obviously, this is incredibly misleading.

Because, let’s not confuse trade, which has existed in every society, with the economic machine we know as capitalism. Trading goods and services, even across continents, was once about mutual exchange, about meeting real needs and strengthening communities. But capitalism isn’t just organized trade; it’s a system that converts everything — resources, labor, even human dignity — into commodities for profit. It’s a form of economic control that reshapes society around one simple rule: maximize gains for those at the top, regardless of the cost.

Capitalism operates on a set of values that distort what trade was ever intended to be. This will sound bizarre to Westerners, but profit was only one aspect of trade at some point. Trade was also about community! It was about relationships! When our ancestors exchanged goods, they were not just swapping items; they were strengthening the ties that held their communities together. They were building trust, forging alliances, and nurturing kinship. Every transaction was a testament to the social fabric that weaves us all together!

Not to mention the cultural exchange that flowed through these trade routes! The Silk Road wasn’t just a path for silk; it was a highway of ideas, a bridge between East and West, where cultures met, mingled, and flourished. In many societies, trade was grounded in the principle of giving and receiving. An expression of mutual respect. It wasn’t predatory in nature, it wasn’t parasitic, it wasn’t mercenary.

This has all been cast aside in Capitalism. This system doesn’t empower communities; it preys on them and keeps them dependent. It turns workers into a resource to be exploited, just like any other raw material. It implants the idea of inadequacy in people, so that they will try to validate themselves through consumerism. And no one cares anymore about whether a product is even worthwhile, if it has any quality standard whatsoever; the only thing that matters is getting people to buy it, make your profit, at any cost. It doesn’t matter if you make your profit by over-charging for goods or under-paying for labour. You can cut corners, and cut salaries, and price gouge, and sell faulty merchandise, even dangerous merchandise; who cares? All that matters is the money. How this impacts the society is irrelevant.

Then, we’re told capitalism is about competition, that it drives innovation, but let’s look at what that really means. Competition, in this context, doesn’t create opportunity; it pits people against each other in a rigged game where only the wealthiest corporations win. As soon as someone manages to dominate a market, they shut down the competition. It’s no accident that capitalism leads to monopolies, to economic empires controlling entire industries and wielding enormous political power. It’s engineered that way.

And who told you that people cannot innovate when they come together and cooperate? Why do you think that innovation can only ever come about through rivalry and competition? There is so much wrong with this thinking, and so much that is distinct to the experience and background of Western Europeans, who developed over the centuries this very predatory mindset. Everybody isn’t like that. There are people in the world who survive and thrive and innovate as communities, through comradery and solidarity and cooperation.

And they want us to believe capitalism brings freedom and opportunity, but this system operates on compulsion. When you’re commodified, when your time, skills, and even your privacy are bought and sold, are you free? When the basic necessities of life are conditional upon your ability to generate profit for someone else, where is the choice in that?

What capitalism has actually done is expand poverty, widen inequality, and create a permanent underclass to fuel its endless demand for growth. They redefine poverty to cover up the damage and point to rising GDP as if it’s proof that everyone benefits. But that’s the sleight of hand: capitalism’s success story is about growth, not well-being. In truth, the system only thrives by keeping masses dependent on low wages, high debt, and unsustainable jobs.

This isn’t just about economics; it’s about control. Capitalism didn’t “lift” anyone from poverty. It created a new form of poverty, a kind that locks people into a cycle of survival rather than empowerment. So let’s not mistake trade and mutual exchange, which have existed in every culture, for the exploitative machinery of capitalism that’s turned basic human needs into billion-dollar industries. In fact, the whole system is built around creating needs, creating problems, creating deficiencies, even creating illnesses, because that is nothing but creating markets for the so-called solutions and remedies they want to sell you. It’s absolutely ruthless.

Let’s address this narrative about capitalism — that it’s supposedly lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty and brought a better quality of life to people worldwide. This claim is one of the most common defenses of capitalism, and, as you might expect, it is a very deliberate misdirection. Even if we concede, for the sake of argument, that Capitalism has saved hundreds of millions of people from poverty (which, is actually something that they have only started to say recently, because they want to give Capitalism credit for how many people have been saved from poverty in China), even if we concede that; it is nothing but a deflection from the literal billions of victims of Capitalism. Because Capitalism was a driving factor in colonialism, slavery, modern slavery, famine, ecological devastation, deadly working conditions, and so on.

So, for example, European colonization is estimated to have caused over 50 million deaths. British colonialist rule in India killed 1.8 billion Indians. Capitalist-driven wars have resulted in 158 million deaths. Upwards of 20 million Africans died during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. That’s all part of the Capitalist impact, historically.

Today, at least 8 million people die every year because they can’t afford medicine. About 9 million die every year because they can’t afford food, half of those are children under the age of 5. 3 million people die every year because of unsafe working conditions. So, that’s roughly 20 million per year, or about 500 million since the year 2000. That’s specifically deaths. But you also have at least 50 million people living in conditions of modern slavery right now. Around 15 million people are forcibly displaced for large economic projects like dams and mining and so on, every year. A billion people are living in extreme poverty right now — that means extreme poverty, as in, BELOW the official World Bank poverty threshold of $2 a day. So, if you make $3 a day, this doesn’t include you. 854 million people are under nourished today, because food prices are too high. Over 2 billion people lack access to essential medicine due to high costs. I mean, I could go on. All of this is directly or indirectly causally connected to Western Capitalism.

And, like I said, the World Bank set the international poverty line at around $2 a day, and anyone earning above that is technically considered to have been “lifted out of poverty.” So, yes, if you make 2 bucks fifty per day, Capitalism has rescued you. By this metric, even people who can barely afford the basics are considered “non-poor.” It’s a deliberately low standard, designed to make the numbers look better. It doesn’t reflect any meaningful improvement in their lives; it simply changes the way poverty is measured to make capitalism look like it’s doing more than it is. You eliminate poverty by redefining it as not poverty.

So, if people are working under horrendous conditions in sweatshops, living in overcrowded slums, breathing polluted air, drinking unsafe water, and barely surviving paycheck to paycheck. They should thank Capitalism for “uplifting” them. No, you brought them into the system as low-cost labor and gave them just enough to survive — because the system needs them as workers and consumers. It’s a setup that ensures a constant supply of cheap labor while maintaining the illusion of progress.

And let’s talk about the so-called “improvements” in quality of life. Yes, we have more technology, more access to information, more goods and services — but at what cost? The environment is being decimated. Communities are being displaced for corporate interests. Traditional ways of life are being erased. The pursuit of profit has brought short-term gains, sure, but we’re paying for it with rising inequality, instability, and a planet suffering ecological disaster. Capitalism creates a race to the bottom, where corporations cut costs, exploit labor, and deplete resources, all to keep their profits up. So, what does “improvement” mean if it’s not sustainable, if it’s undermining the future for the generations that follow?

They say capitalism creates opportunity and social mobility, but look around. Wealth is becoming more concentrated than ever before. Billionaires and multinational corporations are hoarding resources, manipulating economies, and avoiding accountability. The so-called “free market” is anything but free; it’s dominated by a few massive players who pull the strings and rig the game in their favor. For the majority, the system is designed to keep them where they are — on the treadmill, just trying to make ends meet, while a small elite reaps the rewards. Where’s the “opportunity” in a system like that? Do you know that 93% of the people in America born in the lowest 20% of the economy will never get any higher in their life?

If we really want to talk about lifting people out of poverty and improving quality of life, we need to start looking beyond this model. We need an economic system that isn’t about maximizing profit but about meeting human needs, protecting the environment, and creating real opportunity for all. Capitalism’s record is one of exploitation, environmental destruction, and deepening inequality.

Now, if I am criticizing Capitalism, they’ll say I’m a communist or a Marxist or a socialist — as if the only thing anyone can ever be is one of their ideologies. It’s like you go to a clothing store and they show you one suit, and you don’t like it, so they say oh you must want this other suit, they think you have to like something they’re selling; never mind the fact that you are wearing your own suit already. I just came in here to see if you had something better than what I already have, I don’t have to choose one or the other, I can just stick with what I’ve got. And being against Western capitalism doesn’t mean being against trade, private property, and markets and so on. No. That’s the trick they try to pull. Like, if you don’t like the way they make a dish it means you don’t like that dish — no, I just don’t like the way YOU make it. I don’t like your recipe. You’re a terrible cook. When you make the food, you put razor blades and cyanide in it. That’s not how I prefer my meal. Like if you don’t like McDonald’s it means you don’t like hamburgers. When what McDonald’s makes barely qualifies AS a hamburger. The same way, trade and markets in Western Capitalism barely qualify as trade and markets. It’s a feudal system. It’s serfdom. It’s oligarchy. It’s predation.

We don’t have to choose from between the available Western ideologies, the Western approaches. As I say, trade and markets and exchange have always existed, economies have always existed; and we have had our own way of approaching them.

We start with what Islam teaches about wealth, resources, and the marketplace. Islam doesn’t reject private ownership, nor does it demonize profit or trade. But there’s a fundamental difference between Islam’s approach to economics and the capitalist model: in Islam, wealth is seen as a trust from Allah. You don’t have an absolute right to do whatever you wish with your property if it harms others or undermines the welfare of the community. This isn’t some abstract concept; it’s a concrete reminder that our wealth comes with responsibility.

In a true Islamic market, there’s a balance — a *middle ground* — where the rights of individuals to own, trade, and profit are intact, but they’re regulated by principles that prevent exploitation, hoarding, and monopolistic practices. For example, hoarding essential goods to drive up prices is prohibited in Islam. The Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) explicitly forbade monopolistic practices and exploitation because these undermine the natural flow of resources to those in need.

In an Islamic economy, the role of the state isn’t to dictate or centralize control but to enforce ethical standards in the market, preventing exploitation and ensuring that wealth doesn’t accumulate solely among the elite. The role of the market is to operate freely within these moral boundaries, where businesses compete not only on the basis of profit but on how well they serve the community. This isn’t “socialism” or “capitalism” — it’s a middle way, a balance that prioritizes justice over greed, community over monopoly, and service over selfishness. This is the *Middle Nation* approach: a model where trade and ownership serve a higher purpose, rooted in accountability to both Allah and society.

See, the West gets Free Markets wrong, the same way that they get Freedom wrong. In Islam, no one is free to act immorally in the public sphere. People have a right to live in a society where their values are not assaulted. You say everyone has a right to act any kind of way in public, say anything they want to say in public, behave in all kinds of immoral ways, indecent ways, all in the name of personal liberty — never mind how much tension, misery, division, and animosity that causes. You will let a fringe group of people oppress the general pub’s lic by violating the values and morals of the majority, in the name of freedom. To you freedom means freedom from responsibility and accountability, freedom from morality and decency. And you apply this same understanding to the business sector and so-called free markets.

Well, that’s not our way. Now, I am not going to get into what an Islamic economic model looks like, that’s a topic for another time.

But the point is, always set your base camp on your own territory, and don’t take them at their word about anything; scrutinize it, analyze it, from a vantage point that does not already concede ground to them. You’re not liberal, you’re not democratic, you’re not free, you don’t have a healthy economic system; you don’t have a healthy political system, you don’t have a healthy society. You have done everything wrong; And there is no reason whatsoever why anyone should be scared to tell you so.