Marwa Yousuf K.
A Crisis of Visibility
Sincerity was once defined by absence: the absence of applause, of performance, of self-consciousness. To be sincere – in worship, in speech, in dāʿwah. It was to move quietly, to act for the sake of Allah alone, even when no one was watching. Especially when no one was watching. But in the architecture of modern life, that absence has become almost impossible. The believer is now always seen, always caught in someone’s frame, whether it’s the state’s, the algorithm’s, the ummah’s, or their own. We have entered an age where the sacred is surveilled. And sincerity, as it once existed, is being dissolved under the constant pressure of performance.
It begins subtly. a Qur’ān verse posted on Instagram, a reel featuring someone crying in sujūd, and a hijab tutorial captioned “modesty is beauty.” None of these, in isolation, seems harmful. But taken together – repeated, commodified, and rewarded – they begin to shape an entirely different spiritual landscape. One in which the line between worship and branding collapses, where the aesthetic of piety is confused with its substance, and where God becomes something we gesture toward publicly rather than surrender to privately. We are no longer cultivating ikhlāṣ – we are curating it.
This isn’t a critique of individuals. It’s not about one influencer, one post, or one brand. It’s about the air we’re breathing, an environment where sincerity itself is under siege; not just by state violence, but by the culture of visibility. Under imperial surveillance, Muslims are already forced to perform goodness: to be non-threatening, to be soft-spoken, to be grateful, to be moderate, to be palatable. Add to that the algorithmic gaze, which rewards aesthetics over substance, and you get a new kind of spiritual crisis. Not just one of hypocrisy, but of distortion. Where even the desire to be sincere becomes infected by the desire to be seen.
Sincerity in tradition, spectacle in practice
In the Islāmic tradition, ikhlāṣ is not a mood. It is not a branding angle or a personal virtue. It is the axis upon which the entire faith rotates:
“They were not commanded except to worship Allah, making the religion purely for Him, inclining to truth” — Qur’ān 98:5
It is the condition for acceptance, the unseen weight behind every action. And it is fragile – so fragile that even a momentary lapse into self-regard, into seeking validation from others, can fracture it. The Prophetصلى الله عليه وسلمfeared it for his ummah more than he feared open shirk.
“What I fear most for you is minor shirk.” When asked what that was, he replied: “Riyāʾ (showing off).” — Musnad Aḥmad
This is not an exaggeration; it is a warning. It means a person may spend their life in devotion, only for their intention to spoil it from within. Al-Fuḍayl Ibn ‘Iyāḍ said, “To leave an action for the sake of people is riyaʾ, and to do it for the sake of people is riyaʾ. Ikhlāṣ is when Allah saves you from both.”
Sincerity, then, is not found in being seen doing good, but in not caring whether you’re seen at all, in knowing that Allah is not just the end goal, but the only audience. And yet we live in an age that has made an audience of everything.
The Good Muslim: A Colonial Invention
The Muslim body has long been a site of scrutiny – a body watched, measured, coded, and judged not on what it does, but on what it threatens to mean. In the wake of empire, that scrutiny has become systematised. The colonial lens that once studied “Mohammedan fanaticism” now studies “Islāmist radicalisation.” The language has shifted, but the gaze remains the same. From British India to Guantanamo Bay, from Palestinian checkpoints to anti-terror legislation in France, the presumption remains: the Muslim is dangerous until proven docile.
And so we are asked to perform. Perform modernity, perform gratitude, perform moderation. The “good muslim” must smile gently, dress just visibly enough, quote Rumi but never Sayyid Qutb, centre love but not law, spirituality but not shariʿah. She must not speak of occupation unless it is vague. She must not critique the state unless the state is foreign. She must not mourn too loudly, resist too fiercely, or worship too freely. To be visible is not enough, we must be legible. We must make sense to power.
This logic seeps into everything. NGOs commodify Muslim suffering, Western media platforms tokenise “Muslim voices” to decorate liberal diversity, and social media – the one place that promised liberation becomes another surveillance tool, another performance stage. The same Muslim who is racially profiled at an airport must now share her hijab journey for content. The same man who fears saying Allāhu Akbar in public must soften his dāʿwah into palatable soundbites for a non-Muslim audience. Our piety is allowed (even applauded, in some cases) but only if it is apolitical. Depoliticised piety is rewarded; resistance is punished. The one who prays is celebrated, the one who prays and resists is watched.
However, this violence is not limited to external sources. It distorts us from within. It creates a split in the believer: one part reaching for Allah, the other performing acceptability. One part longing for ikhlāṣ, the other managing perception. And the longer we live in this tension, the harder it becomes to know which part is genuine. Imperial surveillance doesn’t just police us, it shapes our spiritual grammar, it teaches us to pray with one eye open, to believe with caveats, and to apologise for our theology before we even express it.
“Do they seek other than the religion of Allah, while to Him submits whoever is in the heavens and the earth, willingly or unwillingly, and to Him they will be returned?” — Qur’ān 3:83)
This is the only audience we are commanded to face, and yet, we find ourselves constantly turning away.
The Private Realm, Undone
In Islam, there is a sanctity associated with secrecy. A weight to the hidden act. The Prophetصلى الله عليه وسلم said that among the seven who will be shaded by Allah on the Day of Judgement is “a man who gives in charity and conceals it so that his left hand does not know what his right hand gives.” (Bukhārī, Muslim)
Sincerity is not just about intention – it is about concealment. The believer hides her best deeds not to avoid recognition, but to protect her intimacy with Allah. But in the architecture of modern life, the private is always being mined. The algorithm wants your dhikr, the state wants your loyalties, your community wants proof that you’re still righteous. And so, bit by bit, the realm of “just between me and Allah” begins to shrink. The app remembers your prayers, the post archives your reflections, and the public celebrates your tawbah. And what was once yours (and His) becomes theirs too.
We are told to document everything, to brand even our repentance, to turn our heartbreak into testimony, to show our followers how far we’ve come. And maybe those things are true, but in documenting them, we hollow them out. The private realm is not just where sincerity lives – it’s where healing happens. Where the soul comes raw and unfiltered to its Maker.
“Call upon your Lord in humility and privately. Truly, He does not love transgressors.” — Qur’ān 7:55
Fitrah and The Forgetting
This collapse is not just unnatural – it is anti-fitrah.
We were created to recognise and return to Allah instinctively, inwardly. “So set your face firmly towards the religion, inclining to truth — the fitrah of Allah upon which He has created people. There is no change in the creation of Allah.” — Qur’ān 30:30
Sincerity is not a foreign discipline, it is a native instinct, etched into the soul before we were even born:
“Am I not your Lord?” they said: yes, we testify” (Qur’ān 7:172).
Fitrah remembers Allah before the ego learns performance – before we are trained to curate, to brand, to fear the gaze of others more than the gaze of our Rabb. But this age of visibility wages war on that original covenant; it drowns the fitrah in noise, it makes sincerity feel unnatural, naive, even foolish. And so, many of us perform faith not because we are insincere, but because we’ve forgotten how to be anything else.
What Remains
And yet.
Despite the noise, despite the watching eyes, despite the self-fracturing under the weight of performance – something in us still longs to be seen only by Him, to be held in a gaze that isn’t transactional, extractive, algorithmic, or violent. Something in us aches for ikhlāṣ the way the body aches for breath underwater – not because it’s profitable, not because it’s strategic, but because it’s true.
There are still pockets of resistance, not on the feed, not in the brand – but in the dark, in the quiet, in the things we do when no one is counting. The sujūd that isn’t recorded, the duʿāʾ made with no audience in mind, the verse that cracks our heart open at 3 am and is never shared, never stylised. Just felt. And known. And recorded by the only One whose record matters.
We won’t always get it right. The line between sincerity and spectacle will keep blurring, and we’ll keep falling, but there’s mercy in that struggle. Allah sees even the fight for ikhlāṣ – the guilt, even the turning away from the post, from the applause; back toward the miḥrāb, the rug, the unseen.
And maybe that’s the only real rebellion left: To want Allah without being seen wanting Him, to choose a love that leaves no trace, to rebuild the private realm – not for clout, not for legacy, but because we were always meant to have something that belonged to Him alone.
Mar Yousuf K. is a writer exploring how politics and faith shape life in Occupied Kashmir and beyond, with contributions to local publications and community platforms.
