Though this article focuses on America, this short excerpt is worth repeating and pondering on.

In Southeast Asia, the primary way for Muslim layman practice of ‘piety’ is to learn a lot of sunnah practices while never even having read a full translation of the Qur’an. It ends up being kind of back to front. Further, ‘sunnah’ preferences in the region tend to be about those things to ‘do’ – like ticking checkboxes – rather than the sunnah about how to ‘be’ or how to prioritise Qur’anic values when making different choices.

I think it leads to things like an inability to recognise when a particular advocated application of hadith or sunnah is probably suspect because it contradicts Qur’anic content, and an inability to decide priority and infer context for apparently competing/contradictory sunnah. Without having at least the gist of the entire Qur’an in their mind, people therefore tend to resort to ‘what feels about right’ to make these judgments, which inevitably is coloured by personal preferences, peer pressure, and what one is used to thinking – this is not how a Muslim should judge information.

For example, if I were to be ambivalent or worse – supportive – about a Muslim overseas keeping a dog or working at a dog shelter, or about a convert who does not want to change his name after conversion, my views would be seen as ‘weak’ on Islam despite these actually being minor topics of legitimate variety of opinion. But if I were to oppose hiring a foreign domestic maid outside of legal channels because I know this black market demand leads to foreign (and Muslim) women being abducted in their countries into human trafficking channels, my view is seen as excessively inconvenient, indicative of my “western” worldview – and most importantly – *not at all related to Islam*.