More than 600 years ago, Muslim historian and sociologist Ibn Khaldun observed that the defeated often imitate the victorious, adopting their dress, customs, habits and ways of life because they come to associate power with superiority. His insight remains strikingly relevant across much of Africa today, where the end of colonial rule did not necessarily mean the end of colonial ideas about what it means to be modern, successful or civilised.
For centuries, Muslim civilisations were among the world’s leading centres of political power, scholarship, trade, science and culture. During the Abbasid period and beyond, Muslim scholars made major contributions to mathematics, medicine, astronomy, philosophy, optics, geography and other fields.
Thinkers such as Al-Khwarizmi, Ibn Sina and Ibn al-Haytham studied knowledge not as something detached from faith, but within a civilisation whose intellectual life was deeply shaped by an Islamic worldview. Knowledge was not simply a means of material advancement; it was also understood as a means of understanding creation, serving society and fulfilling responsibilities before Allah.
Ibn Khaldun famously observed that human beings are often inclined to imitate those who dominate them because they assume that the victor’s success must be rooted in the superiority of his ways. His observation helps explain something that colonialism would later intensify across Africa.
European colonial powers did not simply seize African land, resources and economies. They also imposed systems of education, governance, language and social organisation that frequently presented European civilisation as the standard against which others were measured. European lifestyles were associated with progress, sophistication and advancement, while African cultures were often depicted as primitive, irrational or backward.
Muslim societies were not immune to this process. Across parts of Africa, colonial rule weakened or displaced indigenous systems of education, law and social organisation while elevating European institutions and cultural norms.
Political independence eventually ended direct European rule across most of the continent, but it did not automatically produce intellectual or cultural independence. The colonial administrator may have left, yet the belief that Western ways of living represent the highest form of modernity often remained.
Western education, fashion, language, entertainment and social norms increasingly became associated with prestige and success. Over time, external pressure was not always required because imitation could become voluntary. This is where Ibn Khaldun’s observation becomes particularly relevant to African Muslims today.
Who defines success?
Islam does not ask Muslims to reject useful knowledge, technology, education or innovation simply because they originate outside Muslim societies. Muslims throughout history learned from other civilisations, translated their works, developed their discoveries and incorporated beneficial knowledge into their own intellectual traditions.
The problem is not learning from others. It begins when Muslims adopt not only useful knowledge, but the values and assumptions that come with a dominant civilisation without critically examining them.
The Qur’an reminds believers:
“And this is My Path, which is straight, so follow it; and do not follow other ways, for they will lead you away from His Way.”
— Surah Al-An’am, 6:153
Islam provides its own understanding of success, morality, family, modesty, responsibility and the purpose of life. Yet African Muslims today live within a global cultural environment in which entirely different priorities are constantly presented through films, music, advertising, social media, celebrity culture and the lifestyles of influencers.
The result is not necessarily the complete abandonment of Islam. More often, there is a gradual negotiation in which Muslims continue to identify strongly with Islam while simultaneously measuring their lives through increasingly secular standards of success.
Faith remains important, but career status can become the primary measure of achievement. Family remains valued, but individual fulfilment can increasingly become the highest priority. Modesty remains an Islamic principle, yet cultural pressure steadily shifts the boundaries of what is considered acceptable. Marriage remains respected, but may increasingly be viewed primarily through the lens of lifestyle, status and self-actualisation.
The tension is therefore not always between Islam and disbelief. Often, it is between an Islamic worldview and assumptions we have absorbed so deeply that we no longer recognise where they came from.
When the exceptional becomes normal
One of the most powerful effects of culture is its ability to normalise behaviour. What one generation regarded as clearly incompatible with Islamic values can, within a few decades, begin to appear ordinary.
Clubbing can become seen as simply another form of entertainment, alcohol may be treated as an unavoidable part of socialising, and casual free mixing between men and women can become increasingly normalised. Behaviours once recognised as religiously problematic may gradually lose their stigma, not because Islamic teachings have changed, but because the surrounding culture has changed.
The argument is not that every African Muslim lives this way, nor is it to pretend that Muslim communities were previously free of sin, hypocrisy or cultural problems. Rather, it is to recognise how repeated exposure changes perceptions.
When something appears constantly in films, music, advertising and online culture, it can eventually stop appearing foreign or exceptional and begin to feel normal. Once that happens, questioning it becomes increasingly difficult.
Modesty and the pursuit of attention
The same cultural pressure can be seen in attitudes towards modesty. Islam does not require Muslims to reject beauty, creativity or personal expression.
Allah says: “O Children of Adam! We have provided for you clothing to cover your nakedness and as an adornment. However, the best clothing is righteousness.” [Quran 7:26]
Clothing can therefore be both functional and beautiful, but Islam also establishes boundaries around modesty that are not determined by changing fashion trends.
The difficulty arises when a global culture built heavily around visibility, attraction and personal branding teaches young people that being noticed is itself a form of success. Social media intensifies this by turning appearance into content, attention into currency and validation into something measurable through likes, views and followers.
For some young Muslims, modesty can consequently begin to feel restrictive or outdated, while revealing clothing is presented as confidence, liberation or empowerment. The question is not whether Muslims should care about appearance, but who gets to define what empowerment looks like.
If confidence increasingly means conforming to standards produced by fashion houses, celebrities, advertising agencies and social-media algorithms, Muslims have to ask whether they are expressing themselves freely or simply responding to another set of cultural expectations.
Relationships, marriage and the individual
Similar tensions exist around relationships and marriage. Islam establishes clear boundaries governing relationships between unmarried men and women, yet Western dating culture has become globally influential, particularly through film, television and social media.
Among some young Muslims, dating can consequently become increasingly normalised because it is presented as the natural or inevitable route towards romance. Marriage itself can also be reshaped by broader cultural changes.
Islam recognises companionship, attraction, compatibility and affection within marriage. The problem is not that Muslims want happy or compatible marriages, but when marriage is understood almost entirely through the modern language of individual fulfilment.
A spouse can be expected not merely to be a companion in faith and life, but to satisfy an ever-expanding list of emotional, financial, social and lifestyle expectations. At the same time, marriage can be postponed because educational attainment, career progression, financial status, travel and personal experiences are seen as milestones that must first be completed.
There are, of course, genuine economic reasons why many young Muslims delay marriage. Employment insecurity, housing costs and social expectations all play a role, and Islam does not discourage Muslims from seeking beneficial knowledge, working hard or developing their abilities.
But there remains an important distinction between pursuing education and believing that professional status defines one’s worth, between building a career and treating family formation as an obstacle to personal success, and between seeking compatibility in marriage and adopting a hyper-individualistic understanding of life in which personal fulfilment becomes more important than responsibility, sacrifice and commitment.
Modernity does not belong to the West
One of the lasting effects of colonialism has been the assumption that modernity itself belongs to the West, so that to become more developed is imagined to mean becoming more Western.
But technology is not morality, scientific advancement is not a worldview, and economic development does not require Muslims to abandon their own understanding of family, modesty, morality or social responsibility.
African Muslims should be capable of distinguishing between benefiting from Western knowledge and allowing Western culture to determine their values. There is no contradiction in studying at the world’s best universities while remaining confident in Islam, adopting useful technology while rejecting the social values promoted through it, appreciating fashion while refusing to allow fashion to redefine modesty, or pursuing professional excellence while refusing to believe that career status matters more than faith, family and character.
The challenge is not isolation. It is discernment.
Who are we trying to resemble?
Ibn Khaldun’s observation was not merely about clothing or outward imitation. It was about psychology.
The defeated imitate the victorious because they begin to believe that the victor possesses something inherently superior. That is why the deeper question facing African Muslims is not simply whether they consume Western culture, but whether they have internalised Western civilisation as the ultimate standard against which they judge themselves.
Who defines what an educated person looks like? Who defines what a successful woman or man looks like? Who defines what a healthy family should look like? And who defines liberation, progress, happiness and fulfilment?
If the answers increasingly come from celebrities, influencers, corporations, entertainment industries and secular cultural institutions rather than the Qur’an, Sunnah and a confident Islamic intellectual tradition, then Ibn Khaldun’s observation may no longer simply describe the past. It may describe us.
Because a civilisation does not lose its identity only when another power conquers its land. Sometimes, it begins losing its identity when it stops believing that its own values are worth preserving.
