The mystic murid who works as an adviser to Trump

Since Trump took office as president in early 2017, many Muslim activists, minority advocates and human rights advocates have defended Muslims as a group exposed to hostile policies and hate speech.

But few prominent Islamic symbols have chosen to stand by a US administration described as having an anti-Islamic political philosophy, including the man once described as "one of the most influential Muslim scholars in the Western world."

Middle East Eye has published a lengthy article detailing aspects of the biography, philosophy and political attitudes of American Muslim preacher Sheikh Hamza Yusuf Hansen on many issues of concern to Muslims, especially those living in the United States and the West in general.

Dispersed loyalties
Sheikh Hamza, who once claimed that Muslims are wary of sultans, is now collaborating with US President Donald Trump, while some see him as an "Emirati spy," according to the article by Azad Issa, a New York correspondent.

Hamza Yusuf now faces an unprecedented crisis among the Muslim public over his legitimacy as a preacher. However, Azad Issa describes the man in his article as being intelligent, leading and fluent in Arabic, and a voice for millions of Muslims in North America and Europe.

Sheikh Hamza has long been a controversial figure, but the events of the past 18 months have made him and his followers the target of a flood of criticism that he has abandoned the Muslim community and exacerbated hostility towards Muslims.

His critics argue that his continued association with the UAE government and his subsequent link to the Trump administration assert that he is a defender of what the writer calls "the American empire," and even described him as the "client spy" of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East.

Western Islam
The biography of Hamza Yusuf is not just the story of a man whose intellectual heritage is disputed by different convictions and beliefs. The "fierce" debates and debates raging over the impact of his decisions and alliances are not merely a threat, according to Azad Issa.

Sheikh Hamza represents the "foundation" against which the future of "Western Islam" is defined as the Middle East Eye article.

The article reviewed in some detail the intellectual development of Sheikh Hamza and the radical shifts in his political positions on events and issues whose repercussions continue to plague Muslim communities in America and the West, and even affect the Arab Spring revolutions and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Hamza Youssef, born in 1958 to a Christian family in Washington state in the name of Mark Hansen, miraculously survived at the age of 17 years of a car accident made him reflect on the idea of ​​annihilation and the very existence.

He said it took him six months to overcome the shock, which was his "alarm bell", until his hand fell on the "book of certainty" by his author Martin Linkz, who led him to read the Koran to convert to Islam before he turned 18 years old. He soon followed the Suzaliyya Sufi order.

Hamza Yusuf then left university to travel to seek more traditional Islamic knowledge.He first went to the United Kingdom to stay with a Sufi man before spending four years in the UAE, where he studied at the Islamic Institute and worked as a muezzin and imam in a mosque.

The man then went to North Africa and ended up in Mauritania. There he had a close relationship with his mentor, Cheikh El Mourabet El Hadj Ould Fahfou, before he was then apprenticed by Sheikh Abdellah Ben Bey, who had an important role in the march of Hamza Youssef.

His relationship with Sheikh Abdullah bin Biya has earned him a reputation among the public and governments in the Middle East and the Western world alike.

Benbey chaired the UAE-based Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Communities. Hamza Yusuf was appointed as his deputy. The forum held its first session in 2014, which established a platform to promote Zionist organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League of Israel and the Quilliam Research Foundation Against Extremism.

In 2017, when Saudi Arabia and the UAE decided to impose a blockade on Qatar, the Forum for Promoting Peace in Muslim Communities issued a statement in support of the move.

Yemen and Khashoggi
Sheikh Hamza Yusuf came under fire in late 2018 when he participated in the 5th Forum of the Forum for the Promotion of Peace in Muslim Communities in the UAE.

At a time when the Yemen war has reached "tragic" stages and the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at his consulate in Istanbul is still alive in the minds of Muslim Americans, Sheikh Hamza Yusuf has been reprimanded for calling the UAE a "tolerant" state.

Not only did Yusuf, but claimed that the majority of the people in the Gulf are happy with the way their governments manage their countries.

After returning to the United States in 1988, Yusuf became famous for his dramatic lectures and speeches. He rose to prominence as one of the nation's most influential and influential Muslim preachers and one of the few American religious thinkers with a global audience.

Yarina Grewal, an associate professor of American and religious studies at Yale University, says that the great impact of Sheikh Hamza Yusuf in the United States is his spread of Sufism as an Islamic curriculum without promoting specific methods.

Grewal adds that Youssef's popularity turned him into a phenomenon. He was one of the founders of Zaytuna College in California in 1996.

His intellectual and political transformations
There is a general consensus among scholars and scholars that a fundamental shift has taken place in Sheikh Hamza Yusuf's political positions after the September 11, 2001, attacks. Right. "

He expressed conscience and remorse for speeches that provoked anger and resentment of the "American Empire", claiming that this played a role in the consecration of the "unbalanced" hate speech.

He said two days before 9/11 that the United States was a "repugnant" state for invading Muslim countries and that a "great scourge" would befall them.

In the days that followed, Yusuf was one of five religious scholars who met then-President George W. Bush before his 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, where he was said to have persuaded Bush not to use the word "invasion" because it was "insulting to Muslims."

Although he was criticized for meeting with the US president at a time when Muslims are being humiliated and wounded because of the events of September 2001, this step was a sign of the emergence of a new approach adopted by Joseph towards the US government and extremism and towards American Muslims.

He now calls on Muslims to be grateful for the rights granted to them by Western countries.

"When you look at the way Yusuf is talking about the United States, you are on the verge of a real shift. He was a staunch critic of US policy both inside and outside the United States before 9/11," Grewal said.

Yusuf himself acknowledged that shift: "If you stay the same, there is something wrong, which means you are not alive."

In the opinion of the author of the article, this recognition marks the beginning of a series of contradictions and "volatile" positions.