Hamza Yusuf

Zaytuna College

Hamza Yusuf is a leading proponent of classical learning in Islam and president of Zaytuna College, a Muslim liberal arts college in Berkeley, California.

More Full Bio

Pluralism in a Monoculture of Conformity

Despite the diversity of our countless creeds, colors, and cultures, our society has been subsumed into a monoculture of ersatz arts, entertainment, and consumerism. How can we recapture humanity’s once extraordinary individuality?

“Our towns and cities look the same, and their monotony is bound to stifle the senses of anyone who makes a long-distance trip across the country, with billboards beckoning travelers to banal strip-malls and fast-food restaurants where everyone eats the same metabolically toxic food. Across the world, globalization has sullied many beautiful cultures, imposing homogeneity on most places. Nonetheless, in some spots, one can still see real diversity in the last remnants of traditional societies. Simply traveling a few miles in such lands, one finds an entirely different culture, proof of the complexity and beauty of those societies and their radical and singular divergence from modern mediocrity and cultural conformity. In Palestine, each traditional village has its own unique patterns for women’s garb. In Morocco, one could go from the deep desert to the furthest north and find a striking diversity of food, clothes, and dialects, something people who have never experienced such places would find hard to imagine.” —Hamza Yusuf

Read the Article instead: “Pluralism in a Monoculture of Conformity”