The Conversion of Andrew Tate, The Matrix and the Red Pill Movement

The most googled man on the planet, controversial internet influencer Ander Tate’s acceptance of Islam has taken over social media by storm and has left opinions divided. However, after his podcast with UK-based Dawah influencer Mohammad Hijab, the Muslim critiques of Tate have toned down a bit.

The podcast, however, has sparked many questions in the minds of the people who have seen it or listened to Andrew Tate for the first time. Why did the king of the ‘red pill movement’ accept Islam and not a friendly neighborhood ally like Bernie Sanders? What is the Matrix? How do we get out of this? How come things that Tate was saying from his own experience and perspective, also coincidentally exist in hadith narrations that Hijab subsequently mentioned? What is going on? Was our whole life a delusion?

To understand this, we will first have to understand the Red Pill movement.

Red Pill Movement

Sheikh Hamza Yusuf once said, “we are in a time that is so extreme in its madness, that if it doesn’t drive you mad, you are mad already.” It could be said that the red pill movement is a bunch of people who are trying to resist the madness that secular modernity is bringing with itself.

The red pill movement initially started as a reaction to the feminist movement. The term comes from the movie ‘Matrix’ wherein the protagonist was offered two pills by Morpheus. The red pill represents truth and self-knowledge and the blue pill represents a return to blissful ignorance.

Proponents of this movement claim that they have chosen the red pill and have formed a resistance against the matrix. They claim to be fighting against the left, liberalism, feminism, progressiveness, etc, which they say are tools used by the matrix to enslave society. This movement has been criticized as being misogynistic and bigoted.

However, from an Islamic perspective, this movement is nothing but the fitrah (innate predisposition towards Islamic monotheism) of the red-pilled activists trying to find a way out of the mad paganism and mass societal dysfunction that secular modernity has brought with itself. They’re expressing it in whatever way they can, even though it might on a surface level seem misogynistic or bigoted.

The armor that these crusaders are using to push back against the matrix has since it’s inception, been Christian conservatism. However, many red pill thinkers have started to criticize Christianity for being a carpet religion over which anyone can walk, insult its injunctions and practices, and not respect its God and still go to heaven.

People like Andrew Tate have criticized Christianity for being too weak an armor to withstand the onslaught of secular modernity, and have now accepted Islam and started advocating for other red-pilled activists also to follow suit. Criticizing Christianity, Tate remarked “who is not a Christian? Even Will Smith is a Christian. No one is fearful of God in the Church, there is no substance to the religion.”

What he liked about Islam, he stated in a podcast before converting “Islam is the last religion on the planet, because it is the only one that is willing to enforce its boundaries. Since it is the last religion, it has to be the correct one.” In the podcast with Hijab, he said “God to me is strong, God to me is something to be feared, God to me is something that people are afraid to mock, God to me is someone you have to go out of your way to prove something to, God to me has red lines, God to me represents the Islamic faith, I don’t see God in Christianity, I don’t see anything.”

Following Andrew Tate, many believers of the red pill movement are turning towards Islam.

The Matrix

There is a global culture that has been forced down on the throats of everyone on the face of the earth. This global culture is protected and promoted. Thomas Friedman, an American commentator says “the hidden hand of the market cannot survive without a hidden fist. McDonald’s will never flourish without McDonnell Douglas (the designer of F15 jets).” In other words, we’re not really dealing with a global culture that is benign or compassionate.

This is a culture that gives you no choice(or an illusion of choice), you either ACCEPT McDonald’s, otherwise, McDonnel Douglas will send their F15s above your heads. It’s a very intolerant culture that cannot coexist with anything else. It uproots, every other culture on the face of the earth. It just cuts its roots of it, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a famous Russian historian, and writer, says “to destroy a people, you must first sever their roots,”

So it’s really a destruction of the people of the earth because every other culture is being demolished. So this is not a global culture that will co-exist with others. It will replace others. And the only ideology that is standing up to this global culture is Islam. Now with this understanding as our base, let’s understand the matrix.

If you knew that you could cheat in an exam without getting caught to get better grades, would you not do it? So if a bunch of ruling elite could cheat, rule the world without us knowing about it, and deceive the world without getting caught and have a monopoly over everything, why wouldn’t they take the shot? We all know how media can be taken control of and used to manipulate the masses. If you were an oligarch, why would you not spend 0.1% of your money to control the media and shape a public opinion favorable to your interests? It’s not a conspiracy theory anymore, it’s a well-known harsh reality that has been established at different levels and was further exposed when Andrew Tate was simultaneously banned from all social media apps without notice and a reason. There is simply no other explanation than to be convinced that someone else is pulling the strings from behind.

So what do these ruling elites want? They want the continuing existence of capitalism and control over the masses. What sustains capitalism are materialistic ideologies and political correctness that are proactively supported and promoted by the matrix. Slavoj Zizek, an eastern European philosopher too mentioned “political correctness is the most dangerous form of totalitarianism.”

It should be kept in mind how the huge concrete jungles and skyscrapers, and the clubs and concerts, all batteries of this Matrix seem so attractive. They have attempted to create a paradise here itself so that humanity forgets about the real one. Iblis has already promised Allah :

[Iblees] said, “My Lord, because You have put me in error, I will surely make [disobedience] attractive to them [i.e., mankind] on earth, and I will mislead them all”(15:39)

The matrix is the Leviathan surveillance police state that Aldous Huxley predicted in his book Brave New World Revisited. He pointed out that the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” He predicted that instead of being controlled by inflicting pain, people will be controlled by inflicting pleasure.

Furthermore, Huxley said that what we love will ruin us. He also visualized that no monarch or dictator would be required to deprive us of our autonomy, maturity, and history, and “people would come to love their oppression and adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” And what Huxley feared the most, was that the truth would drown in the sea of irrelevance.

The Matrix is the whole system that is designed to keep humanity in blissful ignorance and slavery. When Andrew Tate was explaining the Matrix, Mohammad Hijab commented that it can also be called the “Liberal World Order.” The matrix has a set agenda, it is controlled by a ruling elite, who Andrew Tate says is even above the government.

The way the Matrix tries to control people is through social engineering, programming, indoctrination, and mass brainwashing through mass media, education, and dictating the status quo. One of the things that Andrew Tate says is that the matrix is trying to weaken men because they know that the only threat to them is strong God-fearing men.

The worldly life that the Qur’an has repeatedly warned us about, in this era is the matrix.

So let not the worldly life delude you and be not deceived about Allah by the Deceiver. (31:33)

If we analyze the matrix, its goal is to plug humanity into an infinite Tsukuyomi, a lifelong delusional existence in a fake artificially designed reality. At the helm of this design is obviously Iblis himself, who has made the following challenge to Allah :

And I will mislead them, and I will arouse in them [sinful] desires, and I will command them so they will slit the ears of cattle, and I will command them so they will change the creation of Allāh.” (4:119)

It can be said that the aim of the matrix is to arouse in people a sinful desire and change the creation of Allah. Explaining this verse, Sayyid Abul Ala Maudoodi writes :

“To alter God’s creation in some respect does not mean changing its original form. If that was meant, human civilization would have to be considered Satanic in its entirety. Civilization consists essentially of man’s putting to use the resources endowed by God. Hence the alteration of God’s creation, which is characterized as Satanic, consists in using a thing, not for the purpose for which it was created by God. In other words, all acts performed in violation of either one’s true nature or of the intrinsic nature of other things are the result of the misleading promptings of Satan.

These include, for instance, sodomy, birth control, monasticism, celibacy, sterilization of either men or women, turning males into eunuchs, diverting females from the functions entrusted to them by nature and driving them to perform the functions for which men were created. These and numerous similar measures are enacted by Satan’s disciples in this world, which amounts on their part, to saying that the laws of the Creator were faulty and that they would like to ‘reform’ them.”

Who are bots?

‘Bots’ usually existed in video games. They were pre-programmed to do only a certain set of things, do their share of whatever it was in the game, and then die. Another red pill YouTuber, who has also shown interest in Islam, Sneako, has devised this term.

Bots are people who have successfully been programmed by the matrix to think, talk and behave exactly as the matrix wants them to. It can also be said that these bots are products of the factory of enslavement of the matrix. The matrix has used schooling, mass media, entertainment, political correctness, etc., to program the bots to act in a certain way. These are people plugged into the matrix, living in blissful ignorance, consuming Netflix, masturbating to pornography, working 9-5 jobs, being unhappy with their spouse, and buying antidepressants.

The people that Allah SWT repeatedly talks about in the Qur’an, “why don’t they reason” “they don’t they think” “why don’t they ponder”… in this day and age, bots are ignorant people about whom another place Allah says that they are “Deaf, dumb and blind – so they will not return [to the right path].” (2:18)

Bots are people who have a certain opinion and viewpoint, only because everyone else also has the same opinion and viewpoint, and the media also teaches the same opinion, and their favorite celebrity also promotes it. The only reason they believe in certain things is that it’s “cool” to believe in them. Neither they nor those who are brainwashing them can defend these viewpoints in a fair discussion.

What’s next?

Someone once said, “reality is stranger than fiction.” All this, red pill, matrix, bots, and everything seems straight out of a comic book. I’m already laughing thinking about what the older generation would think after reading this.

There is a general perception that believing in conspiracy theories, or thinking that people more powerful than governments are controlling the world would push people into hopelessness and lethargy. However, Andrew Tate’s acceptance of Islam has proven this theory wrong.

People listening to Andrew Tate and other Red Pill influencers, are more motivated than ever to resist the imposition of this dajjalic system and push back against the matrix. And now they have Islam, the strongest armor they could’ve wished for, to help them in this struggle.

The conversations we should be having here in the Indian Muslim intelligentsia are how is the red pill movement relevant to Indian society and how long will it take for young Indians to jump on this wagon to oppose the matrix. The matrix is a global system, with the IMF, World Bank, and other institutions as its pillars and it is time to stand up against it.