Why so many Muslims feel disconnected from their faith

Across the Muslim world - and well beyond it - a quiet disconnection is taking hold. Mosques are full, religious symbols are visible, and public expressions of faith remain strong. Yet beneath this surface vitality lies a growing sense of dissatisfaction, especially among younger generations. The problem is not that Muslims no longer believe. It is that many struggle to find meaning in the way faith is presented, practised and preached.

I have encountered this disconnect repeatedly, in very different settings. In mosques across North America, sermons often focus on the length of a beard, the correct use of the miswak, or whether trousers should be worn above or below the ankle - while Muslim communities face far more pressing realities: political marginalisation, rising Islamophobia, social fragmentation, ethical confusion and a generation wrestling with identity and purpose in an increasingly hostile environment. The details vary, but the pattern is consistent. Form is emphasised; substance recedes.

This is not a uniquely Western phenomenon. I have seen the same dynamic in Turkey, the Gulf, Southeast Asia and South Asia. What differs is the cultural expression, not the underlying problem. Everywhere, Muslims appear caught between three competing impulses: rigid conservatism that treats questioning as betrayal; shallow modernism that imitates progress without moral depth; and a performative religiosity that prioritises symbols and emotion over ethical responsibility and intellectual engagement.

It was during a recent visit to Kerala, after nearly two decades away, that this crisis came into particularly sharp focus. Kerala has long occupied a distinctive place in Muslim history. Islam arrived there not through conquest or coercion, but through trade, scholarship and cultural exchange. For centuries, it produced a confident religious culture - rooted in tradition yet comfortable with plurality, debate and local expression.

During a Friday prayer in a small village mosque, the khateeb delivered his pre-sermon remarks while reading from notes on his mobile phone. Moments later, after ascending the pulpit, he began condemning the use of technology in mosques - including the loudspeaker amplifying his own voice - describing it as an unacceptable innovation. The contradiction was striking. After the prayer, I quietly asked my cousins whether I had understood correctly. They laughed, not mockingly, but with resignation. "Yes," they said, "this is common here." Inside the mosque, older men nodded along out of habit. Many younger worshippers appeared disengaged, their attention drifting elsewhere.

That moment captured something deeper than a single sermon. It revealed a widening gap between ritual and relevance, between inherited form and lived meaning.

Young people today are searching for purpose, clarity and ethical direction. Yet too often, the spaces that should nurture these questions offer only rigid answers or superficial performances. Many do not walk away from faith because they reject it, but because they find little room to question, challenge and reinterpret its human expressions in light of the world they inhabit. When doubt is treated as disloyalty and curiosity as threat, disengagement becomes almost inevitable.

This fragmentation between intellect and spirit, reason and devotion, is not inherent to Islam. In fact, it runs counter to its richest intellectual traditions. Classical Muslim civilisation thrived on integration - of thought and worship, law and ethics, spirituality and reason. Ibn Rushd argued that revelation and reason are allies, not enemies, insisting that truth cannot contradict truth. Ibn Taymiyyah and Shah Waliullah, writing in very different contexts, both emphasised reform from within the tradition - guided by moral purpose rather than blind imitation, whether of the past or of external models.

In the modern era, Muhammad Iqbal warned that Muslims had "ceased to think creatively under the weight of dead habit", urging a reconstruction of religious thought capable of speaking to contemporary realities. Fazlur Rahman later reinforced this call, reminding Muslims that the Quran was never intended to be a frozen codebook, but a moral framework aimed at cultivating just and ethical societies.

Imam al-Ghazali perhaps captured this balance most powerfully. Having mastered theology, philosophy and mysticism, he concluded that knowledge without humility leads to arrogance, while devotion without understanding leads to emptiness. His insight remains painfully relevant today: action without understanding becomes performance; understanding without action becomes vanity.

So what went wrong?

Part of the answer lies in history. Colonialism reshaped Muslim societies politically and economically, but its most enduring impact was psychological. Many communities came to measure progress by borrowed standards, oscillating between defensiveness and imitation, pride and paralysis. Tradition hardened under pressure; modernity arrived stripped of moral depth. Over time, faith itself became something to be defended rather than lived, performed rather than internalised.

Yet external forces alone cannot explain the present malaise. The deeper challenge is internal: a reluctance to confront contradiction, to admit incoherence, and to renew the ethical and intellectual confidence that once animated Muslim life.

The path forward does not lie in romanticising the past or rejecting modernity outright. It lies in recovering the spirit that once animated both. This requires the courage to think critically without fearing that faith will collapse under scrutiny; a commitment to ethical substance over identity performance; and a cultural confidence that allows Muslims to contribute to the world rather than merely react to it.

Renewal will not begin with grand declarations or ideological battles. It will begin in ordinary spaces: in mosques where sermons address lived realities rather than rehearsed anxieties; in classrooms where questions are welcomed rather than silenced; and in communities where young people are invited to wrestle honestly with faith rather than inherit it unexamined.

I think again of that mosque in Kerala - of a sermon condemning technology while relying on it, of elders nodding politely, and of young minds drifting away. Their disengagement was not apathy. It was a quiet critique. A sign that something essential was missing.

The crisis facing Muslims today is not a loss of belief. It is a loss of meaning. And meaning, once lost, cannot be enforced or proclaimed back into existence. It must be rediscovered - through humility, courage and a willingness to align faith once again with the moral and intellectual questions of our time. Only then can Islam cease to feel distant to those who most need it, and once more become a living source of conviction, purpose and hope.