Relativity of Realities: Globalization, Freedom, and the Muslim Struggle in the Modern Zamana

Einstein’s Theory of Relativity revolutionized how we see the universe. It taught us that motion, time, and even space are not absolute — they depend on where you stand and how you move. What is still to one observer might be racing at the speed of light to another. Reality, then, is not singular; it shifts with the observer’s position.

In a way, human perception of social and moral life works much the same way. Every individual, community, and culture lives within its own gravitational field of meaning — its own frame of reference. What is “freedom” in one world might be “loss” in another. What feels “progressive” to one group might feel “decay” to another. Our minds, like Einstein’s universe, are relative fields — constantly comparing, weighing, and defining good and bad in relation to what surrounds them.

The Brain’s Relativity: Desired and Undesired as Shifting Coordinates

The human brain does not perceive “good” and “bad” in absolute terms. It learns by contrast. We only understand light because we have seen darkness. We value truth because we have known deceit. In the same way, our desires and aversions are shaped by the world we inhabit — by the social, cultural, and moral “gravity” that holds us.

When someone says, “I want freedom,” the brain immediately — though often subconsciously — defines freedom from what and freedom for what. It never exists in a vacuum. A person in one society may crave freedom from poverty or patriarchy, while another might crave freedom from moral expectations or social conformity. Both claim the same word — freedom — but mean something entirely different.

This is why our comparisons across cultures are often emotionally confusing. We see the good in others’ lives — not the context that defines it. We envy their blessings but do not understand their struggles. And this selective comparison creates the illusion that someone else’s “reality” is better, more modern, or more meaningful than ours.

Hollywood and the Manufacture of Relative Dreams

Hollywood — and by extension global media — thrives on this psychological relativity. It doesn’t just entertain; it exports meaning. Through its narratives, it builds a visual universe in which certain ideas are not just common, but normal, and therefore aspirational.

When a Pakistani woman watches a Hollywood film about women’s empowerment, she might see confidence, mobility, and voice — qualities she desires in her own environment. Yet the film rarely shows the bad within that same Western reality: the loneliness of atomized families, the commodification of sexuality, or the silent pressure to constantly “perform” one’s identity.

The camera chooses which side of relativity to show. And what it shows begins to redefine what millions around the world begin to desire — even if those desires do not belong naturally to their soil.

Thus, when we unconsciously internalize Hollywood’s narrative, we are not simply watching a film; we are entering another world’s coordinates of good and bad. We begin to measure our own lives against those foreign coordinates, and in doing so, we lose the truth of our own reference frame.

Why Pakistani Women Don’t Need the Western Version of Freedom

The struggle of a Pakistani woman is not the same as the struggle of a Western woman. To assume otherwise is to erase both. A Western woman’s call for freedom often arises in a context where religion has been privatized, where family bonds have weakened, and where social expectations stem from centuries of industrial and capitalist culture. Her “freedom” is often freedom from those cultural forces.

But a Pakistani woman’s struggle unfolds within an entirely different web of meanings — one where family, faith, and social interdependence are still strong (if sometimes oppressive), and where the moral vocabulary is deeply tied to religion. She might seek safety, respect, and dignity — but not necessarily at the cost of modesty, motherhood, or moral rootedness.

To impose the Western version of freedom upon her is to ask her to fight against ghosts that do not exist in her reality, while ignoring the demons that do. It’s like asking someone to wear armor designed for another battlefield — it might look noble, but it won’t protect against the right arrows.

And this is why the idea of “swapping bads and goods” is impossible. Every society’s bad and good emerge from its own soil. You cannot trade them, because they are made of your environment, your history, your faith, and your people.

So when a powerful culture teaches a less powerful one what to fight for and what to fight against, it doesn’t liberate — it colonizes meaning itself.

The Process of Cultural Power: How the Powerful Change the Less Powerful

This process — where powerful nations shape the desires and struggles of less powerful ones — is the modern face of imperialism. The age of colonization may have ended on paper, but the age of cultural colonization continues through screens, slogans, and songs.

Globalization has allowed ideas to move faster than armies. But ideas can conquer more deeply than armies ever could. The mind that begins to doubt the worth of its own traditions has already surrendered, even if its land remains independent.

When nations begin to see themselves through foreign eyes, they lose the ability to define their own good and evil. And once that definition is lost, everything else follows: family values, educational goals, and eventually even faith.

The Muslim Struggle: Returning to the Pure Reference Point

For Muslims, the solution does not lie in rejecting the modern world, but in re-centering their frame of reference around the one constant that does not shift: Allah.

In Islam, purity is not just a state of the body or soul; it is the very design of existence. Allah is Al-Quddus — the Purest of all. The human being, in turn, is born upon fitrah — a natural state of purity. But life in the world (Zamana) constantly pulls us into relativity — into comparisons, desires, and borrowed definitions of success.

Thus, a Muslim’s lifelong struggle (jihad) is not only against outer injustice but against the corruption of purity — the temptation to define good and bad by anything other than what Allah has revealed. When the Zamana goes against Islam, the believer’s duty is not to conform, but to struggle — not violently, but intellectually, morally, and spiritually — to preserve that original alignment with the Pure.

The Prophet ﷺ warned that a time will come when holding onto faith will be like holding a burning coal. That is the Zamana we are living in — one where meanings are manipulated and purity is mocked. Yet this struggle itself is what keeps the believer alive, awake, and dignified.

Conclusion: Holding on to the Constant in a Relative World

Einstein taught us that everything in the universe is relative — except the speed of light. In the moral universe of Islam, everything may appear relative — culture, trends, ideologies — except the Light of Allah’s guidance. That Light does not bend, no matter how much the world around it does.

And so, the task of a Muslim in this modern age of shifting meanings is to remain oriented toward that Light — to measure good and bad not by Hollywood, not by the West, not by public opinion, but by the unchanging coordinates of revelation.

As the Qur’an reminds us in Surah Al-‘Asr:

وَالْعَصْرِإِنَّ الْإِنسَانَ لَفِي خُسْرٍإِلَّا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا وَعَمِلُوا الصَّالِحَاتِوَتَوَاصَوْا بِالْحَقِّ وَتَوَاصَوْا بِالصَّبْرِ**

By time, indeed mankind is in loss — except those who believe, and do good deeds, and encourage one another to truth, and encourage one another to patience.