California Clashes: An Accidental Incident or a Societal Rift?
(Translated)

https://www.al-waie.org/archives/article/19866

Al-Waie Magazine - Issue No. 467

Thirty-Ninth Year, Dhul Hijjah 1446 AH corresponding to June 2025 CE

On June 6 of last year, protests and clashes broke out in Los Angeles, California, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s strict approach to enforcing immigration laws and deporting undocumented immigrants became evident. The demonstrations turned into security confrontations after federal authorities arrested undocumented immigrants in several areas of Los Angeles with the aim of deporting them.

However, what began as a civil protest quickly turned into a constitutional crisis between Trump and the state of California, which had been in confrontations with his administration, since the start of his second term over various issues, chief among them the matter of undocumented immigrants.

History has taught us that there are empires that collapse from within. The not-so-distant future may prove that the American empire is one such empire, prone to collapse due to domestic factors, without necessarily waiting for a foreign enemy to push it toward that fate.

One of the most important factors in a state’s cohesion and internal strength is that it represents a cohesive society with its own identity, laws, and way of life. The state is as strong and unified as the majority of its subjects are members of that society. Some may mistakenly believe that all of a state’s subjects, its citizens, are members of its society, but this is a major misconception. A society is not necessarily made up of all citizens and subjects of a state; the state may encompass multiple societies, and may have many individuals who, in their worldview and way of life, do not belong to its society.

When certain communities within a state feel that the state does not represent them, and that they do not belong to it culturally, they may believe they can organize themselves. At that point, they might begin popular, political, and activist movements, either to join another state to which they feel they belong, to establish their own state that represents them, or at least to secure self-rule that sets them apart from other communities within the state. We have seen several such cases and examples both in history and in our own time.

Modern Western culture, built on the doctrine of separating religion from life, and the laws derived from it, succeeded in achieving a notable degree of integration among different ethnic and religious components, reaching the peak of this achievement in the late 20th century. However, in the current century, it has experienced a clear decline. Perhaps its first major setback was the failure to approve a unified constitution for Europe and transform the European Union into the United States of Europe. This was followed by deep divisions within these societies over fundamental life and societal concepts, creating a rift not only between ethnic and religious factions, but also within single nation groups that were assumed to share a common culture distinguishing them from other nations.

Issues such as views on religion and its role in society and politics, positions on abortion, homosexuality, feminism, so-called gender ideology, the LGBTQ+ community, and the role of women alongside the division of Western societies between the so-called liberal current, many of whom call themselves the open society, and whom Trump calls the leftists, and the often racially charged groups, labeled as conservative, have begun to split Western societies into two distinct camps. These two camps compete in elections, and when one takes power, it drives the country in a direction entirely opposed to that of the other.

It has become clear that the unrest that broke out in California last month and spread, to some extent, to other states does not resemble past riots known to the United States. While earlier riots sometimes requiring military intervention were often sparked by minorities living within American society, most notably the Afro American minority, the current scene reflects a much broader, vertical and horizontal division, in which nearly all Americans are split into two culturally and ideologically distinct groups: a racially conservative faction led by Trump and the Republican Party, and a liberal faction that attracts non-religious individuals, ethnic and religious minorities, and the so-called open society, led by the Democratic Party.

This division has surfaced repeatedly in recent years and nearly led to widespread clashes on the ground, particularly in 2020 when Trump lost the presidential election. Although the federal authorities managed to contain the unrest after this recent wave of protests, this does not mean it will be just another fleeting episode, like past riots in the country. This is a deep division, one that grows deeper day by day, and it will continue to shake the stability of the empire until it collapses, and Allah Almighty knows best.