The rest of the world has a hard time relating to us because our communities have an optics and aesthetics problem.
Muslims have completely abandoned any sense of aesthetics and that is, in my opinion, the main reason it is so hard for the rest of the world to take a stance in our favor and see us as their equal. It is obvious to me that muslim societies have almost unanimously given up on beauty.
For the life of me I will never understand why to this day, in western countries, we still see muslim men with scrawny unwashed faces, untrimmed beards, a qamis so long it's practically wiping the floor, and a dirty pair of airmax walking around in a society where everyone is groomed, shaved, smiling and well dressed.
I will never understand why so many (not all! But many) mosques smell like feet and sweat the second you enter, and why it is so hard for people to regularly wash and scrub those carpets.
I will never understand why women complain about strangers avoiding them and systemic racism when they decide to go for fully covering dark jilbabs in the hopes of hiding themselevs when it does nothing but make them stand out so much because the contrast with other women is just blarant.
There is no other religious community which has decided to behave like this and make their life 10x harder than it should be. If we were to abide by quranic rules, it is clear and unequivocal that none of this has ever been asked to them.
You can dress modestly and not look like you just came out of a cave.
You can avoid the male gaze without LITERALLY blocking the gaze, because that in facts does the complete opposite, you live among people who perceive a fully covering veil as a threat.
You can adapt to your surroundings and the people among whom you live otherwise islam could not be the universal religion it aspires to be, all you do is actively push people away, create a barrier between them and islam, how on earth could one join the religion or even just treat you with respect?
The way you present yourself is the single most important factor in spreading islam, be righteous, good looking, clean, groomed and succesful, and people will look up to you and equate your behavior and appearance to the teachings of islam, but dont expect to be accepted into a society which you actively try to NOT fit in!
It's just madness.
I'm not asking people to uncover their hair or show their awra, but I think there is a balance that can be found?
I worked in Japan for 6 months and I was shocked to see how well malaysian and indonesian muslim women could seamlessly blend into a non muslim society like Japan, they dress modestly, but are still fashionable and follow japanese dress codes (which I admit are already very modest which does make things wasier for them).
It was a striking difference, coming back to Europe and taking the subway, I just feel pity for the women in niqabs, Im aorry sister but it just looks ridiculous, you are trying to hide yourself, but in a sea of women in jeans and loose hair we in fact can only perceive you out of everyone, which completely defeats the purpose.
You can tell everyone is awkward around you. Why do you inflict that upon yourself?
Not engaging in arts, giving up on music because of some salafi interpretations, giving up in the sciences and technology are big mistakes which led muslim societies to destroy their civilization culturally, if we were to summon and bring back to life al andalus or baghdad muslims from 5~10 centuries ago, they would be horrified to see what the muslims have become, we used to seek arts, sciences and beauty, today we consider that to be borderline sinful to do ANYTHING but preach and actively detaching ourselves from weatern societies, which we actively actively push back from yet refuse to actually leave.