DoubleTake Podcast
46 / 50
The State of Masculinity with Dr. Osman Umarji | DoubleTake S4 E7
Listen on your favorite podcast app!
Some of the most popular influencers today are being hailed as guides and teachers for boys and men. They claim to understand the challenges that men are facing, and they say they have the solutions.
Why are people talking so much about masculinity, and are these conversations productive? What does the Islamic tradition have to say about what it means to be a real man? What are the values that men should be building in order to thrive in the modern world?
In this episode, host Mohamad Zaoud talks to Dr. Osman Umarji, the Director of Survey Research and Evaluation at Yaqeen.
Love our content? Sign up for the DoubleTake companion email featuring bonus supplemental content and a SNEAK PEEK of next week's episode! Sign up here: https://yqn.io/doubletake-email-signup
Share your feedback!
Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated using AI and may contain misspellings. Assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh Some of the most popular influencers today are being hailed as guides and teachers for our boys and men. They claim to understand the challenges that men are facing and they say they have the solutions. Why are conversations about masculinity on the rise? What does the Islamic tradition have to say about what it means to be a real man? What are the values that men should be building in order to thrive in the modern world? Welcome to a new episode of Double Take, a podcast by Yaqeen Institute about the questions and ideas around Islam and Muslims that give us pause. Remember to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Check out the links in the show notes if you want to share feedback with the team or join our new email newsletter. I'm really glad to have made sense of this topic of masculinity with THE man, Dr. Uthman Omarji. Dr. Uthman is the Director of Survey, Research and Evaluation at Yaqeen. He studied Islam at Al-Azhar University in Cairo and he has a PhD in Educational Psychology from UC Irvine, where he is also an adjunct professor in the School of Education. He's back on Double Take for his first solo episode since season 1 where we talked about religious identity and raising children as Muslims. Enjoy the episode. Dr. Uthman, Salam Alaikum and welcome back to Double Take. Wa Alaikum Assalam wa Rahmatullah wa Barakatuh Dr. Uthman, the M word, masculinity, is a trending topic right now. Influencers, scholars, men and women, a lot of people are talking about what it means to really be a man. Of course, discussions on gender and sexuality have also been increasingly relevant in recent years, but it seems to me like masculinity is being brought up much more frequently.
You and I spoke a few months ago about this because I wanted your perspective on how to approach the subject with the boys and men in my life, but I also wanted to better understand that for myself. Help me understand, Dr. Uthman, what's happening in this space? Why are we having this conversation? Bismillah wa salatu wa salam wa rasool Allah wa ala alihi wa sahbihi wa ala walakuh Jazakumullahu khair. Muhammad, you asked a deep question that is sure to bring out many passionate thoughts and emotions from different people. SubhanAllah, you know, the last couple of years, especially in the Western world, we've seen a massive rise in the conversation around this topic. There have been all kinds of different campaigns. Gillette, actually the razor company, had a big commercial a few years ago where they're talking about masculinity. That's all like there's a global rise and kind of Google searches on masculinity. But generally, I believe that the reasons why this topic has become so important and on everybody's mind, both men and women, young and old, is the state of males in the modern world. And what I mean by that is that everyone now is kind of, we take a step back and we look at the status of what's happening with both our boys, with our adolescents, and with our full, fully grown, you know, males in society, is that we're recognizing that many of them are actually not thriving from many different angles. So what we find is that men are actually, of today, are in many ways doing worse than men of prior decades. You've been seeing the last few decades rises in many maladaptive outcomes. So for instance, in college graduation rates, in college enrollment, in labor market outcomes, when it comes to even mental health and suicide. So just to give you some of the statistics, men are three to four times more likely to commit suicide than women, at least in America. You find that whereas about 75% of adult men were in the labor market about 20 years ago, now we see only about two and three. So we see kind of globally that there's all these different
trends that are happening and people are looking back and saying, well, why are men not thriving anymore? So that's a big part of this conversation. And it's interesting because you can think about, well, who cares about this, right? It's just an issue for men. And I think this is where we need to say, look, a society that has men who are not thriving is a problem for everybody, right? It's a problem for men because obviously they're not in the best state that they should be in and they're confused as to who they are and why their predicament is the way it is. It's not adaptive and healthy for mothers and fathers who are trying to raise their boys in this world to become strong, capable, righteous, courageous men. And then of course, for young Muslim women and for young women in the world who are looking to have a spouse in the world, to have a husband, how do you find a man in today's world who has the characteristics that they seem, that they deem as desirable? What's happening in our world that is leading to men thriving less and becoming less, I don't know what the correct kind of political terminology is. Is it less manly? What is it? There's a couple of ways we can think about it. One is to think about the very broad meta perspective that we are living today with an economic situation and a social condition that was so different than prior generations. And I think it's important that we start there because or else what we end up doing is blaming other people. And that's the most unhealthy thing we can do is to say, well, men are in their predicament because of women or women will say their predicament is because of men. I mean, there's a lot to unpack, but really it's the way that the world is heading in terms of the conditions that every day we are experiencing. To give an example, look at the cost of living. Look at how all of a sudden today with the astronomical price increase in rents and in homes that young men are unable to actually own a home, even rent to own homes. There's a far higher percentage of men who are living at home with their parents. Of course, that makes it difficult for them to get married and rightfully so. Sisters
should be concerned that the man they're going to marry is financially capable. It makes harder for them to have children and it makes harder for them to actually live their independent lives. There's also the aspect of the middle class disappearing. So with the middle class disappearing, a lot of those things that our parents and our grandparents were able to enjoy, despite not being at the top 1%, men of today are unable to do. And then the third thing really is talk about even those who are married, even those who are having family, we are living in a world where we're seeing increased levels of kind of isolated families. Individualism is creating this environment that again, our grandparents and great grandparents never saw where today the man is living with his wife and they are isolated away most of the time, especially Muslim immigrant families from their parents or their grandparents or their aunts or their uncles or their cousins. And so that village that used to raise a child is no longer there. And you have a father and a mother who are both struggling and burnt out with the realities of working full time and then raising kids full time without the social support to thrive. People can pretend and outwardly, because of the world that we live in, put on a face that everything is fine and dandy. They might post pictures on social media and they'll show up at Juma and they'll give salams. But you have no idea that these young men are actually suffering from so many different ailments. Like I said, it could be drug abuse, because we see an increase over the years. We see that in alcohol issues, of course, in the non-Muslim society more so than the men. We see pornography addictions. So you have all these addictive behaviors, but then we also see, again, a decay of morals and a lack of role models. So these men are actually questioning often behind the scenes. I don't even know what it means to be like a man in the modern world, because everyone is trying to define this in a different way. And there's just a lot of confusion. It's sometimes hard to see. But then in other ways, it's actually right in your face. Why do we have a Me Too movement in the United States of America that in many ways was actually global? Why did you see women all over the
world who were complaining about the way that they were being treated? Because there is an epidemic of a lack of chivalry, of a lack of respect for others. And so you're seeing it every single day in that way. And then you're not seeing a lot of it, because it's even for those who don't have those outwardly negative behaviors, a lot of it is being bottled up inside. Where would you rank the challenge of the role of a man or the changing idea of masculinity in the modern world? Where would you rank that in terms of pain points for Muslim men? Honestly, I'd put it almost at the top, because the way I see the world, at least, is that we can always try and blame the higher ups and the powers that be. But at the end of the day, this world is made up of men and women. And if our hearts are not sound, our societies will never be sound. And really, because there's so much confusion over even what it means to be a man, you cannot expect a society to thrive that has no clear direction and identity about who they are and what they're trying to accomplish. At least in the past, there was some semblance of understanding of what it meant to be a man in the world and what it meant to be a woman in the world. And of course, things were not perfect. But that transparency, at least, gave people a clear idea of what their life would look like. A man understood that these are some of the rites of passage you go to. This is how you become a man in the Muslim community. These are the things that you have to do as a man in the Muslim community. You have to provide for a family in a certain way. And today, you see that it's literally a blank slate. Young Muslim men are wondering if the way to be a man is the way that the pop culture is defining it, or as Western society defines it. Which really is that there's no difference between men and women in many ways. That there is no biological difference even to that extent. They're saying it's almost neglect. There's no difference really when it comes to their physiology. There's very little difference when it comes to their psychology. That is the direction that you find a lot of the discourse, especially on the progressive left.
And what's the problem with that discourse? What's the problem with just going and following that path? I mean, the first thing is that it's not, it's something which is foreign to our tradition in many ways. These gender wars that we're seeing today in the Western world, right, is related to the way that the West has conceptualized and treated women for hundreds of years. And the Muslim world didn't have a lot of these same problems, at least theoretically. Of course, practically there's no need to whitewash everything. We have our challenges. But this is what gave rise to some of those early waves of feminism, especially the first wave, that really didn't have anything problematic in it. That said, well, women should be treated like human beings. Women should have a right to vote. Women should have a right to own land. Things that Islam gave women. But the ever evolving nature of feminism and then critical theory has really began to seep deep into the hearts of society where they're decimating terms like the word patriarchy. Well, anything to do with the word patriarchy is all of a sudden negative. Masculinity is now being the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear that word is toxic masculinity. Being someone who is even heterosexual, someone who is attracted to the opposite gender is considered to be almost like an insult or a pejorative in many ways. And so this idea that men and women are different is a contentious point in today's society. Whereas for Muslims, this was never the case. It was very clear for us. When I mentioned masculinity, does Islam clearly identify what that is? No one can speak directly on behalf of this is what Islam says. We have ayat in the Quran, we have the hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, and we have a long tradition that we can use to piece together some of the key concepts around this. And so without a doubt, the Quran speaks about the genders as وَلَيْسَ الذَّكْرُ كَالْأُنثَىٰ that the male is not like the female. So we affirm first and foremost, in a world where this is almost like, you can get canceled for saying that in certain settings, that
men and women are two distinct parts of the human creation. They are distinct genders that have biological differences, physiological differences and psychological differences. And they are not interchangeable and it's not a choice if you choose to be a man or you choose to be a woman. So we start with that. Is there anything else that Islam does around this topic? Of course, I mean, there's so much that Islam also accepts, you know, in the tradition of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, in Islamic history, that there are people who don't biologically fit neatly into it for genetic reasons. But leaving that aside for a minute, of course, Islam provides in its totality, in the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, in the way that the companions, the Sahaba and the Sahabiyaat dealt with one another, a blueprint. And the Prophet, how he dealt with his wives and his wives dealt with him, a blueprint for how we're supposed to behave. And there are clear injunctions as to what a Muslim man has to do, especially like a Muslim husband versus a Muslim wife. So it's not that, well, this is just left, okay, there's a man and a woman and you guys figure it out. No, I mean, there's no other way for us to fulfill our roles as Ibadullah, right, as servants and slaves of Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, unless we do it in a way that is befitting of who our identity is. So as a man, I have certain obligations towards Allah. And as a woman, a woman would have a different set of obligations. You and I spoke a couple of months ago about this topic. And it was actually quite an open conversation and I used some of the tools in your toolbox around masculinity. I'm going to describe to you my current life situation at home with the hope of understanding from you what the core ingredients of masculinity are, like what I should be dialing up, dialing down. We have, alhamdulillah, three kids. I am trying my best to provide for the family.
I'm the breadwinner. I have a couple of jobs. And I'm trying my best to get into the gym and work out. I start but I stop because I'm extremely busy with work. We're renovating the house. I barely have time to do some chores at home. My wife, Tula, is also struggling, frankly, in terms of raising the three kids. She's also trying to find time to work out and help with renovating the house. We've got our extended families. We've got my mother-in-law, my parents to look after. There's a lot going on. There really is a lot going on. We're struggling with one of our children in schools. There's a lot. And I'm trying to do my best in being an ideal man. But I'm struggling, frankly. So I'm trying to articulate in my life what I should be dialing up, what I should be doing, what does an ideal man look like. But before that, what are the core ingredients that I need to remind myself of in my household? This is my role and this is what I should be focusing on. So I know there's a lot to unpack there. But I'm struggling, man. I'm struggling. And I'm having this conversation very selfishly because I want to understand what your thoughts are. JazakAllah, Muhammad, for opening up with that. Honestly, and I think the fact that you said that, that you're struggling, is something that we need to embrace and speak about more often. Because like I said, a lot of these problems, they're ignored because people, especially men, we're not voicing these concerns. And the truth of the matter is most of us are struggling. And it's not because we don't have wonderful wives. We have wonderful wives. But they're also struggling because we live in a world that is living
so against the fitrah. And it's living in a way that is not Islamic. So these problems exist because we live in a cultural context that's not conducive to who we're supposed to be as Muslims. But now to get into the nitty gritty of it, what are you supposed to be doing? And I think the first thing is to figure out what does it even mean to be, what does it mean to be masculine, right, in the house and out of the house. And the Islamic tradition, again, not to box yourself into the English word masculinity, uses a lot of different terms that capture the idea of what is a man supposed to be like. And some of those terms that come in the literature you'll find are words like futuwa, words like muru'a, words like rujula, words like qiwama. And all of these get at aspects of being a man. And in certain dimensions, some of these can apply to women as well. So al-futuwa is a common term that's been used just to provide some context. It's really about, the best translation is chivalry. It has to do with the traits that are ideal for a young Muslim man to have. And so we're going to start by talking about character. Because the foundation of a man, right, is his character. And so many different scholars were asked these questions actually historically by saying things like, you know, what is manhood in Islam? Or what is, the Quran doesn't talk about manhood, so tell us what that means. And so just to share with you some of those that have been shared historically, a scholar was asked one time, he said, it was said to Sufyan ibn Uyayna, rahim Allah, he said, all things are derived from the Quran, so where is manhood in it? And so he responded by, with reading an ayah of the Quran where Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala says that you find what manhood is in the words of Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, show forgiveness, command good and turn away from the ignorant. So of course, from his perspective, and from the scholars perspective, the primary aspect of being a man, right, was having sound character. Now, Ibn Qayyim, I think he provides
the best kind of treatment or one of the best kind of conceptualizations, what it means to be a man. And what's important is that not all males are men, right, meaning not real men, right. And, and that's sometimes people mix that up, right? They say, okay, just because I'm biologically a male, I must become like, I must be a man, man. No, Allah says in the Quran, minal mu'mineena rijal, right, from amongst the believers are real men, sadaqooma a'ahadullaha alayh, who have fulfilled that promise to Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala. Now, what does that promise entail? Ibn Qayyim talks about the idea of muru'ah, right, of this part of being a being a man. And he says that the human being, all of us, at least, you know, we can speak about ourselves as men here, but all of the creation actually is struggling, and they're being pulled in three different directions. We have kind of these satanic behaviors that are calling us, right, or tugging on us, we kind of have these like animalistic behaviors tugging on us. And then we have these angelic behaviors that are tugging on us, right. And he begins to define how each one, so he's like, look, the satanic behaviors and traits are things like excessive anger, you know, excessive, you know, like excessive jealousy, you know, cheating, deception, you know, seeking power in unhealthy ways. And so that's one dimension, right. The second dimension is the base desires of an animal, right, just fulfilling those desires, just eating and intimacy, so on and so forth. And then he says the angelic behaviors, right, of having, of seeking ihsan and sincerity and goodness and kindness and forgiveness. And so his whole statement is saying that being a man is the ability that you can fight off the satanic tendencies or callings, and the animalistic ones, and that you are inclined towards the angelic behaviors, because your mind is in control of your shahwat. And I find it a beautiful kind of conceptualization, because it's not all of a sudden being so rigid and saying there's one way to be a man. But it's first and foremost, it's a mindset. Are you gravity? Are you in control of your
life? And this is a lot of what being a man is about having agency. So it's not that we're going to sit here and complain, oh, the world is rigged against men. And this is not what this is about. This is saying that we as men, or as fathers, right, or as mothers have a responsibility of raising boys and treating men in a way that's not just about us. A way that gives that they feel a sense of agency to reach their full potential. And so are we ensuring that they're being raised in a way that reduces the likelihood they're going to develop those satanic traits of arrogance, right, of jealousy, of unhealthy, right, of unhealthy anger, of deception? And are we modeling them in a way? Are we inculcating an environment that makes them naturally inclined towards those angelic behaviors? So that's Ibn al-Qayyim's beautiful framing of kind of what it means to be a man. He says that the person who has no manliness has no deen, right? The person who has no manliness has no deen. Many scholars, right, have said this. And what that means is that if you're not in control of yourself and of your desires, and you can't fight off those tendencies to do things that we're seeing everywhere, right, the deception that's around, the mistreatment of women, right, the lying, so on and so forth, then one cannot call themself a real man. And so this is the definition that I really like because it makes it easy for us to say there's a gold standard. I know what I should not be doing. Can I control that for the most part? Do you mind talking about the tendencies that I would have just by being a man? These are the tendencies that I need to control. Yeah, no, exactly. And you know, that is such an important framing of how we talk about this because the current predicament, unfortunately, is that men and boys are being socialized that by default, they are wrong, right? By default, they are likely to be predators, right, to be abusers, right, and to be a whole lot of negative things. And that's because this is some of the discourse in the mainstream community in the culture. And what that ends up doing is that it makes it almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Because if someone is struggling to fight off some of those desires, it's kind of like, well, you know what, this is just who I am. So I should just be who I am, right? Rather than saying no, at the root of who we are is we are on the fitra, right? We are pure and inclined towards good. And of course, we have a tendency, you know, to also do things that might deviate from that. When you talk about the tendency of a man or the tendency of a human being, you know, oftentimes today, young boys are being taught, actually being taught explicitly in school settings, especially in Western educational settings, that by definition, men are likely just wrong, right? Men have a tendency to be evil and a tendency to be abusers. They have a tendency to be toxic, right? And so that kind of creates this default where this is what young boys think is that we are messed up. And if it's hard to kind of break that mold, then you know, you might as well just fulfill your destiny and this is just who I am. So no, the Muslim does not believe that our default, right, is this. No, Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala says, وَلَقَدْ كَرُّمْنَا بَنِ آدَمٍ Allah has honoured us, right? Like, we are honourable creatures from the get-go, right? We are born upon the fitra, right? The inclination to believe in Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala and to live in a natural way, right? But our society is that which typically will socialise us to do things that are not in our fitra. So what are some of those tendencies, right? Depending on the culture you come from, it could be different. And this is where there's massive variability. For some cultures, excessive anger is a problem, right? And that could even be a genetic factor that could be there, right? So like, you know, if that is your, if you notice that that is your challenge, then now you've identified this is a trait of mine that I've really got to hone in. For other people, it might be, for instance, excessive pride or arrogance. So every culture and every family and every kind of subculture has some of their tendencies that they're socialised with that we all have to wake up and say, hmm, am I possibly either way underperforming on this character trait that I need to have, right? Or am I so excessive in it where it's unhealthy, right? It could be stinginess.
And I think I spoke about this, you know, previously, that like for many men, right, you know, stinginess is a huge issue, especially when it comes to having families. But we're acculturated to be stingy rather than to be generous. So I'm not going to give you an answer for what is your specific thing, because you know your context best as someone who is living in Australia in a certain type of Muslim community. But I think we all have to kind of do the self assessment is that this muhasabah is that where do I feel like I'm imbalanced from what is that gold standard of Islam of having those angelic traits? And what are some of those satanic traits that I might kind of be maybe a little bit more into than I should be? I think one of the ways I like to think about these drives that we have these internal drives and desires is that they're by default, they're not necessarily good or bad, they're necessary. So for instance, we have by default a desire for food, and for nourishment. And that is the fitrah, right? If Allah did not put that drive in us to eat when we would die of malnourishment, but the excessive tendency in it is gluttony, right? Or is overeating. And that's what leads to a lot of the negative traits. And by that ties into manliness, because even men who overeat and who become overweight, actually will begin physiologically to pick up on more feminine traits, even when it comes to their body mass, and so on, so forth, because their body produces hormones in ways that are actually going to mimic more feminine behaviors. So I mean, and then you take intimacy as another one, Allah's created us with a desire for intimacy. And it's healthy without it human beings don't you know, that you know, we don't procreate and there's no passing on right of our lineage, but having an uncontrollable drive that's not being done in the correct way, right will lead to zina and lead to abusing women and so on, so forth. So that's what I mean by there's a there's a base desire, and Islam and the framework of being a man in Islam has bounded all that. So if you want to eat, we have rules around how you eat. If you want to have a family, you want to have intimacy, there's some rules around marriage and what that looks like and your obligations to this woman, right?
It's not like in pop culture where you swipe right and you fulfill your shahwa and you move on, right? This is this is the satanic way of fulfilling this right? Dr. Othman, growing up, I think maybe this is a cultural phenomenon, I'm not sure. But certainly there are roots in some Islamic context that that men are supposed to be qawamoon ala nisa and the way I understood that from my parents, and from my society, and certainly from my heritage in certain parts of Lebanon, is that we're supposed to protect women, sure, but we're also supposed to be in control of the relationship. Is this is this correct? Yeah, JazakAllah khair. Well the idea of qiwamah is a Qur'anic idea, so there's no doubt about that. Allah's sponsors in Surah An-Nisa, ar-rijalu qawamoon ala nisa, right? And the verse continues, but the idea is that men are qawamoon ala nisa, men are caretakers, protectors of women. That's kind of the general translation of it. The scholars spoke a lot about what dimensions can constitute qiwamah. I'll mention some of those, Ibn al-Arabi, the great Maliki jurist mentioned a number. The first thing he mentioned is that he is protective over her, which I mentioned like the ability for a man to protect his wife is a core part of what it means for him to be qawam over her, right? And so this goes back to physical fitness. If you can't protect your wife, right, then you're failing in that aspect of being a man. The second part of it is actually helping and aiding your wife despite whatever circumstances or conditions she's in. So being helpful and supportive is a part of being qawam. The third is that the man spends on her as well, and that's what the end of the verse says because that's the part of being qawam, Allah's given you a right to be qawam because you spend on your wife as well. So through spending on your wife, you kind of have more right to kind of give her that advice in life. The fourth, and this gets a little bit contentious with people, but I read like seven different
interpretations that he commands his wife to obey Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala, right? And this is not some issue of like the woman being lower, right? But it's part of being a good man and a good husband is that you encourage your wife and you push her in the direction of doing things that are righteous and noble. And it would not be righteous if a wife was unaware of something being haram or was lacking in fulfilling some of her obligations and the man was to remind her of that. And that's part of us being brothers. I mean, we're awliya, right? Ba'adkum li ba'd, right? That we protect and care for one another. And then the last dimension is that he mentioned that its leadership is to lead and to direct the family and your wife towards Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala in the best possible way. Now of course, that can be construed, people can take this general thing and they can abuse it in different ways. But again, when you have a balanced understanding and you're inclined towards those angelic behaviors, then this fits in perfectly. I mean, this aspect of being patriarchal, right? Of kind of looking for the best for your wife and for your womenfolk is a part of Islam. And the Prophet actually said in a hadith, the three people who would never enter Jannah, he said one of them is a dayyuth, right? It's a famous hadith about a dayyuth and this is the man who kind of didn't care if his wife was kind of loosey-goosey with men around her, right? You know, the way that she's dressing in front of them and interacting with them and having a relationship with them. So part of this ghira, this protective jealousy, right? It's part of what it means to be a man and to be qawam over your household, right? So if I understood you correctly, being a man in a Muslim context is about being in control of those tendencies and you mentioned the tendencies, but it's also dialing up those fitrah traits, the traits that make us, I guess, more, I don't know how you define it,
angelic that are positive traits that a Muslim can bring to his household and to his community. So what are those traits that I need to dial up in my life? I love one of my teachers, he told me, he used to tell us that the ideal Muslim kind of has a balance of three things, especially for men, I think it works well. He said, you have to have a strong body, a sharp mind and a soft heart. Again, he said a strong body, sharp mind and a soft heart. And so there we can kind of come up with at least some, like a framework for saying, look, there are things we have to be doing physically because by men, by being men, right? And our fitrah, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala has made actually a strength, right? Something which makes us, it's something Allah has given us a fadila over women with, right? And women have other fadail over men. So it's not about that, being strong makes you a better person, but men are responsible for safeguarding their women and safeguarding and protecting themselves. Part of who we are, right, is to be protectors of society, right? When Allah says that, you know, ar-rijalu qawwamuna AAala nisaa, right? That we are protectors and caretakers, right? This part of it has to be physical. And if a man can't take care of himself and he can't defend himself, defend his honor and defend his family, then that is a major limitation, right, of his manliness. You know, as a panlah, we see this so often today where, you know, people's wives will be insulted or their sisters or their mothers, and they don't even have the guts to stand up for it, right? Because they're just so worried about the ramifications, right? Whereas in the past, you know, Muslims and even non-Muslims who had this idea of chivalry would be willing to die, right, for their women, right? If someone insulted their mother or insulted their wife or insulted their daughter. So and this is important because actually having a strong body, right, is part of what gives a man confidence. And men today are really, they are struggling with a lack of confidence because again, this unnatural life where we're sitting in front of computers all day long, we give our boys,
you know, video games that they get addicted to, and we keep them in the house because we don't want them to get in trouble outside. And we're limiting the rough and tumble stuff. All of this has made us much more effeminate. And it's really, it's doing a number to the way that the man thinks about himself because at the end of the day, the fitrah is such, you put two boys together and you see what they're going to do. They're going to want to wrestle. They're going to want to play games like this, right? And that's part of who they are. And the inability to actually, you know, engage in that in a healthy way, right, is very damaging to their sense of self. So I would say one dimension is ensuring that we are physically in the condition that is suitable for how Allah has made us, which means our diet needs to be appropriate, which means we have to control what we eat. It means we have to take care of our, you know, of exercising in ways that optimize, you know, our bodies. Are we walking? Are we running? Are we lifting weights? Are you playing sports? So that's one dimension of it, of course. The second dimension is going to be the sharp mind. So do we have the intellectual capabilities and faculties developed that allow us to see the truth as the truth so we can follow it? Because if somebody is just sincere but uneducated, they're going to fall for every lie that's out there, right? They're going to fall for anything that someone presents to them. So developing our intellectual capabilities through studying, right, through being in the presence of people who can teach us how to think about the world. And that's really one of, that was probably the core aspect of the Risalah of Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, his message, was he taught the companions how to think about the world, right? He taught them how to have the tools and the skills in order to thrive and to take care of their families and to make the right decisions. But if our logic and our rational thinking is flawed, then that's a big flaw in our manliness. And the third thing is a soft heart. And that again gets to those traits that are you forgiving? You know, it's funny when people say that, oh, you have to be compassionate and forgiving and merciful. You can't be merciful if you don't have the ability to actually regulate or to do anything, right? You have no power to take something, you know, hold someone accountable, then mercy and forgiveness
means nothing. So, but developing, you know, those character traits through tarbiyah, right? Through the right study of Islam, through being in the company of the right people, right? These three dimensions are things we can think about, making sure that we are working in all three of them to make us wholesome altogether. And that's why the Prophet said in the hadith, right? So the strong believer is better and more beloved to Allah than the weak believer, but there's good in both, right? So if you're sitting with a newly wed couple, Muslim man, Muslim woman, and you're advising them on gender roles, and you're talking to the man specifically, what are you saying in that context? Yeah, exactly. Okay. And this happens all the time. We do premarital counseling regularly. And Spanla, the evolution of this conversation is drastic. Ten years ago or 15 years ago, when we would do marriages, we did not have the same type of questions popping up. Something as basic as saying that the man is the breadwinner of the family, is financially responsible is something which many men don't even know today. And many women don't, Muslim women don't know today. So I mean, it's astonishing to me that these basic facts, again, because of the lack of the Islamic culture around us, we are communicating. So for men, I usually will speak about a couple of things. So the first is that a man needs to recognize that they are not everything for their wife. So and vice versa, for a woman, she's not everything for her husband. The modern world as kind of this all or none marriage, there's actually a really good book about this, that kind of says that we used to live in a world where for men, there used to be a profession they would have a craft, right? And they had their family, and then they had their community, which they would include a circle of friends, right? They would have mentors, right? They would have all kinds of different people they can go to for different aspects of their life. Right? So if I need help with like a professional issue, right, I got someone who can mentor me professionally. If I want someone for like spiritual and moral guidance, I have someone who can help me there.
If I need help with my physical fitness, someone who could help me there. But today, it seems as if many people are operating under the principle of like, you know, I have to be everything for my wife, and my wife wants me to be everything for her and vice versa. I have to be her fitness coach and I have to be her, you know, her, you know, you know, her mentor when it comes to religion, I have to be her mentor for her business that she wants to start. And so what ends up happening is that the burden becomes so heavy. And no human being can fulfill that. I tell men all the time, you do not have the keys to your wife's, your wife's happiness, right, is not in your hands, is the way that I put it. And for the wife, your husband's happiness is not in your hands. We have agency, like we have to do things and we have to live our lives in a balanced way, which means you have to have different people involved in your life. So for the man, I'll say things like, look, make sure that you maintain connections with your community, right? You don't disappear from the masjid after you get married, right? You don't disappear from those circles of male friends that you bonded with and that you could talk to them about issues you could never speak to your wife about because she doesn't understand you, doesn't understand you in that way and vice versa. So we're having a lot of those conversations as well about, about responsibilities when it comes to raising children and some of those challenges. I mean, this could be a pre-marital session, so I don't want to go too deep into that, but I usually start with the framework of like, what do you think, what is your default understanding of what men and women do? And I usually will then build from there. You mentioned to me a few months ago that there are a few things men should be doing more of. I think one of them was to join a weekly halaqa or a men's group. Do you mind just talking to that because I'm trying to make the connection between the role of a man and then some of these kind of actionable items in your mind that help? Yeah, of course. And again, where this all comes from, just so we're clear again, this is not some magical Islamic formula.
It's a combination of looking at the lifestyle of Muslims historically, the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And then honestly, a lot of it comes from just experience working with men for the last, I'd say many years. I'm seeing a very familiar script with men in the Muslim community. I see two different kind of challenges, or not challenges, two different models that they're adopting that are problematic. And of course, there's a third, which is the middle path. The first is you see many men who are kind of, their belief is that my job is to financially provide so I work all day long. And then when I come home, it's time for me, meaning that I can go and video game as long as I want to. I can go out and hang out with my friends as much as I want to, because I've done my job as a man is to put food on the table. And this absent husband, absent father phenomena is definitely worthy of a lot of conversation. But what I'm seeing arise in these days, especially amongst religious Muslims, religious men who are recognizing that they need to be more present for their families is an opposite extreme, which is where the man ends up becoming in many ways like a domestic servant unknowingly. And he's doing it out of the goodness of his heart of trying to serve his family, because we have the hadith, the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, he was, you know, كان في خدمة أهله. He was always in the service of his family. And so what they end up doing is they work all day long, and then they walk to the door in the evening, and they take the children, and they feed the children, help them with their homework, they get them ready for bed, and they put them to bed, and then they're just beat and they go to bed. And this happens often for many men, I know five, I mean, seven days a week. Numerous stories like this. So again, what is the proportion is not important, but we have these, the domestic servant husband, and then we have the absent husband, both of them are problematic. So for either one, again, it comes back to a balance, especially I'll speak first to the one who's more of a domestic servant, because I'm seeing a lot more of that, especially in the immigrant Muslim community.
It's really recognizing number one is are you living that balanced life? We go back to our principles. So number one is, do you have any sort of connection to spiritual growth and development? Are you a part of a halqa? And I tell this to almost every single man, you have to be plugged into a network of men, men who are not, and I say halqa, and I'm not saying like, a religious class in the masjid, because of the difference. If you go to a religious class in the masjid, it's going to be just generally, you know, wa'ath and you know, good admin. One way traffic as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's going to be essentially just, you know, it's not personalized, and it's not recognizing who you are and your needs. And what a halqa does that's very different, or a men's circle, is that it's small, it's intimate, and it's over time. So these groups oftentimes will last for years and years and years, even I've heard of some brothers who've been doing it for 20, 30 years, right? And what you do in these circumstances or in these circles is that you're developing spiritually with one another, often with someone who's leading it, or if it's, you know, multiple people who can lead it together, but that male bonding is happening, where they're talking about like what me and you were talking about now, hey, I'm struggling at home, like, you know, my wife is exhausted all day long, but I'm also tired, like, how do I give her time for what she's doing? And so we learn from one another, we learn from those brothers who are older than us, who are in the halqas, who have gone through this, and maybe have some wise advice, tell us what we should not do, because they made a mistake, tell us what has ended up working for them. So through a halqa, you build number one, you fulfill your social needs. And number two is you begin to fulfill your spiritual needs. So I think for men, number one is be involved in some men's circle or men's halqa. And for women, and this is an important piece of advice, I've dealt with many, many moms who come and tell me they're desperately looking for something for their boys, they're looking for a mentor for their boys or a space for their boys. And I sometimes look at these moms and I say, you know, your own husband was not allowed to attend halqas because you needed him to help you with the kids, and now you're struggling with your boys.
So for the wives who are listening, if you want your husband to be the best father possible, you have to recognize this is necessary for his development. Right? So even though it's difficult, because we all need that extra hand in the house, it is going to be pivotal in enhancing the marital relationship, and in the relationship between the father of your husband and his children. So number one would be, you know, being involved in the halqa. Number two is having some commitment to physical fitness. And again, this is because it's good for your mind, it's good for your health, right? It has so many positive outcomes. And it's from the Sunnah of the Prophet Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam. And he would do things like grapple and wrestle. So I tell Muslim men, if possible, enroll yourself in some regular committed martial arts or sport. That's just a part of where you get out that energy, you're bonding again with other men, right? And you are going to be more confident over time. And you're going to be and when you feel better, when you physically feel better, you're going to mentally feel better. So that's the second thing that they can do. A third thing that I recommend is again, one of the biggest challenges in the modern world, especially for men is lack of purpose. It's actually one of the biggest correlates of suicide. You need to be plugged in and involved in your community. What are you doing for the greater ummah and for the greater society? That are you volunteering, right? And giving your time, wealth, energy to causes that make you feel like your existence is valuable. That, you know, because of you, right, there's people who are being served, right? Because of you, the Muslim community is benefiting. Because of you, right, the environment is improving. So there's a lot of things that we can cover, but at least again, some of these, like being involved in something spiritual, right? Being involved in something physical, right? And then involved in the community. Those are at least three things that men can do. I mean, intellectually, we can speak about, I usually tell that, you know, we, men often get so bogged down, right, with family and work that the intellectual development is no longer there. So try to come up with a routine for yourself, even if it's a reading for five minutes a night,
even if it's listening to something that's profound, that you feel intellectually stimulated, right, at some point throughout the week. Or else, you know, you don't feel like you're growing as a person. I would go as far as saying without that men's circle, it's very easy to get sucked into various other circles that are detrimental. Would you just talk to the point of having pure friendships for the sake of Allah? How important that is and what the absence of that leads to? Yeah, JazakAllah Khair. You know, the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, the famous hadith, you know, المرء على دين خليل And it's amazing, there's a word مرء, right, we're talking about manliness here. The root of it is المرء, right? So المرء على دين خليل, like the real, you know, the man, right, or it applies to the woman as well, but the man is upon the faith of his closest friend, right? فَلْيَنظُرْ أَحَدُكُمْ إِلَىٰ بَنِي خَالِي So look closely that who do you take as your intimate friend? What's amazing, when I think about this hadith, is almost taken for granted that people had intimate friends, that they were really, really close with these platonic friendships, right, between men, right, a man with a man or a woman with a woman that just kind of have existed through most of humanity. But today, one of the biggest challenges is not even, there's the issue of having good friends and bad friends, but it's even having friends to begin with. And today what we're seeing is a trend in the last few decades in much of the world, especially the western world, is that less and less men have real friendships. I'm telling you, I even did a survey of, we did a survey of imams in North America, and the numbers were really, really not good. If I remember correctly, it was a good percentage of imams said they don't have any close friends, right? And imams are supposed to be the leaders, right, of our ummah, but again, we're all part of the same society. And so, you know, in 1990, right, you had a small percentage of men, only I think about 3% of men who said they had no close friends, right?
And in 2021, that number is 12%, right, a fourfold increase, right? And so there's a lot of other statistics like this, but what we're seeing is that, again, the modern world, because of the lifestyle that men are living between their work and if they're married, their family obligations or expectations, or because of technology and sitting on the phone all day long and having virtual kind of supposed friendships, is that this is really, really causing a lot of distress to us because again, we're social creatures, right? And we cannot find the lifestyle habits that we need unless we are in the presence of others who are embodying these, right? So I need to be around other men who are modeling good masculinity for me, right? They're not speaking about it, they're just modeling it. So I see that when I like, I'll tell you, I'll be honest, when I go and I hang out with some of the brothers, and they are lifting weights, right, and they are doing martial arts, or they are memorizing Quran, right, or they are doing community service. They're not, you know, they're not, you know, giving us a lecture about it, but they are simply doing those things, and in conversation, we're aware of what each other do. That encourages us, that, you know what, I should probably step up my game, right, when it comes to, man, he's exercising, I should exercise. He's memorizing Quran, and he's doing Islamic study, I should do that as well. Okay, well, he's involved in the masjid, so the necessity of friendships, right, you know, like the Prophet said in the other hadith, right, it's just, we rub off on one another, right? So, finding good friends, right, is going to be essential for all ages. So, if you're a mom, and you have teenage boys, find them a group of good boys to hang out with, Muslim boys, right? If you're a, if you're a single man in college, right, you know, that's easy, MSAs facilitate that. The hard part is after marriage and after kids, and for all of us to recognize, we cannot do without this, right, to tell our wives, and for the wives to recognize, your husband cannot do without a circle of friends to talk about life with. So, allow him that space, and for men, seek that space and recognize it's integral to your religiosity,
it's integral to your well-being, and it's integral for you actually being there for your spouse and your kids, because when you've been fulfilled with the brothers, now when you go back to your wife and kids, you give them your 100%. Rather than wishing when you're around them, and you're being almost kind of like, I wish I was somewhere else with the brothers at the moment in time. So, investing in friendships is one of the biggest paths towards thriving in all different aspects of life. I've been taking down notes. JazakAllah khair. I think we're going to need a follow-up episode about time management and how to fit it all in, because I can, there's a lot to do. My last question, a very simple one. My nine-year-old niece knocks on your door, Dr. Othman Omarji, and says, Dr. Othman, what does it mean to be a man these days? What is your response? InshaAllah. Your deeply intelligent niece is always hard to give a simple answer to, but we'll try our best. I would tell her that what it means to be a man in the modern world is to be different than often much of what you see. It means to be respectful to everyone you meet, male or female. It means to be hardworking. And it means to be spiritually connected to Allah Subhanahu wa ta'ala. It means to walk with good character and that you, despite the fact that people will harm you, that you do not let that agitate you and you do not allow that to make you mistreat those people. That's what it means to be a man in today's world. Dr. Othman, JazakAllah khair. Thank you very much. And inshaAllah, we're going to change gears here and ask you a set of rapid fire questions. The challenge with someone like Dr. Othman is that you're a veteran of double take. So we're up to a list C or D of rapid fire questions.
But the same principle applies. You've only got a few seconds to answer each question. The first one is an easy one. We'll start off very easily. What's the last book you were reading? So that's actually not an easy one because I have been juggling between too many books. But you want a fast answer. Actually, the last one I was reading is called Prophetic Grappling. So it's a book about kind of the history of martial arts and how the companions were well versed in wrestling. Hey, that's awesome. Actually, are you writing another book? Slightly off topic, but are you writing another book? Because my kids love your book on the hoopoe bird. JazakAllah khair. I mentioned to you, I think last time I was supposed to be working on the novel of Musa. That's taken a pause and I'm actually attempting to write Tafsir now. So I'm trying to write Tafsir of different surahs that are looking into different aspects of the surah. So that's kind of my latest project. If you could sit two people in a room and be fly on the wall for their conversation, who are those two people? The more and more I read by two of my favorite scholars, Sheikh Al-Islam Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim, I'm just so fascinated by the two of them. And I would love to just sit and hear the two of them go at it and talk, especially because Ibn Qayyim spent so much time alone with Ibn Taymiyya in prison. And to be there, maybe sitting in the cell, listening to the two of them talk would be phenomenal. Which of the Sahaba is underrated as a masculine role model? MashaAllah, great question. Two come to mind. I can give you one. It's because everyone always uses Omar as the model of masculinity. But I think Abu Bakr Siddiq and Uthman ibn Affan. And the reason is because Abu Bakr Siddiq was known to be very kind of emotional, especially when he came to the Qur'an, when he'd recite, he would cry. And he was just known to just be a lot softer in certain issues. But he knew how to dial up the masculinity, the physical strength, right?
And the intellectual kind of rigor and the decisive decision making and leadership when the time was right. Famous examples when the Hurub al-Ridda, when the wars of apostasy, when he was willing to fight everybody, when everyone else was like, no, no, no, no, don't fight. And Uthman ibn Affan, even though he was the Sahabi with the most hayat, bashfulness, again, he's incredibly underrated in terms of his ability to dial up those masculine traits when needed. What do you listen to when you work out? I don't listen to anything. I like the peace and quiet and the ability to just kind of have nothing just kind of occupying my mind. So it's like cleansing for my mind that doesn't turn off otherwise. And what are you lifting these days? Oh, unfortunately, my lifting is I pinched a nerve a few months ago, so it's been it's unfortunately been in rehab. But in PT, I lift whatever bands I'm asked to pull on. Dr. Uthman, Jazakallah khair for your time. And we're following your work at Yaqeen Institute as a director of survey research and evaluation. Mashallah, really rigorous content coming out. We appreciate your time on Double Take and we'll see you next time. Jazakallah khair. Oh, Yaqoob, it was my pleasure.
Welcome back!
Bookmark content
Download resources easily
Manage your donations
Track your spiritual growth
1 items
1 items
1 items
25 items
9 items
