Andrew Tate FOOLED Muslim Men… And It Shows

 

Have Muslim men been looking for masculinity in the wrong places? 

In this powerful episode, Sheikh Usta reacts to the growing influence of the manosphere on young Muslim men—and exposes the real reason behind it: a lack of purpose, mission, and true Islamic masculinity.

Discover what Islam actually teaches about manhood, leadership, and purpose—and why chasing money, status, and the “red pill” lifestyle isn’t enough.

If you’ve ever questioned masculinity, purpose, or where Muslim men stand today… this is for you. This will change how you see manhood.

Patriarchy, give me my country back

 

I was four years old when it first happened. A middle-aged man, who ran a small departmental store in the Dhaka neighbourhood I lived in, was babysitting me while my mother went out to fetch some notes from her university. It was difficult raising a child all on her own, and my single mother was grateful that she could leave me in safe company.

I was sitting cross-legged on the floor opposite my babysitter when he pulled me close to his body and put his tongue down my mouth. At first, I was fascinated—I had seen adults kiss each other in tv shows and films. Children, at that age, are curious about the liberties that adulthood offers. But soon after, a dirty feeling came over me. My mouth froze. He attempted to force his tongue on me a few more times before I pulled away and rushed to the bathroom. I had a rabid compulsion to clean my mouth; I brushed my teeth, again and again, hoping to remove his traces so that my mother would never know, and I could pretend it never happened.

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Two years later, a security guard at the apartment complex we shared with my aunt groped my chest and motioned that he would put his "thing" inside me. I thought I should stay quiet, because I was ashamed, but the constant touch from him and the resulting pain became so unbearable that I rushed to my mother as she was boarding a rickshaw to go to the supermarket. "He's hurting me," I told her. She looked at me in surprise. Hurting? How? Where? I eventually revealed all the details to her, and he was dismissed shortly after.

I used to be a very talkative child, but with every experience of physical violation, I grew quieter, more watchful of my words, more concerned about what I could talk about to anyone.

When I was seven, I realised that my parents had separated because my father would physically abuse my mother, the floor frequently turning bloody.

When I was eight, a law enforcement officer asked my mother to sleep with him. She refused and was sanctioned.

When I was nine, a male relative lay down beside me while I was resting and put his arms around my waist. He turned me around, and there it was, again, a foreign tongue inside my mouth, unwelcome, unwanted. I flinched and immediately left the room.

When I was eleven, construction workers next door would make untoward gestures every time I went to the veranda, and I eventually completely stopped going outside.

When I was 13, I was severely bullied about my weight and the lack of feminine curves—disparaged for not meeting societal beauty standards.

When I was 14, a teenage crush of mine spread stories about being physically intimate with me, and my classmates hurled numerous insults my way while somehow, in their eyes, he was now "cooler."

When I was 15, my friend's boyfriend locked the room behind us and attempted to pinch my private parts, but I immediately unlocked the door and left the room.

When I was 16, my male cousin confessed that his peers could not see their female counterparts as anything more than sex objects.

When I was 17, a man older than my father proposed a sexual relationship with me in exchange for expensive gifts and financial security.

When I was 18, my school's principal, upon my insistence on wearing shorts while playing sports, gawked at me and said, "What will I do if one of the security guards rapes you?"

When I was 19, I left Bangladesh, and I have not returned since.

Begum Rokeya, the prominent feminist thinker and social reformer, once dreamt of a world led by women in her famous short story "Sultana's Dream." Kazi Nazrul Islam, the national poet of Bangladesh, wrote, "I sing the song of equality; in my view, there is no disparity between man and woman." Why, then, according to Bangladesh Mahila Parishad, were there 2,711 incidents of violence against women and children, including rape, between January and October in 2020?

Why, according to a 2015 survey by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), did more than 70 percent of married women or girls face intimate partner abuse, including physical violence? Why indeed, according to Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK), were at least 235 women murdered by their husbands or members of his family in the first nine months of 2020? How, in the country of Begum Rokeya, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Sufia Kamal, can rape be justified because of what a woman is wearing?

The consequences of patriarchy are a pervasive reality in Bangladesh. According to a 2018 study by Brac, 94 percent of Bangladeshi women report being sexually harassed while commuting via public transport. Poor women, including those from rural areas, face multiple forms of oppression, including lack of access to quality education and unpaid productive work. Women from religious minorities continue to be persecuted for their beliefs. As part of a community facing landlessness issues and a lack of civil rights, non-Bengali indigenous women in particular face further challenges at the intersection of indigeneity, gender, and food insecurity. Gender-variant people are not spared from these challenges either: hijra people are marginalised in social and economic spheres. In 2015, they were denied government jobs because they "failed" a genitalia-based medical examination.

Despite my personal experiences and the grim statistics on gendered oppression in Bangladesh, I have begun to speak up. I am fortunate to have had the opportunities to study around the world and grow as a person, but I still feel the wound of being a second-class citizen in my own country. I want to reclaim my home. I ask the women reading this article, what about you? 

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Toxic Love - Khutbah by Nouman Ali Khan

Toxic Masculinity

  

I really concurred with this comment on FB from brother Mohamed Ghilan.

With the increasing number of Muslim women speaking out against what they perceive to be not so much a double standard because that presumes sameness between men and women, but an injustice in terms of what's expected from them compared to Muslim men, we now have men pushing back and crying foul.

So this is to the males who wish to be men out there:

Some of you are asking for equalizing this calling out culture. If men are being called out to "man-up", then we should do the same with women to "woman-up". The problem with this is that women have been "putting up" with a lot from males that they didn't really have to put up with for a very long time.

What you think is "man bashing" doesn't even come in the same cosmic dimension to what a lot of Muslim women are subjected to up to our current times, even in the West where one would think they should technically at least have some means for recourse to get out of a bad situation.

It's a really sad commentary on how fragile some men's egos are that they can't even handle words on social media posts expressing the current situation many Muslim women are in. It also speaks to a blindness to the lived experience of a Muslim male and the things we take for granted.

This issue of toxic masculinity keeps coming up. In my view, if it's toxic, it's not masculinity anymore. The masculine and the feminine are Divine forces, and everything created exists as a product of the interaction between these two essential realities underpinning all of creation.

وَمِن كُلِّ شَيْءٍ خَلَقْنَا زَوْجَيْنِ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَذَكَّرُونَ
"And of all things We created two mates; perhaps you will remember." [Quran 51:49]

I'd rather call it toxic male chauvinism. I prefer this term because the dictionary defines chauvinism as "excessive or prejudiced support for one's own cause, group, or sex." That's really what we have when we see Muslim males engage in vitriolic commentaries against Muslim women who did nothing other than penned a few words. If anything, that just proved the women's point. Otherwise, why would someone get so worked up unless it struck some nerve?

What is toxic male chauvinism?

It's to view women as nothing but sexual objects who can also serve as reproductive machines, and that's the purpose of marriage for you.

It's to use those analogies of the chocolate and the wrapper or a diamond hidden in a safe when you talk about the hijab because women are edible objects or precious stones to be hidden away in a safe for you.

It's to pontificate about the obligation for Muslim women to wear the hijab while you go out publicly in your undershirts (yes, they're undershirts no matter how many times you've been told they're not).

It's to look for a well-educated woman in your search for a spouse but you then bury her aspirations and personal dreams once she accepts you for a husband under the guise of "she needs to pay attention to raising the children".

It's to call being with your own kids "babysitting" when your wife needs to have free time for her own pursuits, whatever they may be, instead of calling it what it is: being a father!

It's to expect that your wife clean after you and wash your laundry.

It's to marry a woman and give her the impression that she's getting into a marriage when in reality you were looking for a maid...or let's call it what it is, a legal concubine.

It's to exploit your wife's spirituality, which is more powerful than yours, and use the Quran and Sunnah to coerce her into accepting the unacceptable. It's the ultimate type of gaslighting if you really think about it.

It's to talk about all your "rights" as a husband in a marriage, but conveniently ignore your responsibilities and her rights.

It's to deny your wife the right to have her own domain where she feels safe and secure with you and instead put her in the same house with your parents so she can take care of them and be their maid.

It's to fool yourself into thinking you're taking care of your parents by having them live with you when in fact you just shirked your responsibility and put it on your wife who is under no obligation to carry it out.

It's to view marriage as some sort of power dynamic between spouses and use the analogies like manager and employee to establish that you're the boss, rather than approaching marriage as a partnership between two individuals who are both equally but differently deficient and that they're coming together to help each other grow.

It's to turn a marriage into a battle of rights and responsibilities as opposed to a loving and caring union with mutual respect, recognizing that your wife is a full human being with her own intellect, thoughts, and ideas that don't always have to align with yours.

It's to question a woman's adherence to Islam when she brings these issues up and then let your tongue loose on her with whatever filth Iblees inspires you with.

It's to try and dismiss Muslim women by attributing their concerns and grievances to feminism or secular individualism or whatever ism you wish to throw at them in hopes of silencing this conversation because it's "not Islamic".

It's to ask for equalizing the call out culture and demand that women also be asked to "woman up".

I could keep going with this, but it's long enough already and I think you get my drift. According to the Quran, men are supposed to be in service to women. That's what Qiwama (قوامة) is. But somehow, somewhere, at some point, Muslim men flipped this.

We need to take a long and honest look at ourselves and be prepared to engage in the hard work of undoing whatever sociocultural conditioning we've been subjected to. This is especially so if you really want to follow the Sunnah of the Beloved ﷺ, which is not just about putting on a turban and growing a beard.

There are lots of males. Becoming a man is a rite of passage, and being a toxic chauvinist doesn't count.

________

P.S. If none of this resonates with you and it sounds foreign to your experience and the dynamic you have in your marriage, then it's not about you and you can safely move on. But recognize as you do move on that this is the reality for A LOT of Muslim women out there.

Muslim men pushed into toxic masculinity - Dr. Johnathan Brown

An Open Letter to Muslim Men: The Sunnah Trumps Toxic Masculinity

Excerpt from article by Prof. Jonathan A.C Brown

In light of ongoing debates about differences between sexes and expectations of gender roles, it’s worth looking at how the men and women of Islam’s ideal, founding generation conducted themselves. In the Qur’an and the teachings of the Prophet ﷺ, men and women are distinct in their duties of prayer and fasting (women don’t do either when menstruating), in their dress (they must cover different areas of their body), and other legal issues. Men have the duty to guard and protect (qiwāma) their womenfolk because of some of the capacities that God generally grants one sex to a greater degree than the other.

But what surprised me when I reflected on it was how little difference there was otherwise between the conduct of men and women in this noble community. Both were deeply pious, decisive, courageous in word and deed, proud of themselves but humbled by the charge God put upon them, confident when they believed they were right but also utterly deferential to the instructions of God and His Messenger ﷺ. Both were dynamically involved in public life. And both men and women were extremely conscious of their code of sexual propriety. Aisha رضي الله عنها became a major political leader in the first decades of the Muslim community and one of its most respected sources of knowledge. When the Prophet’s ﷺ wife Umm Salama رضي الله عنها heard him addressing the people outside, she went out to join the crowd. When she was asked why she thought she was meant to attend, she replied, “Are we not among the people?”During the caliphate of ʿUmar رضي الله عنه, a female Companion interrupted his Friday sermon to correct him on a point, and he admitted she was right. A whole slew of female Companions fought in battle, the most notable among them Nuṣayba bint Kaʿb رضي الله عنها, who defended the Prophet ﷺ with her sword at the Battle of Uhud and later died on campaign. The great enemy of the Prophet ﷺ, Abū Lahab, was killed by Umm al-Faḍl رضي الله عنها, who smashed his head with a tent-pole. During the Battle of the Trench, Ṣafiyya bint ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib رضي الله عنها was among the people defending the small fort of Fāriʿ. When the senior man there would not go out and confront an enemy soldier who was about to find the fort’s secret entrance, Ṣafiyya took matters into her own hands. She leapt on him from the fort’s walls and clubbed him to death. But she demanded that one of her male comrades strip off his weapons and armor since he was an unrelated man she would never touch with her own hands.

The Prophet ﷺ and his community did not leave a legacy of ‘Traditional Man’s Men’ and subservient women. Their legacy is one of courageous, committed, humble, and engaged individuals, men and women alike. At their head was not an angry alpha male whose masculinity made him mock or subordinate others. He ﷺ was a man who saw that a man’s role is to serve his family and that letting others serve you is something a real man would prefer to avoid.

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Huddersfield grooming gang: The Islamophobia issue

Earlier this year, one of the victims of the Rotherham grooming gang anonymously wrote a very informed and intelligent piece on this issue for the Independent.

In it, she said that grooming gangs are upheld by religious extremism and even went so far as to compare them to terrorist networks. But even she - having very good reason to allow herself to be tempted to take the racist approach - condemned the work of people like Stephen Yaxley-Lennon aka Tommy Robinson , saying he doesn't speak for her, and said that she and other survivors are 'uncomfortable' with the EDL's protests.

In her own words, she 'experienced horrific, religiously sanctioned sexual violence and torture' and described how her main abuser beat her as he quoted scriptures from the Quran to her. And in Oxford, it was said that sexual assaults were particularly sadistic.

But, despite what some right-wing media and extremists want you to think, the fact is this isn't actually the case with every Asian grooming gang in the news.

It's a point that the prosecutor of the Rochdale grooming gang, Nazir Afzal, has already made.

Speaking about the case in an interview with The Guardian in 2014, he said:

There is no religious basis for this. These men were not religious.
"Islam says that alcohol, drugs, rape and abuse are all forbidden, yet these men were surrounded by all of these things. So how can anyone say that these men were driven by their religion to do this kind of thing?

"They were doing this horrible, terrible stuff, because of the fact that they are men. That’s sadly what the driver is here. This is about male power. These young girls have been manipulated and abused because they were easy prey for evil men."

In an interview with the New Statesman earlier this year, he described the ethnicity of street groomers as 'an issue', but gave more weight to the night-time economy that they often work in, the availability and vulnerability of the young girls who are often around it and the community's silence and lack of action to tackle the problem.

And I believe, based on the evidence heard in court, that what he said is also true of the Huddersfield grooming gang.

One of the victims in Huddersfield was Asian - something that also happened cases such as Rochdale and Newcastle, but is not often reported by the media.

The ringleader, Amere Singh Dhaliwal, converted to Sikhism after the abuse. He wears a turban, carried a kirpan in it and swore on the Guru Granth Sahib before taking to the witness stand. Raj Singh Barsran, who hosted many of the 'parties' in his house, is also a Sikh.

We shouldn't focus on race and religion and the discourse should be about something much more important - for a start, the causes of hebephilia and ephebophilia.

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Toxic Masculinity Took Another Woman’s Life And No, Thoughts And Prayers Don’t Help Anymore

Recently, a bus hostess was shot dead in Faisalabad after she turned down a man.

Mehwish Arshad, a bus hostess, was shot dead at Faisalabad’s Kohistan Terminal. She was murdered for refusing to marry a security guard – a classic case of toxic masculinity running its course. After her father’s death, she was the only financial support of her family. It is important to point out that bus hostesses are harassed on a daily basis. The man who shot her was also an employee.

In the CCTV video, the man can be seen talking to her as he forcibly grabs her hand and she visibly looks disturbed and tries to pull her hand away. She succeeds in pulling her hand away and there is a two-second pause before he shoots her, and runs away. There is no one around to witness the incident, save a person or two in the background, but would that really have stopped the man?

In the harrowing footage, the woman can be seen sliding down the steps in pure agony, with no one to help her as she took her last breath.

For most Pakistani men, women can exist either as homemakers or as sexual toys, with zero agency of their own. This leads to the development of the thought process where they are the “alpha males” whom no one dares to turn down. It is important to point out that socio-economic aspects do not really matter when it comes to mindset.

And let me stop you before you say “not all men.” That’s truly besides the point.
Feminism is made fun of in Pakistan, by men and women alike. Yet, we’re the ones who need it the most.

However, it is imperative to point out that these cases are why we need feminism in Pakistan. The emancipation of women as individuals with their own agency over their thoughts, bodies, lives, and decisions is of the utmost importance.
All these women who suffer, or lose their lives due to the inability of men to understand the word ‘no’, rarely get justice.

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It's not Muslims or people with mental health problems who are most likely to kill you in a terrorist attack – it's men

Toxic masculinity is what entitles a man to take a weapon and take other people's lives in the name of his values. 

Toxic masculinity enforces the idea that being a “man” means not just being strong, but showing that strength through violence and fear. It means always being the one in control, having power and dominance over others at all times, by any means.

If typical masculinity promotes emotional disconnection – something that men’s mental health charities are already trying to combat - toxic masculinity goes one step further and promotes the absence of empathy altogether. It also promotes the dismissal of anything deemed “feminine”, and the hatred of anything that contradicts heteronormative ideals around what it means to be a “man”. 

The easiest way to think of it is to imagine the military. After all, soldiers are paid mass murderers. Different wars, same tactics.

However, toxic masculinity has its roots in the everyday: to prove this, we should look no further than the fact a significant number of these killers were domestic violence perpetrators. Not just these killers, but the majority of mass murderers.

The men who massacre the public are the same men who butcher women privately in their own homes. The same principles of power, control, fear and violence apply: instead of using violence to instil fear in one woman, they scale it up to instil fear across nations. These men walk among us, everywhere, but we only pay attention to their violence when it spills onto our streets.

If we want this violence to stop, we need to address the root cause and its everyday manifestations before they escalate. These men were not extremists existing outside of society; they are products of it. They were men drunk on the entitlement that patriarchal cultures serve them. 

They did not impulsively decide to go out and murder large numbers of people; they were fired by a deep, burning desire for control.

Toxic masculinity hinges on having power over others; it demands inequality. As our world becomes more unequal, it becomes more violent. Toxic masculinity exists on political levels: in policing, prisons, immigration detention centres and controlling security measures.

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