Author Archives: Ikram Hawramani

Ikram Hawramani

About Ikram Hawramani

The creator of IslamicArtDB.

IslamQA: Feeling down and unable to do tasks

I feel down very frequently when I am not able to carry something out,like I have tried to do it but I sometimes cannot find myself the energy and spirit to do it,any advice?

Sorry about your condition. That is likely due to depression or chronic fatigue. I strongly recommend that you seek medical help. The right drugs can give you all the energy you need to start becoming productive again, and once you no longer need them you can always stop using them.

IslamQA: Islam, politics and political parties

Salaam. What is your take on Islam and politics? Do you think Islam has a politic system that matches the teachings of Islam or is it free to us to decide which politic system to use to regulate our nations and country? I remember that 1400 years ago, Prophet Muhammad used to rule an Islamic State (Daar al-Islam) and does that count as a stance for us to also establish an Islamic State? I'm not talking about ISIS and such here, because that's a different matter. Thank you for your time. May Allah Bless you and your family.

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

I lay out my views on Islam and politics in my essays The Muslim Plan for Western Civilization: There is No Plan and The Last Mufti of Iranian Kurdistan (And a Critique of Political Islam).

I do not think there is one right political system for Muslim to follow. What I believe is that if most of the citizens of a country freely choose to implement Islamic principles in their government, then that is a good thing and they are free to do so, provided that they do not transgress on the rights of those who are not Muslim or who disagree with them on governance.

So if a Muslim government comes about organically and naturally, because of the will of the people, then I support that. But if it comes about becomes a small group of people desire it and try to force it on others, then I am against that. The Prophet PBUH was democratically elected as the ruler of Medina, he never sought power for himself or his group. He is the example we should follow in politics.

I am completely against Islamist political parties, where a group of Muslims self-elect themselves to be the representatives of Islam. This always leads to more harm than good. I believe all Muslim organizations should be non-political and they should all have as their main principle the non-seeking of political power.

However, I am in favor of individual Muslims getting involved in politics under their own name rather than claiming to represent all Muslims.

IslamQA: Quantum theory and time travel in Islam

What do you think about quantum theory? Do you think humans can time-travel?

I have read a number of books on quantum theory but I do not know enough about it to express a general opinion. As for time-travel, forward time-travel seems to be possible and unproblematic (if you are on a spaceship that flies near the speed of light, time would travel much slower inside the ship relative to the outside).

But as for backward time-travel, I believe most scientists consider it impossible. From the religious perspective it is problematic because by going back in time everyone else’s free-willed decisions up to that time would be canceled out, since they would have to make them all over again. I believe in a real-time universe as I discuss in this essay, which means that backward time-travel is nonsensical since it would require bypassing God.

Time is merely the fact that some of God’s actions happen after some of His other actions. Traveling backward would literally mean controlling God and making Him undo His own actions, which is naturally absurd.

The Dark Side of Swearing: The Philosophical Reason Why Using Profanity is Wrong

A philosophical investigation of why using various forms of profanity is dangerous and harmful in the long-term. Included is a discussion of why using the word “sexy” casually is wrong.

The line “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” from the 1939 film Gone with the Wind was one of the most shocking examples of profanity that had been shown on screen up to that time in the English language. The Sexual Revolution of the 1960’s brought with it a flood of profanity-celebrating cultural products; films, novels and songs. There is a good reason why the celebration of sexual freedom and the celebration of profanity come hand-in-hand: they are both symptoms of the same process–the increasing corporealization of humans that takes place when a culture abandons its traditional values.

This article heavily relies on the philosophical thought of the great British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton (1944 – ).

To corporealize a person (a verb I have coined) means to treat them as if they were a mere body rather than a person. Seeing a person you respect slip on a banana peel in front of an audience is highly embarrassing because it corporealizes them: it takes attention away from their unique personhood and reveals them to us as mere bodies, helplessly flailing around and falling. Immediately after such an accident, it becomes extremely difficult to take that person seriously, for example if they were about to give a speech. It will take a while for the memory of the embarrassing incident to fade away so that we can start to see the person again as a person, not an object, and so that we can take them seriously.

Rape is a form of corporealization: it is to use a person as an instrument for one’s own pleasure, with their humanity, their personhood, stripped away from them. Mugging someone is also a form of corporealization: the person is treated as a mere instrument, a tool for enriching oneself, without consideration for who they are and what kind of person they are. Rape and mugging are, in a way, the same crime: the crime of treating a person as if they were merely a tool that can be used for one’s own purposes.

Whenever we treat someone as if they were not a person, as if they were not possessed of an inviolable dignity, uniqueness and transcendence as humans, we corporealize them. The philosopher Kant calls this to treat a person as a means (instrument) rather than as an end (aim/goal).

The Golden Rule of Jesus and Muhammad, part of what C. S. Lewis called that Tao, is to “treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves.” We like to be treated as centers of independent moral judgment, not as tools of other people. It is a horrible violation of your dignity if someone right now comes along, drags you away from the screen and starts to cut your hair without your consent. This treatment corporealizes you–throws away your independence, your free will, and treats you as if you were merely a random collection of atoms that can be treated however that person wishes. The Golden Rule teaches us to never treat others in such a way, since we ourselves never want to be treated like that. Kant formalized this by declaring that we must always treat others as ends, not means.

Profanity is shocking, gross and insulting because the basis of profanity is always to cause in the minds of the audience the image of a corporealized human.

Profanity always associates humans with gross or inferior matter or with sexuality (profanity can also have religious blasphemy as its basis, which will be dealt with later). The strong sexual element in profanity is due the fact that when a person is revealed to us as a sexed animal rather than a person, they become something less than human in our eyes. Their moral depth, their free will, their conscience, their inviolable dignity as humans, is all thrown out to to be replaced by the image of an animal. We can do anything we like to them because only humans, only persons, deserve to be treated according to the Golden Rule. You do not treat cows according to the Golden Rule. Cows can be slaughtered.

The dark side of profanity is that, by corporealizing fellow humans and stripping away their personhood, we justify to ourselves treating them with the worst treatment. Whenever you hear someone say “She is a cow,” you should immediately translate this to yourself as, “She is not a person.” When a woman is called a “whore”, the implication is that she is not a person–she is merely goods that can be sold. When a man is called a “jerk-off”, the intent is to bring to the mind of the listener or reader the image of that man masturbating. By depicting them as engaging in a degrading sexual act, the implication is that he is just an animal-like creature who does not deserve to be treated like a human.

Of course, such insults in general are only weak suggestions and insinuations that we can ignore. But the problem is that when they become commonplace and respectable to use in public, as they have largely become in Western culture, this has an influence on the way we envision fellow humans. Profanity teaches that some humans are not humans. And this lesson can be taken to heart. It is very hard to take the idea of the inviolability of humans seriously in a culture that constantly corporealizes people.

A moralist will call expressions like “What the fuck?” a “degradation” of culture when it is used by the elite. I have a hard time respecting the writer Reza Aslan because he keeps using the word “fuck” on Twitter. “What the fuck?” brings the imagery of sexual intercourse out of the bedroom in order to grab attention and create a reaction. It is effective at that, but there is a cost to it. If you do not care about the cost, or do not realize there is a cost, then you will have no trouble using it. Many in the West think it is just a silly social rule that such expressions are frowned upon.

Using profanity is the act of breaking something in order to grab attention. When an intellectual does that, it shows their shallowness and lack of reflection, because it means that either they have not thought carefully about the nature of profanity, or that they are irresponsible enough to know that profanity involves breaking something without caring about the thing broken.

The cost, the broken thing, is that by bringing sex out of the bedroom, the corporealization of humans is normalized. I recently saw a social media post by a teenager who complained that he/she was being made very uncomfortable by their mother wearing a dog collar in the house (apparently as a playful expression of her sexual submissiveness to her husband). Seeing one’s mother as an object of sex makes it very difficult to treat her as “Mother”. “Mother” is a social definition, a person within a social context, she is not a body with sex organs. We never want to think of her sex organs because that destroys the social “Mother” in our minds. Once she is reduced to her sexuality, the person fades away so that only the flesh remains. The child no longer knows how to treat her: is she Mother or is she a sexed female animal?

The mother’s excuse was that she was free to celebrate her sexuality the way she wanted. And her logic makes perfect sense within the West’s present culture: why shouldn’t a woman be proud of her sexedness when everything around her tells her to be proud of it and to show it off?

The cost of bringing sex out of the bedroom is that it literally breaks down social relations. To give an extreme example; a boy cannot respect his parents if he constantly sees them having sex, even if technically they are doing nothing wrong and no one is being harmed. By strongly impressing upon the child their sexedness, their bodies, the fact of their being animals, the human element evaporates. The child is disgusted, turns away and wants to have nothing to do with his parents. The child wants Mother and Father, two social persons, not two sexed pieces of flesh. When Mother and Father reduce themselves to sexed animals before the child, they are engaging in child abuse. They are depriving the child of the right to socially relate to them by forcing the child to see them corporealized.

Using any form of profanity is an act of either taking sexuality out of the bedroom where it should remain, or an act of dehumanizing people in order to insinuate that they should be treated as less than human. It is true that it is degenerative because encourages us to corporealize society and throw away the basis for the way we relate to other humans as humans. It calls for turning society into something that has the harsh, inhuman atmosphere of a jungle. Everyone is a piece of flesh; there remains no inviolability for humans.

An important expression of corporealiziation is the way today in the West people have no trouble dehumanizing their political opponents. Imagine the irony of people saying they believe in human rights while habitually using insults on Twitter to insinuate that this or that person is not really a human and therefore deserves no human rights. Supposedly respectable members of society have no trouble calling Donald Trump a “piece of shit” on Twitter.

Regardless of your hatred for him, if you cross the line and dehumanize him this way, you are showing that you do not really believe in human rights. You maintain a double standard where only people you like are really humans. And this is what is clearly seen in almost all Western political discourse today.

Whenever a disliked person is dehumanized like that, the hard-won centuries of development of the humanistic ideal is thrown into the trashcan. In order to vent their anger, these people are willing to reduce fellow humans to animals or worse, completely forgetting the inviolable place that each human should have in a modern, civilized society.

What conservative Christian (think Victorian) and Islamic society achieve is a non-corporealized human culture where people are forced to treat other people with respect whether they feel like it or not. These traditional, civilized societies continually emphasize persons and de-emphasize bodies through keeping bodily functions, including sex, out of sight. Read Victorian newspapers and you will see how respectful everyone is forced to be toward everyone else. Today’s culture appears totally insane and completely unhinged by comparison–everyone is suffering from a form of insanity that blinds them to the humanity of the persons they dislike. Non-corporealized, traditional cultures keep this form of insanity in check, and an important part of their method for keeping it in check is the fact that they strongly disapprove of profanity and public expressions of sexuality.

Traditional Christianity and Islam had civilized culture figured out: you do not dehumanize others, and you do not do anything to spread a dehumanizing, corporealized worldview even if it is by a mere swearword. Today’s Western culture has no idea what it is doing: it thinks it calls for human rights when it freely dehumanizes millions who belong to the opposing political camp. It calls for children’s rights when it destroys their ability to relate socially, as humans rather than animals. to their families as it encourages the open celebration of sexuality.

If you want to be part of the solution, rather than part of the problem, then you will always avoid profanity. Yes, it is good at grabbing attention. But damaging your home and civilization just to grab attention is a rather cheap trick.

Religious profanity

Religious profanity, like all profanity, involves breaking something in order to grab attention. In this case, rather than breaking the Golden Rule of the non-corporealization of fellow humans, it breaks a rule valued by a particular religion. No self-respecting intellectual should be guilty of this because it still indirectly breaks the Golden Rule by treating other humans the way we do not like to be treated ourselves.

Saying “damn” is inappropriate because it makes light of a very serious matter: eternal damnation in Hell. Saying “What the hell?” is similar, it brings something grave and serious into a casual context, in this way stripping it of its importance. Similar to the way corporealization strips the personhood from a human, these curse words strip the gravity and religious significance of an important item of faith, desecrating them. Corporealization is the desecration of a human, while religious profanity is the desecration of an item of faith.

If you do not care about the feelings of a Christian who is hurt when you insult Jesus, it shows that you are not truly civilized–that the centuries of development of the humanist ideal have passed you by. You are not a respectable member of polite society. For this reason I expect every self-respecting intellectual to avoid curse words of religious origin.

The problem with “sexy”

The word “sexy” is not a swearword, but it is closely related to our topic.

I was recently disappointed to see some Islamic intellectuals use the word “sexy” on social media casually. This is of course not a very big deal. But the problem with “sexy” is that, like profanity, it celebrates the corporealization of humans. The word “sexy” is properly used to describe the fact that a human possesses the capacity to stimulate other humans sexually. Rather than celebrating a person’s personhood, it celebrates their bodies. It turns them into objects and forgets the fact that they are inviolable subjects looking into the universe, not mere objects that can be treated in isolation of their personhood. A “sexy” woman is a woman who can titillate men’s sexual desire. We do not care about her moral character and personhood, the fact that is brought to the fore is that she is a female with desirable sexual features and sex organs that can be used for a man’s pleasure.

It would have been much worse if those Muslim intellectuals had used the word to describe a woman. They did the much less serious act of borrowing a corporealizing term and using it in a non-sexual context. The problem remains that by using the term, they are taking part in the West’s corporealizing culture to some degree. They are taking part in normalizing the use of the word “sexy” in non-personal contexts.

Note that the word “sexy” is perfectly fine to use toward a woman with whom you have a consensual personal relationship. There is no problem with me using it to describe my own wife in private because we have an interpersonal relationship. She has given consent to a personal relationship with me that involves a sexual element. But even here it can still be wrong to use if I use it in a casual way that implies she is merely of interest to me by the virtue of her body. What takes away the wrongness is the constant reassurance in the relationship that I see her as a person, not a body. The constant presence of the interpersonal aspect of the relationship makes room for engaging in eroticism without it being dehumanizing and corporealizing. All eroticism that loses sight of the person and focuses entirely on the body is automatically improper, obscene and corporealizing.

For more on the interpersonal aspect of human sexual relations please see the interesting article “What #MeToo and hooking up teach us about the meaning of sex” by Elizabeth Schlueter and Nathan Schlueter.

IslamQA: Is seeking knowledge better than worship?

Assalam brother, Islam encourages us to seek knowledge and in one of the hadith said it is better to seek knowledge than to perform the daily spiritual activities (e.g. zikr, reads quran, perform sunnah), my question is what kind of knowledge do we need to seek according to the hadith? I think I'm lacking in those knowledge seeking, thank you in advance for your kind answer.

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

I have read it in multiple sources that seeking knowledge is better than worship. My own view is that for a Muslim who wishes to be extraordinary, a minimum amount of daily worship is always necessary. Seeking knowledge does not take away this requirement. In my own case I spend an hour every day listening to the Quran. This is the minimum amount of worship that I believe to be acceptable.

Without performing that worship, seeking knowledge alone can lead to many kinds of evils. A person can become arrogant and proud, or suffer from envy. It is absolutely essential that we do what is needed to keep our egos in check daily. Merely seeking knowledge without subduing the ego can easily lead to a bad character.

As for seeking knowledge, what is normally meant is to seek religious knowledge, especially to do your best to understand the Quran and to read the important books of hadith.

Once you have done that, you can go on to study other aspects of Islam. Ideally we should seek all essential beneficial knowledge, therefore for the extraordinary Muslim I believe the study of some literature and philosophy is also necessary. Please check out the page The Modern Islamic Studies Curriculum on our site which contains a list of books that I believe all capable Muslims should attempt to read.

IslamQA: She caught her divorced sister cheating with a married man

Asalam Alaikum. My sister is a divorced. I have sadly found out my sister has a haram relationship with a married man. The mans wife is both my sisters and I very good friend so I could not believe my sister would do this to her. I’m so sad. What should I do? Tell my parents, tell my friend or confront my sister (she doesn’t know I know)?

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

Sorry about your situation. It would be best to confront her privately without any threats of letting others know about it. Maybe this will make her agree to end the relationship. If she does not, then you can tell her that you will tell your parents and your friend who is being cheated on.

It is best to try to solve such matters as privately as possible, since this is best for everyone involved.

Even if your sister promises to break the relationship, there is of course still the fact of your friend being married to such a man. I cannot say what should be done about this, for example if children are involved then that would complicate matters. If there is a chance that the man may repent and go on with his life like normal then it might be best if your friend does not find out about his cheating. If you are unsure what to do in this regard, it may be best to leave it to God to decide what He wishes. But if you get a clear sense that it is your duty to tell your friend, then perhaps consult a knowledgeable person you trust who knows you and knows that family and maybe a solution would suggest itself.

Best wishes.

[Updated]

IslamQA: Is showering (ghusl) necessary after masturbation? (male and female)

Can you still pray after you masturbate? Or do you need to take a shower?

If the masturbation involves ejaculation (whether you are male or female), then performing ghusl becomes obligatory. You cannot pray until you perform ghusl.

But if there is no ejaculation, then a person can pray without performing ghusl.

Follow-up question: for the females (yes there are females who masturbate), does reaching climax or orgasm the same as ejaculating? Like, if one reaching climax, but no ejaculation, does she has to perform ghusl afterwards? Thank you.

Thank you for your question. According to the Qatari Fatwa Authority, orgasm itself does not necessitate ghusl if no manī is ejaculated by the man or woman. For more on a woman’s manī please see this previous answer.

There is, however, something called retrograde ejaculation, where the ejaculation takes place but does not come out immediately. For example if an hour or more later the person urinates and finds some ejaculate in their urine, then the ejaculation has taken place. In such a case, I believe that ghusl is necessary even though no ejaculation took place during the orgasm.

Source on ghusl not being necessary if a woman orgasms without ejaculation during masturbation:

IslamQA: Finding meaning in life when the most precious thing is taken away from you

You know when the most precious thing is taken away from you, there is nothing that can replace it. I can't seem to find meaning in anything else and now everything seems bleak to me. How do I go about just living life? Nothing matters. I can't seem to find the importance of anything else.

Sorry about your situation. I have been in similar situations and I believe the best thing to do is to consider yourself on break from ordinary life. You are in an in-between state until God creates a new life for you. Focus on doing your duties, and constantly ask God for guidance, forgiveness and ease, and through Him seek a satisfactory solution. It may take months or years; your job is to struggle through it, stay patient, and leave it to Him to create a meaningful life for you anew. Nothing is impossible for God, so even if you see no way out, even if you see no alternative to what you have lost, trust Him, stay patient, and leave it to Him give your life a new meaning.

I also recommend that you seek medical help if you are severely depressed. The right drugs can make this period of life more bearable and productive, and once you no longer need them you can stop using them.

On the Impossibility of 1984: Hawramani’s Theological Law of Propaganda

According to the Wikipedia article, propaganda is:

information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented. Propaganda is often associated with material prepared by governments, but activist groups, companies, religious organizations and the media can also produce propaganda.

It is the dream of perhaps all governments to produce (a) a coherent, fictive vision of reality (past, present and future) and (b) to convince the populace of the truth of this fictive worldview.

George Orwell’s novel 1984 is an exploration of an imaginary world where propaganda has been taken to its logical conclusion. The government is able to create a reality and implant it in almost every citizen’s mind through a very powerful system of propaganda and control.

Reading 1984 is naturally a depressing experience since there appears to be no realistic reason why such a world cannot eventually come about. As the science of propaganda continues to improve, especially today that it can be enhanced with extremely capable artificial intelligence, governments will continue to be able to exert better control over the minds of citizens.

George Orwell (1903 – 1950)

For an atheist who views the world as a closed system, there is no realistic reason to be optimistic about the future of propaganda. The propaganda system will continue to improve until it reaches a point of singularity where it becomes more complex than any human mind, and thus capable of exerting irresistible influence on human minds. A person can of course refer to chaos theory or quantum uncertainty to say that any system of propaganda can eventually break down due to the simple unpredictability of human thought. But this is just a possibility, and one can still fear the thought that a sufficiently intelligent AI will be able to find ways of handling chaos and uncertainty.

But for a theist, things are much more hopeful. By considering this universe a simulation-like thing (as I discuss in this essay), and by considering the soul an entity that resides outside of it, we are faced with a situation where the complexity of the human can never be overcome. The human soul resides outside the simulation and is independent of it, therefore the simulation can never overcome its complexity. It would be like trying to open a locked box with a key that is inside it.

As is common with all simulations, the infrastructure upon which the simulation runs is more complex than the simulation itself. A video game is a simulation, and the world inside is far, far less complex than the computer upon which the video game operates. The soul belongs to that higher-order world of complexity, therefore it is impossible for anything within our universe to reach its level of complexity. Therefore since (a) the soul is independent of the universe and (b) the soul belongs to a higher-order reality, it follows that (c) no system of information within the universe can match it or overpower it.

Thus Hawramani’s Theological Law of Propaganda is:

No system of propaganda can ever reach the complexity of a single human intellect, therefore humanity is eternally immune from complete control by propaganda.

To put it another way, the dystopian vision of 1984 is unrealistic and impossible. All governments’ efforts at mind-control of the populace are incredibly feeble compared to the object they are dealing with: humans. Humans, by the virtue of having extra-universal souls, are not objects but subjects–subjects that look into the universe from the outside.

Thus as a theist, I can justify complete optimism about humanity’s ability to overcome propaganda.

Of course, I have an even more important reason to be optimistic: God exists, He is in charge, and He will not let any tyrant entirely corrupt His earth:

And they defeated them by God’s leave, and David killed Goliath, and God gave him sovereignty and wisdom, and taught him as He willed. Were it not for God restraining the people, some by means of others, the earth would have gone to ruin. But God is gracious towards mankind.

The Quran, verse 2:251.

IslamQA: Is there a difference between wearing hijab and abaya or loose shirts and pants?

Is there any difference if one wears hijab and casual clothing (long sleeve loose shirt and loose pants) to the one who wears hijab and an abaya?

Different scholars will likely have different opinions on that. My view is that as long as the purpose of the hijab is achieved and the hair and body are covered (save for the face, hands and according to some scholars, the feet), then type of dress does not matter. The point is for a Muslim woman to dress in a way that prevents lecherous men from having anything erotically satisfying to look at, and this can be achieved through all kinds of costumes.

IslamQA: On controlling the impulse to masturbate

I cannot control my impulse for masturbating can I?

It will get easier to control your impulses as you get older. So do not get disheartened but always do your best to make up for it by doing other good deeds. Please see this previous answer for more details: On how to stop masturbating

Best wishes.

IslamQA: Should Muslims just stay away from manga and anime?

Everyone should just stay away from manga and anime. So much, if not absolutely most of it is immoral filth. Juvenile stories told with immoral themes and aimed at teenagers. Fantranslations make the stories impossible to regulate and many children are subjected to stories they should never have seen, let alone anyone of any age should see. They are not only ugly in appearance and telling, but ugly in their morals and intent. I pray that the whole phenomenon dies away insha'Allah.

I have no interest in them myself but I think that if Muslims get invovled with the genre and contribute wholesome alternatives to it, then it can be reformed. For example I grew up watching Arabic-dubbed anime on the popular SpaceToon channel and there was nothing in that except good moral teachings, besides the entertainment and fantasy.

If just leave the genre alone then that would just increase the chances of our teenagers going to the unwholesome versions of it. So I believe the first step toward a solution would be an English-language alternative to SpaceToon that only presents the wholesome animes.


IslamQA: Islam and vegan extremists

Assalamu'alaykum. Brother, what are your thoughts on vegans who condemn and look down on people who consume meat? I find few vegan persons who seem to justify their belief in only consume greens and fruits and view that other people who are not vegan as a low-life. Thank you.

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

You can just ignore such people, they are similar to religious extremists who dehumanize those who disagree with them. If you are interested, you can check out Roger Scruton’s book Animal Rights and Wrongs. I have not actually read it (but I have it and plan to), but I trust his opinions on most things. Maybe his book will clarify the matter to you.

IslamQA: Are virtual credit cards halal?

Salaam. I was planning to create a PayPal account, but I'm unemployed, have no credit card, and thought of creating a VCC or Virtual Credit Card to get a full access to PayPal and to make overseas online payment or transfer. Unfortunately, the VCC service asks their users to take up 1,9% to 4,5% from users' account balance. Does this count as usury? If so, I will undo this.

Since it is called a credit card and since a percentage is mentioned, it seems likely that it involves usury. Try to find services that offer debit cards rather than credit cards. Debit cards do not involve usury. You can go to a bank that offers VISA or MasterCard payment cards and open a checking (rather than savings, which involves usury) bank account with them, and first make sure their cards will work online.

Another way to pay with PayPal without having a bank account is to use prepaid gift cards (here is the PayPal page about it). You can buy a prepaid gift card at most Western supermarkets. Make sure they have a MasterCard, VISA, American Express or Discover logo on them. You can them use the prepaid gift card during checkout in PayPal. But I do not know if you can use them to transfer money to others.

If you ever have an urgent need for money in your PayPal account, let me know and I will try to help you.

IslamQA: Growing out of a person

What do you do when you grow out of a person? I no longer have that love for someone I loved so much.

I would say that is a natural part of life. We change and other change, and these changes sometimes lead to having different opinions about the person, or no longer enjoying their company, or no longer liking them.

I don’t know if there is anything you should do about it. Just continue being polite toward them, and if they expect love and kindness from you, try to show it to them even if you do not feel it. As discussed in this previous answer, being compassionate when you do not feel like it is actually greater in virtue than being compassionate when you feel like it.

IslamQA: Some personal questions for Ikram Hawramani

Did you have any mentors growing up? Also, who do you look up to?

I had an uncle who introduced me to Said Nursī and who encouraged me to learn English. I took up English-learning from 7th grade and possibly my main mentors in life were Victorian novels.

Do you have any siblings?

I have a brother and two sisters.

Are you a hafiz?

No I am not.

What are some things you have had to unlearn?

I cannot really think of anything I have had to unlearn.

What inspires you?

The Quran, praying at the mosque, all beautiful things.

What book impacted you most?

Probably Ibn al-Jawzī’s Ṣayd al-Khāṭir (Quarry of the Mind) which completely renewed my Islam and changed the direction of my life. I have selected the most inspiring parts of this book and published them in my books The Sayings of Ibn al-Jawzi and The Way of the Spiritual Muslim.

What are the main lessons you have learned?

Please see my blog post: Advice to my younger self