15 Islamic articles on: Islam and Sexuality

Table of contents for the topic Islam and Sexuality
  1. Can ghusl be delayed after intercourse?
  2. The morality and immorality of sexual fantasies
  3. The Philosophy of Pornography and Masturbation
  4. The difference between sexual fantasies and reading erotic novels
  5. On how to stop masturbating
  6. The rule on writing sexually explicit materials in Islam
  7. Why are we supposed to control our sexual desires in Islam?
  8. Sexual fantasies in Islam
  9. Are sexual and homosexual fantasies forbidden in Islam?
  10. Is reading erotica permitted in Islam?
  11. Why is sexual harassment of women common in Muslim countries? IQ and development, not religion
  12. “How to avoid sexual desires?”
  13. Masturbation is not clearly forbidden or allowed in Islam
  14. Islamic Strategies for Escaping a Sinful Life
  15. The Islamic view of watching anime and reading manga

IslamQA: Can ghusl be delayed after intercourse?

Must one do ghusl right after intercourse? Is it Ok do work around and inn the house within the state of impurity, does touching things, do they become impure? Also should one do wudu if he does not want to do ghusl right away, is that mandatory? Can you go to sleep while in major state of impurity without ghusl or wudu. thanks you.

Delaying ghusl is permitted until the next prayer, since you cannot pray unless you perform ghusl after intercourse. There is no issue with touching things in the house (except for books of Quran that have the original Arabic text, touching translations is permitted). Sleeping after intercourse without ghusl and having intercourse again without ghusl are both permitted.

There is no need to make wudu after intercourse, that doesn’t change anything.

IslamQA: The morality and immorality of sexual fantasies

Sexual fantasies is not the same thing as having a "wet dream" where you are literally asleep and can't control your dreams. To fantasise means your are leading your thoughts to imagine and visualise and thus stimulate yourself. To entertain such thinking is not moral and thus not normal or healthy. Instead of answering hormones as if they are moral we should understand what sex really is and that only via romantic love does it ever serve a moral purpose. Train the libido, do not pander to it.

Also, by that reasoming, hormonal state excuses what we think or do. I am sorry but that is grossly irresponsible a thought. God made us capable of choosing what we say or do irregardles of how we may feel or how our hormones behave. What about bipolar? A hypomanic episode doesn't mean they lose their mind and no longer understand right from wrong. Your libido kicking up does not excuse what you CHOOSE TO DO. Our hormones are a part of God testing us, not excusing us doing something immoral.

Having sexual fantasies is not normal or healthy. And further more they are not necessary.Our hormones may act out but that doesn't mean you need to reply to them with the wrong answer.Your libido raising up doesn't mean you have to answer it. That is like saying a woman has to eat chocolate because their hormones are making them crave something fatty. I have that "emotion" and I ignore it because eating a ton load of chocolate isn't healthy, and it isn't what I really want.

When my libido raises I just ignore it and it goes away. Don't obsess over it. Ignoring it is not hard when you truly understands it has no value without a truly loved and wanted significant other. Entertaining a fantasy is just as bad as if one had done it. The imagination is a powerful thing, what God gave us is no joke. Any sexual act outside of us being with the person we romantically love and are willingly engaging with is not necessary. Do something good to get rid of that energy.

We sadly live in a world where sex is constantly given a value and role it does not deserve. Partly because people do not actually understand sex. It truly isn't the biggest way to express love or to feel good. Beauty shouldn't be the ignition to want intimacy, love should be, love born from knowing someone for who they are. People raised by other flawed people to think love is sex and beauty equals sex, instead of being taught love is so much more than the extra of sex….

..God granted us to enjoy with our significant other. People are raised to think sex is everything and thus people behave like it is, and it absolutely isn't. Raised to act on every feeling they have "do what ever you feel like doing, do not challenge yourself or master your body and mind". God tests us in so many ways, our bodies are one way. We are supposed to deny the impulse to do wrong, just because one has a hormonal spike such as this does not excuse one, we aren't animals.

To entertain sexual fantasies really is dirtying oneself, it is no better than masturbation.What should be a beautiful and intimate act meant to happen, if it is meant to happen, with your loving spouse, is turned to just another act of self indulgence and blind lust. The imagination is so SO powerful, it is very real. God gave it as a gift for good, not this.Raise people to be strong not weak. This is not a place to say that God only gives us what we can bear,

God does not make us fantasise. Us fantasising is us choosing to fantasise. We take something normal like a libido and we feed it with our chosen thoughts. If we simply ignore the libido the libido is not a burden but a mere passing hormonal occurrence. It is part of the normal hormonal cycle yes, but it does not need to be met like thirsting for water is needing to be met.

With how we perceive things we lower our libido's activity, if one constantly answer their libido with fantasies the libidos activity is prolonged. If one thinks a woman/man is a walking talking reminder of sex, their libido is constantly awakened. When the libido is not pandered to it goes away quickly. If one has problem with the libido passing they can find healthy ways to make it pass like exercising.

If the libido is very high, then it may speak of hormonal imbalance, even mental health issues such as bipolar, one should be directed to consult a doctor and receive help. The libido or our hormones in general shouldn't be treated as an force that we must surrender to and let choose for us above free will. The body has hormonal responses both independent and soul bound (example, hormonal imbalance caused feeling of unhappiness vs. unhappy event+understanding said event= feeling truly unhappy).

Example, an aware bipolar patient recognises the manic episodes as completely not their own emotions and purely as "hormonal emotions", and the soul, the sentience, is feeling its own feelings, but the body is in mania and produces hormones of euforic happiness and even aggression. The patient still has a choice, knowing right from wrong, they refrain from the bad and steer towards the good. God has given the greatest aid besides the second aid of medication, Knowledge of Him, of what is Right.

By these I try to give examples of the soul triumphing over the test. One must want to do good for God and thus learn Right from wrong and act upon Right no matter what. To say no way but God's way will do, in every matter.When we know right, understand right, act upon it, we become better and can recognise far better what is truly us, who God made us to be, and what we shouldn't be doing. Ultimately we choose what we do, the sentient creation who follows Sentience Himself Who teaches us Right

Thank you for your time if you read all these asks, I felt compelled to say something on the matter. Salam.

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

I understand your position. To me it is about a cost-benefit analysis: I believe that teaching people to obsess about the wrongness of sexual fantasies is more harmful than teaching them it is a morally neutral thing.

Since we do not have any clear texts on the moral wrongness of sexual fantasies, and since the brain has a strong natural tendency to generate sexual fantasies during the right physiological state, the balanced position is tell people not to worry about it.

Every strict moral ruling we create adds to the cost of religion, until a point comes when a person feels the religion is too demanding, inhuman, and irrelevant to their own inner experience. So I believe telling young people to feel guilty about giving in to sexual fantasies does more harm than good. When it comes to something neutral like this, the path we take should be one of easing things rather than making things more difficult.

Note that I do not recommend religious laxity just to make religion sound more easy to people. As I discuss in my essay The Philosophy of Pornography and Masturbation, since we have good reasons to consider pornography and masturbation wrong, we can take a strict stance toward them. But as for sexual fantasies, I am not at all convinced that a strict stance would be helpful.

The Philosophy of Pornography and Masturbation

Why is it wrong to watch pornography? Even if a person is not religious, they will still feel guilt and shame about a porn-watching habit. Where does this come from? Even the most free-thinking and atheistic person will have reservations about watching pornography with their family, even if everyone in the family is an adult. They are consenting adults, and no one is harmed in the film (it can be a computer-generated film). So where does the wrongness come from?

This was one of the most difficult questions I have had to answer for myself. My diaries contain many entries over the years where I argued why watching pornography is wrong only to defeat my own arguments. Being religious, I did not need to justify the wrongness of pornography to myself in order to avoid it. I already knew it was wrong; I just wanted a good intellectual argument for why it is so.

The key that opened this mystery to me and many other mysteries about sexuality was Roger Scruton’s 1986 book Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation. Finally I found arguments that could satisfy my skeptical self.

A popular argument against pornography is that people are harmed in its creation. This is true, but it does not cut to the root of the problem. Imagine if thousands of yours in the future a person discovers a computer hard drive filled with pornography. All of the people in the films or pictures are dead. Surely whatever harm was associated with the creation of those films or pictures would no longer be relevant. Enjoying them would be similar to enjoying visiting the pyramids in Egypt. We know thousands greatly suffered in those projects. But that does not prevent us from enjoying the sights of the pyramids; their magnificence and beauty.

Or imagine an artificial intelligence system that can generate pornography that is better and more realistic than the real thing. No one is harmed in the creation of such pornography. So what is the right moral approach to it?

Evolutionary psychology and the uniqueness of humans

The root problem with pornography is not the way it is created. It is also not the erotic enjoyment it creates in its consumer. It is also not exactly the way it is supposed to cause a person not to enjoy real sexual intimacy or to become lazy and disinterested in seeking out real-life partners.

The problem goes deeper.

The basic problem is that humans are not animals. Enjoying pornography means breaking a moral rule that is tied to our basic humanity; it is our humanity that is damaged in the process.

A main attraction of the evolutionary study of human psychology since Nietzsche and his Darwinian influencers has been the sense of perspective and knowledge that we gain over fellow humans when we view them as mere bags of matter controlled by built-in biological instincts; our relationships become so simple if we look at them solely through Darwinian eyes. My mother loves me because she has genetic instincts that make her love me. If she is just a mere collection of matter who is configured to be nice to me then that takes away all of my duties and responsibilities toward her. I may still be nice and dutiful toward her because I have genetic instincts to be this way toward her, but I will not pretend that there is anything to this relationship between selfish genes using us for their own ends. Looking at humans this way, we feel like our eyes have been opened. We see the cold, harsh reality of existence and have at least taken a first step toward dealing with it, a step that (we think) most of those around us cannot even conceive of taking.

And yet, our actual, lived human experience proves the utter falseness of the above way of seeing the world. My mother is not just a mere collection of matter; she is also a person. Persons possess self-consciousness, inviolable dignity and infinite worth. A single uninteresting and “average” person is worth more than any amount of money you can imagine; all great moral philosophers would agree that even if a country could gain trillions of dollars by killing a single innocent person, it would be evil and morally unjustified for it to do so. Somehow a single person is worth more money than the entire world can offer.

We live between two completely opposed views of humans. One of them is only too happy to reduce humans to mere collections of atoms. The other one accepts nothing less than infinity as the worth and dignity of each and every human.

If we were to commit genocide by eradicating an ant colony, most people would not think the worse of us. Yet genocide against humans is widely agreed to be a terrible crime. There is something unique about humans that makes it inappropriate to treat them like insects or animals. There is no agreement on where this uniqueness comes from. Science can only view humans as clever bags of matter, so it cannot enlighten us about why humans are special. According to some religions humans possess a soul, breathed into them by God, that makes them unique and unlike other living creatures.

Whatever the source of the uniqueness, what concerns us here is that most thinkers agree on the fact that such uniqueness exists.

Being human

Knowing the uniqueness of our humanity, we are pushed to ask how this relates to our conduct toward others. How do you treat something that has infinite worth?

The German philosopher Kant proposed the famous principle (or categorical imperative) that humans must be treated as ends rather than means. This idea nicely encapsulates the basis for all of our modern thinking about human rights and dignity.

To treat a human as an “end” means to not treat them as a means, instrument or tool for one’s own benefit. The word “end” here is being used in the sense of “final aim” or “goal”. A human is an end when you view them as an inviolable entity that cannot be used, dominated, sold, raped or killed for another’s benefit. While we can pick up a rock, lump of wood or some other object and use it as a tool, humans, by the mere virtue of being humans, are excluded from this category of “objects”. Humans are subjects, inviolable entities that look out into the universe while somehow being independent of it. Humans can use anything they want as a tool, except other humans.

Humans possess what I call personhood; personhood refers to our uniqueness. Persons are not objects. Treating persons morally has its own universe of rules that have nothing to do with the world of objects. Yes, we have a natural or evolutionary genetic inheritance; we are animals, and a study of our genes and hormones can easily show our closeness to other animals. But we are not just animals. We are also persons. We have a dual nature: both the animal and the person.

Obscenity

The problem with pornography is that it is only concerned with the animal in us.

Obscenity is anything that treats or depicts humans as if they were merely animals. A picture of one’s parents naked is obscene because it stresses upon us their animal nature to the exclusion of their personhood. We are forced to see them as animals; their personhood is not in the picture.

A picture of a dead loved one who has suffered a terrible accident that mutilated their faces and bodies is also obscene. It shows them as a mere collection of atoms that has been turned into chaos by the physical world. The world has turned them into an object. We never want to see our loved ones as objects. So we turn away from such a picture with disgust, try to forget it, and continue to imagine them as they were when they still lived.

Pornography is obscene because it depicts humans as reduced to mere bodies. It does not capture the personhood of the humans; they might as well be corpses that are animated to perform the sex act. Enjoying pornography makes us feel guilt and shame because we join this partying of corpses. In a small way we become like the great tyrants of history, happy to watch humans reduced to animals that can be used for our pleasure.

In this world that we join during the watching of pornography these humans become mere objects. If during the pornographic scene we watch an explosion tear these humans apart, it is merely an interesting data point. The corpses are rearranged in a new way and nothing fundamental is lost, because they were already corpses when we were enjoying their flesh to the exclusion of their personhood.

Hentai and erotica

If online forums are to be believed, many young men progress from viewing erotic pictures to “hardcore” pornography, to watching the genre known as hentai (Japanese-inspired cartoon pornography). Hentai has no rules and is famous for its depiction of extreme violence during sex acts. It depicts beautiful females torn apart by tentacled monstrosities. The viewer is surprised to find that they actually enjoy seeing this. It is because the tearing apart of humans in cartoon pornography does not break any moral rules of pornography. When humans are reduced to mere objects, as if they were corpses, it is only the next logical step to explore what can be done to corpses.

The same applies to erotic novels like Fifty Shades of Grey. Erotic novels are merely pornography intended (mostly) for female use. The intense violence does not feel wrong because it is not being done to human persons but to depersonalized humans, virtual corpses.

Since pornography breaks the first rule of morality toward other humans and objectifies them and takes away their personhood, in the moral universe of pornography violence and death are merely the logical extension of taking pleasure in the objectification of humans.

Moral self-creation

I think it was Christopher Hitchens who said that he cannot see an American woman without imagining her lips around his own penis. This is a good illustration of what pornography does to our psychology.

Moral self-creation refers to the fact that every time we treat a fellow human in a certain way, this reflects back on us and changes who we are. Every time you treat some cruelly, this feeds back into your own internal universe and changes you. You create yourself morally by the way you treat others.

We cannot treat other humans in a moral vacuum. Every choice we make toward others is always associated with a moral cost or benefit. You can justify to yourself that a particular person deserves cruelty; they have done you harm and they have no sympathy or mercy toward you. Yet the moment you perform an act of cruelty toward them, you feel yourself lessened and damaged by this. The Islamic theologian Ibn Taymiyya took note of this when he said:

No one has ever taken revenge for himself except that it created in him a degradation and humiliation in his psyche, because revenge looks like strength and power on the outside but on the inside it is degradation and humiliation, while forgiveness creates strength and power both on the inside and out.

By harming us, a person damages their own internal universe. Taking revenge on them only causes damage in the other direction; in our own internal universe. Revenge can taste sweet to the animal in us, but to the person in us, it is always a degradation.

I call this moral self-creation. You create yourself morally by the way you treat others. Every one of your actions feeds back into yourself and changes you. And if the action is immoral; if you break Kant’s categorical imperative and treat other humans the way you do not like to be treated yourself, you degrade yourself. No reasoning or pretense can undo this damage. The person in you only knows and recognizes itself according to the way it treats other persons. You cannot say to yourself, “I utterly damaged this person but I cut off myself from the consequences.” The very knowledge that you damaged a person makes you recognize yourself, see yourself and feel yourself as the person who did that damage.

This is why our guilt follows us around and does not leave us. The guilt is the recognition of the damage you have done to yourself. You mutilate your spirit by every damage you do to another person. The mutilation remains and cannot be erased except by treating other persons in a better way. Every treatment of others creates you morally. You are the architect of your spirit by the way you treat others. Your guilt is the recognition that you damaged this architecture. And the only way to undo it is by doing what is necessary to rebuild it and improve it. Reasoning to yourself and justifying things to yourself does absolutely nothing to your spirit’s architecture. It will lay in tatters and ruins until you learn that you have no access to this architecture. You have no key to it; it is closed to you. It is only open to others: only others can take away your guilt by the way you treat them. Other persons are the only key to our spirit; the way we treat them feeds back into it and changes it.

Pornography involves treating other humans as if they were merely animals. It is the worst degradation of a human’s personhood that can be imagined. We tear apart their dual nature, the animal and the person, throw away the person, and enjoy the animal. Since pornography generally involves pictures and videos created by others, we can delude ourselves into thinking that there is no harm in it; the wrong was done by others, not us. Pornography can even be computer-generated, so where is the harm in that?

The problem is that the process of moral self-creation is always in force in us. Even if you reason to yourself that no one is harmed in that picture or video, you are harmed. You recognize yourself as a user and degrader of other humans. You are willing to treat other humans as animals and this knowledge feeds back into you. Your spirit does not understand your reasoning that no one is harmed and has no use for it. It only recognizes that you are a human who uses other humans. You are willing to enjoy the tearing apart of humans from their personhood, you are willing to objectify and use them. The treatment of other persons in pornography, even if computer-generated, makes the architecture of your internal universe open up and take in the damage.

Afterwards you feel guilt. You recognize that you have been lessened and degraded. Your guilt is the pain you feel at the damage you have done to yourself. You have gone from a person existing in the warmth and dignity of human society to something less. You recognize the infinite worth and dignity of other humans, and by transgressing against this recognition, you feel that you are unworthy of human society. You feel that the persons around you, your mother and father for example, are giants, whole universes, but you yourself, by partaking in a dehumanizing, dirty and furtive pleasure, are something less. You are a damaged and polluted universe that cries out to become whole again.

Sinking into obscenity

A pornography addict will one day discover that they live in a new world. They may have a memory of the warmth and innocence of the world of their childhood. But everything is now harsh and cold. They feel alienated from their fellow humans and from their societies. Family life, love, the beauty and solemnity of classical literature, all these things seem to them to exist in a different reality that is closed to them.

By making it a habit to depersonalize other humans, the pornography addict can no longer relate to other humans with solemnity and seriousness. They feel that we are all animals pretending to be something more. The daily experience of pornography constantly reinforces this animal view of humanity. Morality starts to feel like a pretense. They become cynical and in social situations such as family gatherings they feel that they are only playing a part assigned to them by “society”.

This cynical view also pervades their relationships. The male pornography addict cannot enjoy the innocence of love; of treating a woman as if she is the most important person in their world. She is just a body and personality with various failings and annoying habits. Opening his heart to her and treating her as if she is more than an animal feels strange and unusual.

Pornography equalizes all humans into a new world order of bodies. One body can be as good as another for satisfying one’s needs. But love and romance require treating a person as if they are infinitely worthy and irreplaceable. The “morality” that pornography teaches is entirely opposed to the morality of love. The two cannot coexist.

Lust and erotic love

Lust is obscene while erotic love is beautiful–even though they both involve sexual desire. Lust is depersonalized sexual desire; lust directed at someone does not care for their uniqueness and personhood. A man who lusts after Elizabeth can be be satisfied with an equally attractive Jane. But erotic love is directed at a specific person; a man who is in love with Elizabeth and desires her will not be satisfied by any other woman of equal attractiveness.

Erotic love allows us to engage in sexuality while remaining fully human. We continue to see the other human as a person even during sexual intimacy.

But lust is inhuman and bestial. It is the fact of one animal desiring another. Obviously pornography can only stimulate and celebrate lust. It is impossible to connect with the depicted person on human terms, person-to-person. And by training us to relate lustfully to fellow humans, this becomes the rule in our minds. Like Christopher Hitchens, we see every attractive person as a potential actor or actress in a pornographic scene.

Masturbation

Masturbation is one of the obscene pleasures that is very often associated with pornography. I consider masturbation obscene for two reasons. First, it nearly always involves the fantasy of using another human for one’s own pleasure–a human that cannot answer back. It lacks the aspect of the union of two conscious and willing first-person perspectives that is the gold-standard of non-obscene sexuality.

Second, it involves the aspect of a first-person perspective turning to itself; using its own body as if the human is merely a body. There is no respect for personhood involved; the human and its personhood turns to its own body, treating themselves as if they are something to be used. It is a form of self-use that is quite similar to, if not the same as, using another’s body for pleasure without respect for their personhood. It is in a way self-rape.

This then brings us into the strange reality that a person’s own body is forbidden territory to themselves. This is strange, but even if you reject the above argument, you can still feel the reality of it: masturbation is always associated with a sense of shame, loss and degradation once the pleasure is over. It is a form of lusting after one’s own body: a body with no humanity, a body that cannot answer back; a corpse.

Masturbation is therefore an attack on a human’s personhood. It makes no difference that in this case the attack is against oneself.

Note that I don’t believe masturbation is forbidden in Islam. It seems to be a personal choice to me. Read more here: Masturbation is not clearly forbidden or allowed in Islam

Recovering from obscenity

I have heard Western men say that they see themselves as mere children in comparison with their grandfathers and ancestors. Looking at pictures of these solemn ancient men, they cannot help but feel their own inadequacy.

I believe that it is our pornographic culture that has filled the West with men who feel degraded in comparison to their ancestors. There can be no sense of solemnity and greatness in a person who has habituated themselves to obscenity.

It is only by following the iron rule of Kant’s categorical imperative in our lives that we can maintain a sense of our infinite worth and dignity as humans. And this means turning away from the obscene in all things. By treating fellow humans as infinitely worthy, this treatment feeds back into our own internal universe and rebuilds its architecture into something solemn and beautiful.

A man who follows this rule in his life will feel no inadequacy in comparison to his ancestors. He will in fact feel in a position to critique them as his equals. Through moral self-creation, a man has the chance to enlarge himself until he towers over all of his ancestors.

IslamQA: The difference between sexual fantasies and reading erotic novels

Assalamualaikum, I read your answers for not reading any erotica in novels but how is this different from it being okay for young persons to have sexual fantasies as another question determined? Jzk

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

The difference is that sexual fantasies are a consequence of a natural hormonal state. Since God does not burden us with what we cannot bear, if a person’s physiological state makes them think sexual thoughts then we do not find anything morally wrong with that.

But when it comes to erotic novels the line of causation is in the opposite direction. The person uses it as a tool to stimulate themselves sexually (similar to using pornography), so it has to be dealt with separately from sexual fantasies.

As for why reading erotica is “wrong”, the reasoning is complicated and philosophical. Reading erotica is a form of voyeurism where a third-person perspective is introduced into a sexual act. For human sexuality to be non-obscene, it must always involve the union of two first-person perspectives. The third-person perspective is always obscene (as argued by Roger Scruton in his 1986 book Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation).

But even if someone does not understand these arguments, we still have a natural instinct that allows us to tell the obscene from the non-obscene, which is why things like pornography and erotica are always associated with guilt and shame even among people who have had a completely non-religious upbringing.

A sexual fantasy can also be obscene if the person imagines themselves watching others having sex. It is just that due to the difficulty of controlling one’s mind when a person is naturally sexually aroused, we can excuse it. But a person who wishes to always live up to highest ideals will do their best to avoid obscene fantasies.

IslamQA: On how to stop masturbating

Assalamu alaikum, can i ask on how to stop masturbating? Ive tried and stopped for a week, but then i accidentally started again. Repetitively failing to control myself had me felt useless, and ive starting to lose hope with myself. Thank you for your consideration.

Your ability to control your impulses only matures after the age of 25, since this is when brain development completes. Before this age it is always going to be difficult to control your impulses. Since masturbation is such an easy source of getting an intense climax, it is going to be difficult to resist for many people.

The way to stop masturbating is to realize that your will power will likely not be able to resist it, so the solution is to make it difficult and inconvenient to masturbate, for example by not living alone, by spending your time with other people, and by spending time outside. Rather than staying home, go to a library to do your reading or studies.

And rather than losing hope when you again succumb to it, use it to motivate yourself to do good deeds. God says:

... good deeds take away the bad deeds. This is a reminder for those who remember.

The Quran, verse 11:114

So to make up for it, make it a rule that every time you do it, afterwards you will spend 30 minutes reading Quran (as an example).

Additionally, the closer you are to God the easier it becomes to resist temptations. You cannot stay close to God unless you do the daily work needed to maintain this closeness. I recommend spending at least an hour a day reading the Quran for the rest of your life. This is the best way to maintain a high level of faith and piety and resist sins.

For more on masturbation please see: Masturbation is not clearly forbidden or allowed in Islam

IslamQA: The rule on writing sexually explicit materials in Islam

Assalamu Alaikum brother, I just wanted to ask if u have any advice how writers or artists can avoid 'fahisha' in their work. When I write fiction I avoid writing about Islam bc I don't want to mix that which is made up with the truth. At the same time I don't want to represent lewd ideas in my writing but since that is a grey area I dont know how to go about it.

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

One rule of thumb is to ask yourself if you would be ashamed to read what you wrote in front of your family and other Muslims you respect. If you think they would find it shocking and unacceptable, then that is a strong indication that you should change it. However, sometimes people find something unacceptable just because they cannot fully understand it. So think of an imaginary pious Muslim who is as intelligent and well-educated as yourself. Would they consider your creation wholesome and justified or questionable? If you are not sure about a certain passage or story, show it to someone whose opinion you respect and find out what they have to say about it.

So there are no strict rules on this. Sometimes you have to write about seemingly lewd things to make a beneficial point. Check out the chapter on Islam and sexuality in my new book An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Understanding Islam and Muslims to get an idea about how a Muslim can write about sexually explicit topics (you can download it for free here).

IslamQA: Why are we supposed to control our sexual desires in Islam?

Why do we have to suppress our sexual desires in Islam? I'm unmarried and always have sexual thoughts, but in Islam we're told masturbation is haram and that we should fast to control our desires. It just doesn't seem fair to those who are struggling to find someone.

Masturbation is not clearly forbidden as I explain here. And sexual fantasies are not sinful as I explain here.

The reason we have to control our sexual desires is so that we can satisfy them in civilized, rather than destructive, ways. We do not want our societies to descend into being like jungles where everyone has sex with everyone else. Even though some may imagine a sexual utopia where everyone is free to do whatever they want with their sexuality, that does not lead to happiness. It actually creates a hellish world that is devoid of love and the warmth of human interactions. The British philosopher Roger Scruton speaks of this in detail in his important 1986 book Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation.

If you are interested in reading more about this please check out the chapter “Women and Sexuality in Islam” from my new book An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Understanding Islam and Muslims (you can download the book for free here).

IslamQA: Sexual fantasies in Islam

What is your advice for young people struggling with sexual daydreams?

The Prophet, peace be upon him, says:

God has pardoned for my community what comes to their mind, so long as they do not act or pronounce words to that effect. (Sunan Abi Dawud 2209, various forms of this hadith are also present al-Bukhari, Muslim and others)

Sexual fantasies are a natural consequence of having high levels of sex hormones. They are not sinful in themselves, but they can lead to sinful behavior. If they become a nuisance then fasting or reducing calorie intake is said to help. You can also search for “how to lower sex drive” and many articles will come up on dealing with an overactive sex drive.

And if they are causing you to do sinful things then this answer may help: What is the best way to avoid habitual sins?

Best wishes.

IslamQA: Are sexual and homosexual fantasies forbidden in Islam?

Is it haram to think about sexual things without acting upon them? What about homosexual thoughts?

The Prophet, peace be upon him, says:

God has pardoned for my community what comes to their mind, so long as they do not act or pronounce words to that effect. (Sunan Abi Dawud 2209, various forms of this hadith are also present al-Bukhari, Muslim and others)

However, as Muslims we should always aim high and try to do what is most admirable. Your goal should be to try to understand God and to work to become the type of person that is most pleasing to Him. From this perspective you can then judge for yourself what thoughts are good and what thoughts are not.

IslamQA: Is reading erotica permitted in Islam?

I wanted to know if it’s haram to read smut and if so what are the punishments for it.

The seeking of any form of sexual pleasure outside the context of erotic love between married couples is either forbidden or in a gray area in Islamic law. The Quran says, in its description of pious people:

29. And those who guard their chastity.

30. Except from their spouses or those whose right hands possess, for then they are free of blame.

31. But whoever seeks to go beyond that—these are the transgressors.1

For a person who seeks to please God to the utmost, “whoever seeks to go beyond that” would be sufficient to make them stay away from all forms of sexual pleasure that is not within the context of marriage. However, it could be argued that reading erotica is merely a pleasure of the mind and has no connection with one’s chastity.

The Quran also contains many admonishments regarding the avoidance of fāḥshāʾ (as in verses 7:28, 16:90 and 24:21), which is translated as “indecency” by Arberry, “all that is shameful” by Muhammad Asad and “lewdness” by Pickthall. Personally I prefer to translate it as “engaging in obscenity”. To engage in obscenity, according to the British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton in his Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation, is to engage in any act in which humans are not treated as persons, but as bodies. Pornography is obscene, and watching it is an obscene act, because in it we see humans not as honored persons, but as mere bodies that one looks at for pleasure. Pornography reduces humans to zoo animals that we enjoy looking at; their humanity is taken away from them.

Humans know naturally that pornography is obscene, they also know that obscenity is harmful and repulsive. Even the most irreligious and progressive families would not find it acceptable to sit down as a family to watch a pornographic film, even if every member of the family is an adult. There is something “gross” about a family doing that even if no one is harmed in production of the film (if it is an animation) and even if they all get sexual pleasure from watching it. The grossness comes from the fact that we humans are subjects, rather than objects, and we have a natural tendency to find it repulsive when other humans, even imaginary ones, are treated as mere bodies, commodities to be enjoyed rather than persons to be interacted with and respected.

Sexual pleasure is only wholesome when it is between two subjects who continue to respect each other as persons during the act, with neither person using the other as a merely instrument of pleasure. Wholesome sexual pleasure is interpersonal, it is between two persons who respect one another. Enjoying pornography is not interpersonal, it is lust aimed at an object that cannot answer back.

If it can be agreed that something constitutes fāḥisha, then this would make it one of those things forbidden by the Quran. In Scruton’s view voyeurism (taking pleasure in watching others engage in sexual intimacy) is obscene, because it does not involve the interpersonal, social aspect that is present in sexual intimacy between a married couple. Reading an erotic novel or story is voyeurism through text, one takes pleasure in imagining others engage in sexual intimacy.

In the example of the family that sits down to watch pornography, what they are engaging in is voyeurism. They are subjects who take pleasure in something that does not look back at them. The all-important interpersonal element is taken out of the sexual act. The result is that the family members cannot respect each other anymore. When they all, together, take sexual pleasure in dehumanized human bodies, in humans treated like animals used for pleasure, it is only a very small leap of the imagination to transfer this way of thinking to each other. The son will no longer respect his father, his attitude toward him will be, “Why should I consider myself bound by an duty toward you when you and I treat other humans as mere bodies? You too are merely a body. For me to respect you, prove to me that you are more than a body. But you yourself treat other humans as mere bodies, therefore you cannot prove that to me.” Such thoughts would of course take time to develop. The family’s feeling at first would be that they are only keeping up a pretense by respecting each other like before. Slowly the respect will break down. This does not only apply to sexual morality but to all forms of morality; a family involved in any form of crime that objectifies and dehumanizes people (say a kidnapping business) is going to suffer an equal break down in respect for one another. Many Hollywood films glorify that lives of criminals, telling us that they are really good people on the inside. That has nothing to do with reality. A person who commits crimes against people is dehumanizing them, and by extension dehumanizes everyone around him. A mugger is much more likely to also be a rapist, as statistics show, because the two crimes come from the same mindset: the mindset of seeing other humans as instruments for gain and pleasure, rather than as honored persons. A mugger who dehumanizes a man by forcibly taking his wallet from him is equally capable of dehumanizing a woman by violating her sexually. In both cases, he is simply treating other humans not as subjects to be honored, but as objects that can be acted upon.

The problem with obscene pleasures is that they degrade us, taking us from the world of humans to the world of animals, from the warm world of wholesome society to the cold, harsh underworld of the criminal. A person who has been watching a pornographic film or reading an erotic novel for 30 minutes will feel out of place, like a stranger, if they were to go sit down in a social gathering. Obscene pleasures always involve dehumanizing others, while in society we are supposed to treat others as humans. There is a deep conflict between these two modes of interaction. That person who has been enjoying humans as objects for the past 30 minutes is now going to feel like he is only maintaining a pretense by treating the humans around him as subjects.

It will require a long essay to fully clarify the conflict between high human society and the underworld of obscenity. Those interested can read Scruton’s book. Back to the question of erotic writings, personally I consider it an obscene pleasure. It contains an element of fāḥshāʾ (obscenity), meaning that the general Quranic prohibition on engaging in fāḥshāʾ applies to it. The point of an erotic book is to help you gain sexual gratification by imagining that you are looking at other humans having sex. It is pornography without pictures, and everything that applies to pornography applies to it. Taking pleasure in erotica is a disguised form of voyeurism.

Voyeurism is evil because it is a violation of the sanctity of the human. In voyeurism a person takes pleasure in only part of a human; a full human is a subject who can look back at you, who is free and who is honored by God. But the human that is the object of voyeurism is a human that is cut apart; we are no longer interested in their souls but only in their bodies and their physical sensations. The sanctity of human life requires that we treat them as subjects and only take pleasure in them with their consent. In voyeurism, this sanctity is violated, the human is taken pleasure in without their opinion being asked, without their involvement as free-willed partakers in the act of the voyeur’s sexual gratification. The voyeur looks at a woman and takes sexual pleasure in her without caring whether she is a murderer or a good person, that part of her is destroyed by voyeurism, she is no longer really a human. And she cannot look back at the voyeur, for the voyeur she is an object. Now in production of erotica no one is harmed. The harm is to the reader alone, because by engaging in fantasy voyeurism, he sinks more and more into the underworld of obscenity where humans are mere objects and where all morality and respect and duty are mere pretenses.

You meet many such people on the Internet. They have no respect for their families because to them each family member is like an animal in human form. They do not consider their father or mother intrinsically worthy of respect; they have to earn that respect by titillating this sunken person’s ego and desires. They do not believe in duties, they believe that they should do anything they can get away with to get the maximum pleasure they can get. I believe that the whole culture of the West is experiencing this sunken-ness to some degree. You cannot mention social duties and responsibilities to most people without them becoming almost violently hostile. To a sunken person society is just an ATM to take resources from and has no rights of its own. For them society is just a collection of objects who should be used for the maximum pleasure and profits. It is not a collection of subjects who have to be honored as sacred and inviolable persons.

There is no punishment specified for engaging in voyeurism as far as I am aware. A person who engages in it is doing something degrading to himself, and he is harming his relationship with God by doing something He disapproves of. The enjoyment of any form of obscene pleasure goes against true piety and fear of God. But if someone is overcome by desire (as in the case of someone who cannot avoid masturbation) into doing it, then it is not a big deal. They can repent and go on with their lives. God does not ask us to be have super-human self-control. But those who have sufficient self-control to avoid an obscene pleasure, and who know full well that it is something God disapproves of, then if they do engage in it, they degrade themselves greatly in the sight of God.

There is no obvious “harm” in a man admiring a woman’s picture, or in a person reading a sexually suggestive story. The harm is not in the act in itself, but in its effects on the person’s relationship with the humans around him/her and with God. It is a slippery slope whose harms can take years to become appreciable. The more we engage in obscenity, the more anti-social we become, the more we feel as if we are merely pretending to be moral and upright in society, and even worse, we start to believe everyone around us is also just pretending. For a person seeking a meaningful life, engaging in obscenity leads to a sense of loneliness and disengagement with those around them. The warmth of human society leaves their lives; sex in its physicality becomes paramount, they start to see the humans around them as objects rather than persons. It becomes difficult to respect even their own parents when they start to see them as mere animals with sex organs rather than seeing them as honored persons. Obscenity forces an animalistic, sunken worldview that is directly in conflict with maintaining a human society in which people are honored.

Reading one or five erotic novels may have no appreciable harm on a person. But they shouldn’t be surprised if this makes them less honoring and respectful towards those around them, and if those around them start to develop a dislike for them in return. And they shouldn’t be surprised if they start to feel as if they are living a lie, as if they are only pretending to be moral. It is impossible to maintain one’s inner sense of moral dignity while engaging in obscenity in private, because the two things contradict one another.

IslamQA: Why is sexual harassment of women common in Muslim countries? IQ and development, not religion

What I have noticed is that in Muslim countries in which there are more modest woman I get more catcalls, harassment, men following me, staring at my body parts etc. I'm not saying I'm for zina, but it feels unfair that they take out their sexual frustration on us. Maybe you're not able to relate to this, but every day I feel dirty. Even covered. Imagine people saying filthy stuff about your private parts, touching your etc. In countries where sex is more normal I haven't encountered this

Sorry to read that, and I hope it gets better for you. I am actually very familiar with this problem, having spent my teenage years in a large Middle Eastern city (Sulaimaniyyah, Iraq).

This appears to be a matter of intelligence and culture and not religion or sexual frustration. In the United States, catcalls and harassment are common in ghettos and trailer parks, where the lower class lives, even though they have as much sex as anyone else and probably more than the middle class.

Lower class people often think catcalls and harassment are fine, this has been my experience with the lower class whether in Iraq or in the United States. By “lower class” I do not mean poor, I mean those who are unintelligent, rude and uneducated and proud of the way they are. They are generally poor and live ghettos and slums, but their being lower class is not due to their poverty, it is due to low IQ and a lack of devotion to any belief system.

In a country like the US the lower class is very well separated from the middle class. The middle class live in certain neighborhoods, the lower class live miles away in a different part of town. In this way the two classes rarely run into each other. The middle class can go shopping, get their errands done, go to work, do everything they want and go home without having to run into the lower class, in this way they can avoid the bad manners of the lower class.

In the Middle East, the classes are not very well separated in general. There are market districts where everyone goes, so that the classes constantly run into each other, and this is why it is hard for someone like you to avoid the type of man you are referring to. As these countries develop, the separation of the middle class and the lower class should increase, and with it the ability to avoid lower class men.

If you want to know whether the problem is Islam or something else, compare the country you are in with a non-Muslim country that has similar average intelligence (IQ) and similar levels of development. Egypt has an average IQ of about 83, similar to the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. I doubt women will fair much better in these two countries compared to Egypt when it comes to harassment.

The people in Egypt (and in the USA) who harass and catcall are not doctors and engineers, they are uneducated. And if you look at the middle class of the USA or Egypt, they are both equally good-mannered in general. I went to one of the top schools of my country in Iraq for high school, where boys and girls were mixed. Since everyone was middle class or upper class, everyone was perfectly good-mannered, not because we had Western-style sexual freedom (we did not), but because we all came from an intelligent and good-mannered section of society.

Instead of Islam being a cause for sexual harassment, it might be acting as a great limiter on it. If these societies abandoned Islam, the problem might get much worse. In the non-Muslim African country of Botswana (70% Christian), in 2010, 92 out of 100,000 women had been raped. In the Muslim African country of Senegal, that rate was 5.6 out of 100,000 women in 2010, 16 times lower. These two countries are not exactly comparable, due to different IQs and levels of development, but this should give people, especially Christian Westerners, pause when they try to blame Islam for the Middle East’s problems. A woman in non-Muslim Botswana is 16 times more likely to get raped than in Muslim Senegal, so it logically follows that Islam might possibly be having a beneficial effect in reducing rape.

I have never met a devout Muslim male who thinks it is acceptable to harass women. One could in fact say that the problem of these Muslim countries is that they have large non-Muslim underclasses, people who are Muslim by name but do not follow it in any manner in their lives (except when it comes to arranging weddings and funerals). A devout Muslim, no matter how sexually frustrated, would never catcall a woman, because they have sufficient self-respect and empathy to know that it is against good manners and civility to do that.

If a practicing Muslim is 100 times less likely to harass women compared to a non-practicing Muslim who knows nearly nothing about Islam and does not follow it, it is only logical to conclude that practicing Islam helps reduce sexual harassment, and that abandoning Islam will almost certainly make the problem much worse. It is the underclass that has abandoned Islam in all but name in the Middle East that is largely responsible for the harassment problem.

What you could possibly do is try to avoid such people, such as by shopping at malls instead of at shopping districts. If you can get a car and stick to the middle class areas of town, then you may run into them less often.

A certain level of intelligence is necessary for a man to have sufficient empathy for women to realize that harassing them is a really nasty thing to do. For this reason in well-developed high IQ countries like Japan (non-Muslim) and Malaysia (Muslim), women are far safer from harassment compared to undeveloped low IQ countries, whether non-Muslim or Muslim, where the men, due to their lack of intellectual capacity and empathy, are more likely to act according to their animal instincts without caring about their social responsibility or the psychological trauma they inflict on women.

Below is a table that lists countries from the highest IQ (Hong Kong) to lowest. You will notice that the highest IQ countries (those on the left) are generally the countries where women enjoy the most respect.

This table does not show the IQ of everyone in each country. It shows the average IQ, meaning the average person you meet will have this IQ, but there will be many people with higher and lower IQs. Countries with higher average IQs will have larger middle class populations, for example in the Netherlands, 50% or more of the population will have “middle class” values and manners. In India, where the average IQ is 81, the percentage of the population that will have middle class values and manners might be 15% of the population. This means that in India it is far more likely to run into men who think harassing women is OK than you would be if you were in the Netherlands.

Malaysia, with its average IQ of 92, is somewhere in the middle. Women will not be as free from harassment as they would be in the Netherlands, but they would fair much better than they would if they were in Egypt or India.

IQ might be the most significant factor, but it is not the only factor that affects these things. Testosterone levels may also play an important role, and perhaps more important than all of these is cultural and religious values. A truly devout Muslim (or Christian) man is not going to harass women even if they have a low IQ and a strong desire to do so, because their religious values will help them override their animal desires.

IslamQA: “How to avoid sexual desires?”

How to avoid sexual desires? (i'm a girl)

We all have sexual desires and there is no way to completely stop them. There is nothing wrong with sexual desire as long as it does not cause you to sin. If your sexual desire is difficult to manage, you can weaken it with fasting or dieting. You can also google “how to reduce libido” to find more suggestions.

From an Islamic perspective, the closer you are to God, the easier it is to avoid sins and obey Him. For advice on making it easier to avoid sins, please see my answers Islamic Strategies for Escaping a Sinful Life and God has not abandoned you.

IslamQA: Masturbation is not clearly forbidden or allowed in Islam

The generally accepted principle of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) is that when it comes to enjoying sexual pleasure, everything is forbidden unless it is explicitly allowed. The Quran’s general teaching on sexuality is that Muslims should “guard their privates” except when taking pleasure in the context of a religiously sanctioned intimate relationship.

A strict interpretation of this verse is that all sexual pleasure is forbidden unless it is had with a spouse. A non-strict interpretation is that all sexual intercourse is forbidden unless it is had with a spouse, which means that masturbation is not included in the prohibition.

The Quran never mentions masturbation, so we cannot use it to reach a final judgment. As for hadith, there isn’t a single authentic narration that mentions masturbation1, therefore hadith cannot help us either in reaching a definitive judgment.

ʿAmr bin Dīnār, one of the Tabiʿīn (belonging to the generations that came after the Companions) and a hadith and fiqh scholar says, “I see no issue with masturbation.”2 Jābir bin Zayd, known by the nickname Abu l-Shaʿthā, student of the Companion Ibn ʿAbbās [ra] also says he sees no problem with it.3 Ibn ʿAbbās says that marriage is better than masturbation, and masturbation is better than fornication.4. Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, founder of the Ḥanbalī school of fiqh, says there is no issue with it.5

The most famous scholar to permit masturbation was al-Shawkānī (d. 1839 CE), a widely respected reformer and revivalist. While he ruled that masturbation is permitted in Islam without conditions (other scholars have said that there are conditions needed to make it permissible, but al-Shawkānī says no conditions are needed), he says:

There is no doubt that engaging in this act is a flaw (in one's character), a show of a lack of self-respect, and a show of abasement in manners and a lack of willpower.

He criticizes the act, but says there isn’t sufficient evidence to forbid it.

In the modern world, the Moroccan scholar Abdel-Bari Zamzami (d. 2016 CE) allowed masturbation for men and women, saying that since it helps one avoid illicit sexual acts, and since there is no clear evidence that it is forbidden, permitting it is more beneficial than forbidding it.

The Mālikī and Shāfiʿī schools say that masturbation is forbidden.

Making sense of the situation

What scholars have often done is try to take the vagueness out of the Islamic texts by enforcing their own interpretations, either saying masturbation is a sin, or saying that there is nothing wrong with it. Both of these approaches ignore an important teaching of the Prophet ﷺ in dealing with vagueness in religious matters, expressed in this hadith narration from Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim:

Allah's Messenger PBUH addressed us and said: O people, Allah has made Hajj obligatory for you; so perform Hajj. Thereupon a person said: Messenger of Allah, (is it to be performed) every year? He (the Holy Prophet) kept quiet, and he repeated (these words) thrice, whereupon Allah's Messenger PBUH said: If I were to say" Yes," it would become obligatory (for you to perform it every year) and you would not be able to do it. Then he said: Leave me with what I have left to you, for those who were before you were destroyed because of excessive questioning, and their opposition to their apostles. So when I command you to do anything, do it as much as it lies in your power and when I forbid you to do anything, then abandon it.6

The above narration can be considered support in favor of silence over the issue of masturbation.The Quran and the Sunnah do not explicitly prohibit it, and they do not explicitly allow it, leaving it in a gray area, therefore Muslims should neither condemn masturbation, nor should they promote it.

To a pious person who is eager to please God, the meaning of these things is as follows:

  1. It is not important enough to be explicitly forbidden or allowed by God and His Prophet PBUH.
  2. Every Muslim’s aim should be to avoid it if they can, since true love and fear of God means that a person should avoid everything that has even the slightest possibility of displeasing Him.
  3. If someone is overwhelmed by desire into doing it, or cannot control their impulses so that they habitually do it, they should not obsess about, they should repent and go on with their lives, knowing that what they have done is a small lapse in manners, rather than a crime.

The Issue of Corporealization

Humans have a built-in revulsion toward masturbation due to the fact that it is a corporealizing act; it places focus on the human body in its physicality; it reduces a human to a mere animal, making a human’s individuality irrelevant during the act. Masturbation has little to do with sexual intimacy between two humans who love one another and who continue to see each other as individuals (rather than mere bodies) throughout the sexual act. Masturbation is obscene, it can never be made respectable or acceptable in society. For more on this, please see my essay:

The Philosophy of Pornography and Masturbation

It would be quite wrong to assume that Islamically ruling that masturbation is not prohibited would lead to an epidemic of masturbation throughout the Islamic world. It would probably not make the slightest difference in that regard (because humans are genetically inclined to feel disgust at masturbation and other corporealizing sexual acts); it would only reduce the feelings of guilt of those who already do it.

Masturbation, teenagers and scholarly humility

Teenagers, especially teenage boys, have heightened sexual desire while also having poor impulse control, since the brain’s prefrontal cortex does not finish developing until after the age of 25. These two factors (increased sexual desire, low ability to control urges) can make it very difficult for them to avoid masturbation. Making teenagers feel bad about masturbation is a short-sighted and destructive thing. It only serves to decrease these teenagers’ religious self-esteem, making them feel as if they will never be good Muslims, since they are supposedly committing a great sin and cannot stop themselves.

The result is that these teenagers start to think of Islam as an outdated and cruel religion that is asking them to do the impossible.

The balanced approach is to tell teenagers that it is best if they avoid it since it is in a gray area, while also telling them that it is not clearly forbidden, therefore if they cannot help themselves and end up doing it, they should not obsess about it, but repent and go on with their lives.

Rather than making baseless statements about masturbation, saying it is allowed or saying it is forbidden, we must acknowledge the vagueness of the Islamic texts on this issue, while also respecting the wisdom of the scholars and human nature in their dislike for it.

Conclusion

Different stages of growth and different life circumstances affect a person’s desire for masturbation. Depression, loneliness and a lack of social interaction, for example, makes it more likely that a person will want to masturbate, and not just among humans. I have seen many articles mention that monkeys in captivity masturbate, but those who live in the wild do not.

Most of our scholars consider masturbation an undignified act that a self-respecting person would not do. While they are right about this when it comes to themselves, they should have empathy for younger people living in very different circumstances and subject to far stronger sexual desires and a lower ability to control their impulses due to the fact that their brain development is not complete. Instead of asking the impossible of young people, of having perfect control over their desires like the scholars themselves, they should treat them with kindness and forgiveness, telling them that there is a consensus among Muslims that masturbation is not a dignified thing to do, but that Islam does not clearly forbid it, and that as people age, it becomes easier to avoid it.

IslamQA: Islamic Strategies for Escaping a Sinful Life

19 year old boy here. It's a serious issue but I'll keep it short. I was exposed to pornography at a very young age and I still haven't been able to get over it. And then came the time when I could mingle with the opposite sex and actually do things and since then I haven't been able to stop myself from committing zina. I've barely started to learn Islam but my imaan was a little stable in a few days and I did not do it in a long time. But it ate me from inside. Please help me

Continuing from above, I fear Allah swt but it does not remain constant to me. I’m very helpless and I do not know what to do. I keep doing it. My sexual desire overcomes it and I feel guilty then as usual. I know I’m doing a very horrible sin but I’m really in a position of a porn addict. And if I haven’t asked you the previous thing anonymously then please don’t answer to that? I’m in deep trouble and want my sins to be discreet obviously. Please help me. Jazakallahu khair

I cannot look at myself in the mirror. I desired to be a very influential Muslim and truth in my heart but this major sin inside me is eating me. I’m very frustrated and unable to do anything and I feel horribly ashamed to offer my namaz. Please help me. I’ve asked you around three questions cuz there was a word limit and I hope I get help from Allah swt through you!

No matter how great your sins are, God’s mercy is greater. The greatest sin of all is to lose hope in His mercy and to stop offering the obligatory prayers and performing other obligatory deeds. Regardless of how you feel, this is a duty you cannot ignore. Continue asking for His forgiveness. Even if you fail ten thousand times, He has the power to forgive you more times than that.

At the age of 19 your brain development is not complete. It only completes after the age of 25. What this means is that you have poor impulse control, because of no fault of your own, because the prefrontal cortex of the brain has not completed developing, which is the part of the brain that enables us to control our emotions and impulses.

Trying to make yourself stop engaging in those sins while they are easily available, and while your brain development has not completed, might be asking the impossible. It is like putting a child in a room full of candy and asking them not to eat any. It is an unfair test, because they haven’t developed the ability to control their impulses yet. The same may apply to you.

Think of your desires as an enemy. You cannot defeat it directly, because you do not have the power yet. You must defeat it indirectly. Instead of putting yourself in a test that you are unable to pass, you must avoid the test altogether. This is done by making it impossible to engage in those sins. If you live somewhere where you have easy access to women to sleep with, move somewhere else. Move to a different country if you have to.

If you are sincere in wanting to win this battle, you must do what it takes, even if it requires much work and hardship. Consider it your hijrah. You do not yet have full control over your desires, therefore you must not put your hopes in learning a magical way of overcoming them. You must instead use your intelligence and planning ability to find ways of making it impossible to engage in those sins. Since I do not know your exact situation, I cannot tell you what the best plan for you is. Any plan that requires you to have significant control over your impulses will most likely fail. The plan must take impulse out of the equation by making the sins impossible. For example, if you could join an Islamic educational establishment in a faraway country or area that does not have internet or cell phone coverage, then in that situation avoiding sinning would probably become very easy for you, and you would be able to focus on worshiping God and getting yourself educated about Islam.

Part of the solution could be to get married, even if your family think you are too young, since avoiding major sins is more important. Ibn Masud (companion of the Prophet, peace be upon him) says that even if he had ten days to live in this world, if he was afraid his sexual desire would cause him to sin, he would do his best to get married. You may be able to find a woman who understands your problem and helps you find ways of overcoming it.

You could also go to a pious person at a local mosque, perhaps the imam, and share with them your problem. Maybe they will be able to help you by getting you involved in certain activities, or helping you move somewhere where you can fight your desires more easily. Sharing your problem with others is difficult, since it will go against your pride and self-respect. But you must give more value to avoiding your sinful life, even if this requires that you expose yourself to highly uncomfortable situations.

If you are unable to find a successful plan for making it impossible for yourself to sin, then know that as you grow older your ability to control your impulses will grow. After 25 it will become much easier for you to avoid sins related to sexual desire. Therefore this should be your back-up plan; if everything else fails, hold on to your faith until it becomes easier to resist your sins. Continue to read as much Quran as you can, try to memorize it, perform all the voluntary prayers including tahajjud, constantly read Islamic books, and if you sin, repent, purify yourself and go back to worship as soon as you can, thinking of it as a temporary interruption in your life of worship, until God helps you completely avoid it.

Continue planning against your desires and praying day and night for God’s help, until He gives you a solution sooner or later. If you sincerely ask of Him and seek Him with everything you have, then He will forgive you and answer you.

Satan will constantly tell you that you are worthless and that you should give up hope. You must fight his whispers and know that there is no solution for you in this world except to seek God, regardless of how sinful and worthless you feel. It is only He who forgives sins.

There is no safety from [God’s punishment] except through taking refuge in Him. (The Quran, verse 9:118)

God knows you better than yourself, and He understands what you go through. If you are sincere in seeking a solution, then He will reward your sincerity and forgive you your past and future sins as you continue to seek His pleasure.

You must consider it your duty to perform sufficient worship and Quran-reading on a daily basis that the afterlife starts to feel as important as the present life to you. This seems to require about an hour of extra voluntary deeds a day, whether it is Quran-reading, supplication, praying at the mosque or performing extra prayers. Once you achieve this state and maintain it for weeks and months, it becomes far easier to resist sins.

You already believe in God and the afterlife. This is only an intellectual belief. Through worship, you can turn it into an emotional belief as well, so that God and the afterlife feel real to you. Once your faith is not just an intellectual belief, but an emotional state, then this will have a powerful effect on your state of mind and on your actions. This is the state that every Muslim must seek to achieve, and it is the state of the prophets and the greatest believers.

The best help I have found toward maintaining such an emotional state has been to perform every prayer at the mosque, to perform dhikr and supplication after every one of them, and to perform all the related voluntary prayers. If there is a mosque near you, then this should be one of the first things you try. Even if it is 10 or 15 minutes away, consider it part of your war against your sins to go there, and God will reward you for your time and effort.

Consider going to the mosque part of your job, as if you earn an hourly wage for it. It is just another job, perform it, and you will get its rewards.

Planning against your sins and doing the work necessary to avoid and overcome them is not going to be easy. It is going to require difficult and perhaps boring and repetitive work. But for this you will be greatly rewarded.

If you want to have a successful career in this life and the next, if you want to be a leader like you said, then do the daily work needed for this. A career requires work, your work is to do worship and to go to the mosque. No matter how unrewarding you find this work, if you do it, you will get its fruits. Worshiping and obeying God is not meant to be fun. It is work, sometimes hard work, sometimes boring work, we do it because we want His rewards. If you do not get any uplifting feeling from your worship or mosque attendance at first, continue doing it for weeks and months, and you will eventually feel it inshaAllah.

When we try to seek God and renew our allegiance to Him, He may withhold His help until we prove our sincerity. If we try to worship Him ardently for a week, then give up hope when nothing happens and we feel no difference, it shows that we do not truly have faith in Him, that we are not sincere in our servitude. We prove our sincerity by constantly working toward Him whether we feel good or bad, whether we feel appreciated or abandoned. This is true worship of God, that we love Him regardless of what He decrees for us. Everything else is mostly self-worship.

 

IslamQA: The Islamic view of watching anime and reading manga

Salaam. I am a Muslim and I like watching anime and reading manga. I usually watch action, adventure types and block tags that contain mature content. I wanted to ask if I am allowed to do so? Another question I have is about drawing. What has been said about drawing cartoons and such? Jazakullah Khair.

There is nothing wrong with anime and manga inherently. It is however against Islamic manners to seek sexual pleasure outside of marriage, therefore if those “mature” blocks you describe are there for the reader’s sexual enjoyment, then it is not acceptable for you to peruse them. You can skip those pages and scenes that are designed to be sexually suggestive and enjoy the rest.

Since we can never be sure if God will be pleased with us if we seek sexual enjoyment outside of marriage in any form, no one who truly loves and fears God will risk disrespecting and angering Him through such things, even if it is in a seemingly unimportant matter.

The Azhari scholars (from al-Azhar University in Cairo) Gad al-Haq Ali and Yusuf al-Qaradhawi and the Saudi Islamic studies professor Khalid bin Abdullah al-Qasim say that drawing (including drawing living things) is permissible. You will find others who will say that drawing living things is not permissible. The people of Egypt and most of the Muslim world follow the Azhari opinion.