“traditional muslim men”
i want to address this as something which has been on my mind for a long time, and mind you, as a disclaimer this from someone who advocates the complementary nature of men and women as الله has designed and outlined for us, and is opposed to feminism
there is a type of man which has become increasingly common, particularly online and it is something I have found increasingly common on this app. they have wrapped their misogyny, insecurities and incorrect understanding of the religion in the language of the sunnah, using it as a means of demeaning and generalise our muslim sisters and it is long overdue that this is called out plainly
jarh wa ta’dil, the islamic science of evaluating and critiquing individuals and narrators has its place. as is enjoining the good and forbidding the evil has its place. i am not disputing this
but i want to ask something genuinely,
how is it that these so-called “traditional muslim” men are always somehow on the exact side of the internet which exposes them to this content that they complain about in the first place? you had to have been there to see it. you had to have been scrolling, engaging, interacting with it for it to even appear on your feed because that is how these algorithms work, they only show you what you have shown interest in. a serious person who truly feared الله and wanted to guard their gaze and their time would have deleted social media entirely, or at the very minimum cultivated a feed where these things would simply never appear
yet instead of anyone questioning this obvious and glaring contradiction, the immediate reaction is to fly toward criticism of sisters which carries no benefit whatsoever and does absolutely nothing to aid them
do you not heed the statement of our mother aisha رضي الله عنها, that the completion of one’s islaam is by leaving off what does not concern him?
— muwatta of imam malik, referenced also in tirmidhi as hasan
why are you constantly speaking about women who have no relevance to you, m and who owe you nothing? do you not heed the word of الله:
الطَّيِّبَاتُ لِلطَّيِّبِينَ وَالطَّيِّبُونَ لِلطَّيِّبَاتِ
“good women are for good men, and good men are for good women”
surah an-nur, 24:26
if you truly believed this and had certainty in it, you would focus your energy entirely on building yourself, your deen, your character, your worldy affairs, and not stressing over the “marriage market” because of the actions of sisters who are disobeying الله, because that is what would actually bring you the pious wife you are claiming to look for. do you think that the people of goodness (and we are far from them, may الله help us) would have reached their status if they were constantly spending their whole lives online and being critical of something you shouldn’t even have exposed yourself to begin with?
rather than curating solutions, rather than encouragement for sisters who are doing their best, so they may be the ones who guide and correct the sisters when they are wrong, rather than the optimism and gentleness toward those struggling with sin which would actually move them toward change, we see none of that. all we see is these projections and double standards, full of wrong and error, and then brothers protecting that instead of calling it, projecting his own fears onto other brothers so they too begin to hyper-fixate on sisters who have done nothing to them, rather than focusing on improving themselves and getting closer to الله, and we ask for الله safety from this behaviour
its how i recently came across a post which claimed that sisters who cite khadijah رضي الله عنها as a role model for pursuing their aspirations under the correct shari’ conditions are somehow mistaken, arguing that “after marriage she gave up all her wealth to the prophet ﷺ, and would climb mount hira every day to bring him food”
i really do not understand how using the mother of the believers رضي الله عنها as a vehicle to gaslight sisters into abandoning their goals is something which people have the audacity to even do. guys claim to want to correct sincerely and then fabricate to fit their own agenda, because the claim that khadijah رضي الله عنها climbed jabal al-nour (mount hira) every single day is not established in the authenticated seerah sources, and if you wanted to c advise someone who took her example and decided to do something haraam, by all means do so, and clarify that khadijah رضي الله عنها was a business owner who ran major trading caravans before and throughout her marriage to the prophet ﷺ, through hired agents and employees, not herself, not compromising her deen or her modesty. that’s what you should be telling sisters, to ensure that if they want to do so, that they do so under the correct conditions and not become too fixated upon it as to neglect her other responsibility which she may have, simple
simply lying and claiming that she wasn’t a business women is counterproductive and a lie, because this is precisely what owning and running a business looks like, and you lying to them worsens the situation, and dismisses the fact that she was a woman of immense intelligence, enterprise, and capability.
then you have the on the double standard regarding sin and ones “past”, and this is perhaps the most troubling, because this falsehood is so widespread and so casually accepted as though it has basis
in the qur’aan الله says:
“and whoever does righteous deeds, whether male or female, while being a believer — those will enter paradise and will not be wronged, even as much as the speck on a date seed” (4:124)
“whoever does righteousness, whether male or female, while he is a believer — those will enter paradise, being given provision therein without account” (40:40)
the prophet ﷺ said:
“women are the twin halves of men”
— abu dawud, tirmidhi
yet in practice, for a man who has a past, it is tawbah, it is growth, it is moving forward, we make du’a for him, right? but let’s make that for a sister, it follows her indefinitely. she is spoken of with terms which have no basis in this deen, considered less than, unworthy, “used” — language which the prophet ﷺ himself would never have used, and which he explicitly condemned
the prophet ﷺ said:
“none but a noble man treats women in an honourable manner, and none but an ignoble man treats women disgracefully”
ibn hibban, authenticated
this is not peripheral. this is a direct correlation the prophet ﷺ drew between a man’s character and how he speaks of and treats women. so let every man who uses such language about our sisters reflect carefully on which category he has placed himself in
it’s the same with marriage, where you find many brothers contradicting what the sunnah actually looks like
our mother aisha رضي الله عنها was asked what the prophet ﷺ used to do in his home, and she said:
“he used to keep himself busy serving his family, and when the time for prayer came, he would go out to pray”
— sahih al-bukhari
he raced aisha رضي الله عنها on foot and she won the first time, he acknowledged it. and he was not diminished by it in the slightest, because true confidence does not require domination, so much that many brothers feel threatened by a sister having a simple leverage over him in knowledge of the deen for instance
he said:
“the best of you are those who are best to their wives, and i am the best of you to my wives”
this is the model, the sunnah, not control or the bottom of the barrel activity we see from many men today who claim entitlement, not a manufactured sense of authority that requires the diminishment of a woman
imam ahmad ibn hanbal رحمه الله, one of the greatest imams of ahl al-sunnah, known for the firmness and strength of his character said regarding his first wife:
“for forty years, i never had a disagreement with her”
— manaqib al-imam ahmad, ibn al-jawzi, p. 409
this is what emotional intelligence and genuine communication looks like, yet brothers will say sisters are too much and ask from a man “abstract terminology” that has no meaning
and after her death, when he remarried, he chose umm abdillah rayhana رحمها الله (a woman with one eye) because he was immensely touched by her religion, following directly the guidance of the prophet ﷺ:
“choose the one with religion, may your hands be blessed”
— sahih al-bukhari 5090 / sunan abu dawud 2047
i say this to the brothers who reduce women entirely to appearance, who speak of sisters as though their worth is only in how they look, and who claim religiosity whilst doing so: would you have married a woman with a visual impediment because of the beauty of her religion?
sufyan al-thawri رضي الله عنه said:
“if i knew that i would not wrong my wife, i would marry”
— siyar a’lam al-nubala, al-dhahabi, vol. 7, p. 258
a senior companion of immense knowledge, yet so aware of the weight of a wife’s rights that his fear of falling short of them gave him pause before marriage itself. سبحان الله, yet where is this understanding today?
bishr ibn al-harith رحمه الله refrained from marriage entirely out of fear that he would not fulfil his wife’s rights
— hilyat al-awliya, abu nu’aym al-isfahani, vol. 8, p. 336
and imam ahmad رحمه الله cited from the early ascetics:
“the most difficult trial for a man is his family; either he fulfils their rights or he is destroyed”
— kitab al-zuhd, p. 118
ibn al-jawzi رحمه الله cited from the adab al-nisa’ literature:
“a woman is a trust, so let one of you look carefully at what trust he takes”
— ahkam al-nisa’, p. 152
people constantly reduce the love, loyalty, and devotion of the sahabiyat to women being “naturally submissive” — as though those qualities existed in a vacuum, completely detached from the men they were with and the environment those men created around them
khadijah رضي الله عنها did not rush to the prophet ﷺ at the moment of the first revelation, wrap him in her cloak, and speak the words which steadied him, because she was passive by nature. she did it because she knew him. she had been in a relationship of genuine mutual respect, trust, dignity, and love for years before that moment. that response was earned. the love and devotion of the sahabiyat was inseparable from the character of the men they were with — to divorce those two things is to miss the entire point, and to use it to justify a version of masculinity which bears no resemblance whatsoever to what those men actually were
from the people of knowledge in our time
this is something which the scholars have noticed and addressed. shaykh ibn baaz رحمه الله reminded the brothers of the words of the prophet ﷺ on his very deathbed — to fear الله regarding women. among the last things he ﷺ said
shaykh ibn uthaymeen رحمه الله stated explicitly that a husband mistreating his wife is sinful, and that being a good husband is itself a form of ibadah — this is not a modern concession, it is a restatement of what the fiqh has always said
finally
i say to the brothers, where is the heed to the statement of shaykh ibn baaz رحمه الله reminded the brothers of the words of the prophet ﷺ on his very deathbed to fear الله regarding women. why not move away from that side of social media and what are you doing there to begin with? build yourself. focus on your deen, your dunya, your character, your relationship with الله, and let this lead you toward becoming someone worthy, rather than tearing down sisters that have no relevance to you, and if you want to invoke the sunnah, then do so, and follow it in your home, in your character, in the way you speak about the women الله has placed in your life, and outside it if you wish to advise, do so with knowledge, and wisdom and encouragement, and if not, remain silent
and الله knows best