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Fortitude towards Islamic Masculinity…

Remember we talked about the difference between Islamic Masculinity and Muslim Masculinity. Islamic Masculinity is the goal, the endpoint where Allah wants us to be as men of his creation. Muslim masculinity is the road to get to that goal. A significant checkpoint on that road to the completion of manhood and the desirable state of Islamic Masculinity is Fortitude. Webster defines fortitude as strength of mind that enables a person to encounter danger or bear pain or adversity with courage. It is the next step after a man attaches to and lives by his principles. Once a man has some principles, the next situation to occur is that those principles will be tested. This is where the adversity, pain, and other obstacles come into play. A man needs to have the internal strength to bear the burdens of these various tests of ones character. Once the principles are in place they must be assessed to determine how strong those principles are, thus determining how strong you are as a man.

I was tested a couple weeks back. I had to propose my study for my dissertation. I am a doctoral student going for my Ph. D. in Counseling Psychology. After a student has taken all the classes and taken the comprehensive exams that test your knowledge of the field in general, you then have two things left: 1. write your dissertation and 2. go on a year long internship. A big step in the dissertation and towards the internship is passing what is called a proposal. This is when you propose to your selected committee of professors what you will do for your study. They sign when they are completely satisfied. A year ago when I first tried, they did not sign. This year, I was nearly positive they would. They actually were about to, but there was an oversight on my part. I thought I printed out papers for some professors prior to the meeting, and apparently they did not get them. This was a critical oversight. Alas, the papers did not get signed again. The good news is that my professor said I am fine to go out on internship and keep progressing towards my Ph. D. However, the bad news was that I got rejected a second time and felt like feces.

It is at this point when a man begins to lose hope. When a man does not get what he really wants, he gets extremely angry. If there are no principles ingrained in that man, then the results are pretty destructive to himself and others. This is the power of fortitude. Fortitude is the ability to fend off forces that try to tear you away from your principles. It does not matter who you are or what you do as a man, your principles will be tested. So the test was laying there in a bed of corruption trying to seduce me away from my principles. I could have taken the easier path and be negative and angry towards everyone and walked down a fiery path of self sorrow. I could have done these things because of arrogance. The arrogance being that I just being me, deserves whatever I want. Thats a dangerous road, and an easy one to follow.

What I also could have done, was take the advice and feedback from the professors, pick myself up and get dusted off and keep working on perfecting my papers. I could move forward and look at this situation as the test it indeed was, and take it with as big a smile as I could muster up. That is what I chose to do. I had the principles of the three levels of respect: 1. Respect for self 2. respect for others 3. most Importantly, respect for God. I was not going to be torn away from those principles. That force, that bond that kept me and my principles attached in this very trying situation was fortitude. Incessantly fighting off urges to spiral downward can weather the soul if not fought off tactfully. This is where composure comes in. We will speak of composure soon.

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