Self Control and Islamic Masculinity (Part 3)…
The secret of self control towards achieving Islamic Masculinity is submission to God. In submitting to Allah we do not simply limit our power to our own carnal bodies. Furthermore, we do not limit our power to relying on others who believe in our peceived power, status, or financial independence. When we properly submit, then we only limit our potential to whatever God wants to give us.
When we do our proper acts of worship, such as the prayer, then Allah gives our soul a different perspective of life. We start to feel differently about things. We start to believe the reality that we have more control over our lives. Things start to have a rhythm and flow in a certain direction. When situations occur, we do not see them as disconnected or mere anomalies of nature. We start to see the events in our life as a theme of our development. Let us remember Halim's Masculine Development model. Certain things happen to people who are developing the first stage which is our principles. Different events will occur when we are in the next phase being Fortitude. Self Control is about the third stage, which is Composure.
Composure is complete self control. It is the ability to control all things within ourself. In doing so, wer are given more responsibility towards the other creation including people. The most important thing we must control is the spritiual desire within ourselves. This part of ourself is called the Nafs. The Nafs is the part of ourselves that has an infinite level of greed and desire. It is the 'monster' within us. It is the source of our lust, our sloth, our gluttony, and our arrogance which will lead to hate of all things and ultimately, hatred of ourselves. It also seats the baser emotions like anger, jealousy, our malice, violent imagery. The pure emotions come from the pure and good part of ourselves like pure joy and happiness, sadness, fear, pain, love, etc.
The more that we sin, the less control we will have in our lives. This is because our Nafs will gain more power over ourselves. We will start to have a corrupted lens of the world and its people. We will then start to feel that the world hates us or is out to get us when in fact it is we who hate ourselves. This is where distorted displays of manhood start to show themselves. It is because we do not know how to show power, strength, and control with humility. We buy in to the society's definition of strength and masculine. Through the sinning of others, they influence the definitions that we have of ourselves. In fact, it should be ourselves that influence others. The anger, the anxiety, and other manifestations of fear are signs that we possess little control over ourselves. The way to acheive this is to worship, pray, and look at all things as connected. Once we put our faith in Allah, our situation will change for the better. We will experience a deeper level of calm. Others will have that experience when they are around us. When we gain more control of ourselves, we will have control over everything.
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