What is in fact being tease by the woman and the life of this world is something that cannot be touched or held. It is the peace and pleasure of God. We as men are fooled by the notion that if you smoke this substance, if you lay with this woman, if you own this much stuff, then you will obtain that. This is completely false. So why do most of our brothers go along with this charade? It is a lack of spiritual sight. Everything in masculinity comes from the first stage of the Masculine Development Model: Principles. When a man holds certain principles then it gives the foundation for you to see the truth. Most of us have experienced that the truth of Allah is not as it seems to us. When we lack principles, then it takes away our vision and our spiritual foresight. We are no longer aware of things that make sense and start to rationalize things that do not make common sense. This is when we know we are being tantalized.
 

Life is just a tease. We make it a tease because we tease ourselves into this irrational thinking that if we indulge in something physical, then spiritual pleasure will be the result. Most people are conviced if you give them enoough money then, they will be happy in their heart. Muhammad S said that 'contentment is true wealth'. Contentment is the spiritual state of being pleased with what Allah has given us as human beings.  So no matter what we have as individuals, we should do our utmost to be happy with it, especially when God blesses us with abundance.  If we keep buying into the phony power of the almighty dollar, sexual encounter, drug, or power, then we will be in eternal tantalization and will never get the carrot at the end of the rope.

©2012 Halim Naeem.com. All Rights Reserved.

There is a tremendous amount of wisdom and lessons that can be taken from this statement. There are things that happen inside of us that lead us to say bad things or useless things. In this statement the Prophet S guided us to have control over the gateway of emitting the tests that we have inside ourselves. That is to say, we may get angry or feel wronged or slighted. We may even be right, but the Prophet S instructed us to guard the tongue that conveys and spreads that negativity all over. This shows us that Allah will test us on the inside. That is inevitable. However, it is what we do with the tests that we have on the inside that we are judged for.

The same goes for our private parts. The Prophet S did not say "do not be attracted to women." He said to guard our genitals. Its not the attraction that is the sin. It is act we do because of our attraction. This puts the owership of salvation into our hands which is very healthy for us as men as we want to possess as much control over our destiny as possible. Sometimes the urge may seem unstoppable and impossible to resist. For some of us, it may approach that status, but most of us know deep down, there is something deeper. The proof is this: after you are done having satisfying sex, then what do you think about? Is your mind revolving around the next time you will have sex or does your mind wander to other matters? For most of us, we mentally move on from that act until the next time we are in a state of sexual arousal.

The control over these two simple pieces of flesh will guarantee us paradise. This is for a reason. It is not easy to contain the urges that flow out of these two parts of our anatomy.

©2012 Halim Naeem.com. All Rights Reserved.

Mu’minoon are those who have attained faith, which is different than a Muslim. Allah says in the 49th chapter (Hujarat) verse 14: The desert Arabs say, "We believe." Say, "Ye have no faith; but ye (only) say, 'We have submitted our wills to Allah.' For not yet has Faith entered your hearts. But if ye obey Allah and His Messenger, He will not belittle aught of your deeds: for Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful." Mu’minoon is in a much higher league than a Muslim. There are characteristics of spiritual development in a Mu’min that is different from a Muslim’s. One of those characteristics we have already discussed in that a believer never backbites. However, Muslims do backbite. It is a sin and we should ask forgiveness, but we are still Muslim if we do it. A believer stops being a believer if he does such an act. Lying is an act that a believer cannot perform. A Muslim however, can stay Muslim and lie. It is a sin, but again we are still Muslim. The list goes on. What you have are two different types of people.

There are two different levels of submissions to Allah. When we submit to Allah at the level of a Mu’min, then we automatically have the characteristics and requirements fulfilled to enter the house clean and pure. Further, we will speak of the good things in the house and remain silent about the bad since the Iman in our heart is thankful that Allah has put us in such a situation. Thus, the believers are united as Allah has said many times. We should pray that we join the community of the believers.

©2012 Halim Naeem.com. All Rights Reserved.

This conversation was extremely therapeutic to me because it is always helpful especially to someone like myself to know that other people are goign through similar struggles or that they are not so far ahead of you in the road to happiness and contentment. It is also very helpful to get advice and feedback from men who are both older and younger than you about some situations you are going through. This is a habit of many women in their sharing and intimate comradery that I believe helps them live longer and cope with more internal pain than most men. Brothers of mankind do need to bond at some level or else it will lead to our spiritual and eventually our physical destruction.

Now this perception is coming from a Muslim Male perspective and it does not imply that brothers do not put sisters through their own personal hell either, however this is a Muslim Male blog. So we started talking about how the wives and women know exactly what to say to get you into extreme anger. We talked about this a little deeper and discussed how women either consciously or unconsciously try to gain emotional control. Sisters control most men through Male emotion and pride in their manhood. Nothing makes a man feel more masculine than power over someone else, especially a woman who the man has multiple levels of attraction towards (spiritual, emotional, and physical).

On the other end, nothing threatens a man's masculinity than someone calling out or questioning a male's manhood. I think that most women know this, and the ones who are twisted in their functioning know that you can control a man through diminishing their self worth to a point of stress and depression. Most women, by nature take these transgressing shots at brothers they even say that they love dearly, whether knowingly or unknowingly. This happens because women do not know what masculinity is. I say that because they may read or hear or have seen a functionaly example of it, but they have never experienced it. Even though they may tell you that they know what you are talking about, but they do not.

One example of this is my wife. My wife came from an extremely positive background witha great male role model in her father and her older brother. Furthermore, she has had many positive interactions with males. Many times I will tell my three year old son something when I am leaving. I tell him, "Make sure you take care of mommy when I am gone." If there are other women in the house, I tell him to take care of them as well. On multiple occasions my wife will ask, "he's just three, what is he going to do? Why do you keep telling him that?" That question right there showed me that she never experienced manhood, just saw it and felt it through a woman's mind and body. Most men reading this should have picked up why I said such a thing to my son. I do not expect all the women reading this to catch it. What I am doing is injecting the quality of protecting family, and responsibility for the home and the women and other children in the home at a very early age. I am doing it from a male perspective which is why a woman like my wife did not catch it. It is interactions and bonds like these between males that are necessary to pass down and perpetuate the journey to the completion of manhood.

We talked about instilling our secure form of masculinity. One of the best ways that this is done is by having interactions that bond males to a level of trust and support that reinforce what we already know. What we already know is that most of us are on our way to completing our manhood and being the best men that we can be. The Prophet (s) said in a very authentic narration that "Women are like a rib, if you try to straighten them out, then they will snap, so leave them be." I know it seems like it we take any more from our women, than we're gonna be the ones who are snapping, but that is where the model of masculinity comes in. That is the true strength. The strength of security to endure the emotional tornadoes, hurricanes, and earthquakes, that women can unleash upon us. Remember the third phase of the Masculine Development Model which is composure.

Most of the time, women, like many people project and dump their internal strife upon males and males get emotionally constipated because they deal with their own issues and whatever is dumped upon him without having a postive outlet to vent, express his concerns, or even get some advice about a trying situation. Many women on the other hand have some outlets and it is more socially acceptable for women to cry and express emotions that scientifically relieve the body of the stress and pain of many situations. Males on the other hand must maintain society's definition of masculinity and hold everything in and not show any sign of weakness. The only acceptable way to show emotion for most men in this society is anger. Anger is not supposed to be a common and consistent emotion. Anger is a defense mechanism that protects something. Anger is described by the Prophet (s) as a fire inside of us and that we must cool it down. If we are walking around 24 hours a day most days out of the year angry at some level about something, we are slowly (and sometimes quickly) killing ourselves. We must not internalize the strife of other people. We must be strong enough to ask for help from other brothers and seek advice and get along with give reinforcement to our fellow brothers in Islam and in Mankind. If we know that we can support one another and help each other then, we can be better even for our wives and our women in the community.

©2012 Halim Naeem.com. All Rights Reserved.

We have spiritual aspects that we must fulfill. Women are apart of that spirituality as they bring out something in us. They present us with the ability to test ourselves and our desires and strengths. The completion of Manhood and our destiny has to involve both men and women into that spiritual journey. Men support and reinforce one another in the journey and women provide the level of intimacy and support where they share along with you the man the creation and development of new life in our youth. We want our communities and our locales to be sustainable. Plants grow, die in the winter, then come back again because they have something sustainable. Now I have heard the argument many times. "There are so many kids out there who need parents and families they can go to; we already have plenty of kids to sustain Humanity." That argument may hold some wait temporarily because the vast majority of people are sexual exclusively with the opposite sex. Lets take this further though. What if most people were gay? What if everyone was gay? Humanity, due to lack of reproduction would eventually become extinct. So perhaps it is most healthy to keep homosexuality to a bare minimum. What would we show our youth in terms of how to treat the opposite sex in terms of perpetuating families? It could very well be that women and men would not be able to have functioning enough relationships, nor the desire to attain that to the point of creating family and sustaining Humanity. These are some of the issues raised. It is definitely a test and a struggle for all of us to complete our journey to Manhood. Homosexual acts and leaving out the other half of the Human Race in terms of perpetuation is definitely one of those struggles to be overcome.

©2012 Halim Naeem.com. All Rights Reserved.

Men have The Three Hungers of Men: Food, Lust, and Ego. The first one is food. Many of us have a special relationship with food, whether it makes our body feel extra good, it can help us deal with stress; we may associate eating with deep thought, tranquility, or peace. Sometimes this relationship and the desire for food can overtake us and begin to rule us as we evade controlling our appetite at all costs. If we continue down this path as many of us know, then we simply become or appetite and we consume and try to quench a hunger that is really everlasting. We should treat our hunger as something like chronic condition, which is we treat it and put it at bay because if we simply. There is nothing wrong with hunger or food, but becoming hunger and becoming the food we eat (full of fat and sugar) is something not many of us men desire.

The second hunger is lust. Since puberty most men have this hunger that is chronic for the remainder of our lives. The dysfunctional attempts to completely satisfy this urge is the cause for the degradation of many societies including our own as we males are glorified for treating the most beautiful creation in women as sex toys to reach orgasmic pleasure. Orgasms are fine and so is taking a woman and being faithful to her in and out of bed, but men are more than their orgasms, much more. Lust is the desire to reach or get as close to that orgasmic pleasure that is within us all. The first stage in knowing that there is a problem is recognizing that the problem exists. If the bottom line use for women is our lust and we see them as a desirable clump of flesh that gives us the orgasmic pleasure; then there is a problem. If all we want is that pleasure and after that pleasure we leave them and alleviate ourselves of commitment and responsibility; then there is a problem. This is where the principles in the male development model come in as we need our principles in place that we value ourselves. If we do not try to regain control of our desires, then one day we will be too old and decrepit to be desirable to whom we want, and all we will be left with is our desire, and no, pornography does not solve that problem.

The third and most destructive hunger is our ego. Our egos have been the root of nearly every evil done on a massive level in this world. It is about or acquisition of power as we see it, autonomy, praise, and all other people places and things that support the notion that we ourselves are in complete control of the affairs in our world. Again, the Masculine Development Model addresses this in the advanced stage of submission. If a male thinks all things revolve around him and are dependent on him, then one day, that male will be all that he has, quite simply. There will be no money, no loved ones, no palace, no praise, nothing. It will be an everlasting cycle of regret and resentment towards self that the male cannot sustain all that he wants and then tries to abandon the hungers, needs and desires that brought him to that place to show his strength and power, but he will find that he cannot escape the black hole of arrogance. The most basic and potent root of arrogance in that a male needs absolutely nothing and is completely self sufficient. If we persist on this path, we will lose all but ourselves and even then we will not want ourselves. Submission is key. Treating and controlling these hungers of food, lust and ego are key to Strength and our complete and unadulterated happiness as men completing our manhood.

©2012 Halim Naeem.com. All Rights Reserved.