Women are the snares of the shaitan

First and foremost: This hadith of our beloved Prophet Muhammad ﷺ is not sexist as some would like to believe to further their nefarious agendas. Furthermore, the hadith does not imply that women are somehow inherently evil.

However, any man would testify to the fact that women have a certain power over men. The attraction of men towards women and the resulting lust, if unbridled, causes corruption and disintegration of family and society as is apparent from observing secular societies. Nikkah regulates this base desire and therefore is a sacred institution in Islam.

Imam Ghazali describes the dynamics of lust and its effect in his ‘Kitab Kasr al-Shahwatayn’ as follows:

The desire for women, which the greatest of all desires, is susceptible to excess, defect, and equilibrium. Excess obtains when the intellect is overcome, so that a man’s concern is so distracted towards the enjoyment of women and slavegirls that he is unable to tread the path of the Afterlife; or it may overcome a man’s religion, so that he is drawn into obscene activities. This may become so extreme in some cases that two foul habits are acquired.

Firstly, he may partake of something which makes him desire to have intercourse more often, just as some people take certain drugs which strengthen the stomach and allow them to eat more of the things which they desire.

The second thing is that in the case of some misguided people this desire may end in amorous passion [‘ishq], which constitutes utter ignorance of the intended purpose of sexual congress, and a descent to a level lower than that of the animals. For such people are not content merely to gratify their lust, which is the unsightliest of all desires and the one of which a man should most be embarrassed, but instead believe that their lust can only be satisfied by one person. An animal finds it enough to satisfy its lust anywhere it can, whereas these people will only be satisfied by one person in particular, which thing heaps abasement upon abasement, and enslavement upon enslavement, until their intellects are subordinated to the service of their cravings, even though the intellect has been created to be obeyed, not to obey desires and devise means of gratifying them. Amorous passion is nothing but a wellspring of excessive sexual desire, and is the disease of an empty and unconcerned heart.

May Allah SWT keep us modest and dignified in our relationship with women.