On Muslim Masculinity
A rather contentious topic in online debates revolves around the question of masculinity, and this is especially so on Muslim Social Media. From discussions of “toxic masculinity” to those promoting a “men’s rights” movement, masculinity remains a matter freighted with a fair amount of contaminated cargo, while those on the outside struggle to apprehend what masculinity means and ultimately entails as a lived reality. In many of these debates, certain presumptions abound concerning the habits of men, or rather, what masculinity constitutes when expressed and defended by men. This includes, though is by no means limited to, a brashness, propensity to lash out, abrasiveness, adherence to a particular aesthetic, and promotion of one’s online brand. Here, manliness is taken as a specific form of male assertiveness, one that coincides more readily with the conditions of the modern world than it does the type of behavior exhibited when organic and healthy masculinity is manifested, let alone a masculinity conditioned by the example of the Prophet (ﷺ) and righteous that carried on in his path.
This masculinity tends to find its most potent defense when weaponized against the habits and behaviors of males celebrated in the public square. These celebrated males are sensitive to interpersonal differences, speak of (and often with) empathy and care, and are not wont to induce scandal, thus expressing views and positions that are, with rare exception, politically correct. These features are disparagingly cast as effeminate, and the program of many western cultures derided as actively endorsing the feminizing of men and stamping out natural male vigor.
Though this appraisal occasionally takes the form of schoolyard slur (‘he is acting like a woman’), it is not wholly without merit. The cultural products of modern media alongside the prevailing discourses in gender studies and psychotherapy frequently speak of masculine behavior with thinly veiled contempt, emphasizing instead the need to control and mitigate male assertiveness and physicality (roughhousing, etc.) while encouraging greater sensitivity, passivity, and meekness in adolescent boys. Within such a social context, young boys grow up being treated as disordered for failing to subdue their own virility and punished for enacting commonplace male behaviors. As the modern progressive motto goes, a good male ally learns to “lean out” so his female counterparts can “lean in.”
What ensues, however, is not so much a feminizing of men as it is an infantilizing of men. Men here find no social or cultural setting in which their masculinity can naturally manifest or come of age, so they extend their adolescence, riddled with puerile personal hobbies and sophomoric imaginaries. The modern male is thus always a boy, enabled to live in ways fully expressive of himself, an independent man (boy) who seeks to forever retain his personhood as someone who can pursue gadgets, money, and things, preoccupy himself ceaselessly with entertainment, and find fulfillment in the ersatz credibility gained in vocational recognition, online attention, and base amusement. Within such a context, the faux masculinity of the modern world distinguishes itself from ordinary male behavior by way of aesthetic — “masculinity” is now about how I dress, or how often I go to the gym, or the fashions I subscribe to. The behaviors of this faux masculinity are variegated, though they are inescapably childlike, attentive to personal male desires, to the therapeutic demands of social propriety, or to the individual needs of oneself in lieu of all others.
Just as a child detests chores assigned to him or seeks to escape personal responsibility, the prized male is independent and void of greater social dependencies, living as a “rebel” against anyone who might deign to hamper his otherwise freewheeling lifestyle. He is a playboy, a man whose singular objective is fun and unending entertainment, and a person who studiously avoids the specter of “commitment.” In its most popular expression, this faux masculinity can be cartoonish, laddish, and unreserved — a far departure from the responsible, prudent, and well-governed characteristics and features of traditional manliness and chivalry.
The conditions that have given rise to this crisis have long been chronicled. Reconfiguring our economic spaces from places of manual labor and toil to ones that rely on services, administration, and “soft skills,” the redefinition of marriage as mere lifestyle selection with autonomous and interchangeable partners, the decline of “gendered” spaces and regularizing of gender neutrality as the riding assumption undergirding virtually all human activity, the devaluation of fatherhood and caricatured popular media portrayal of the imbecilic dad, the pathologizing of traditional masculinity as a mental illness, the open air vitriol against “men” and “the patriarchy” (the two often indistinguishable), the loss of family and male community, the burgeoning of Religion-as-Entertainment at the expense of serious faith commitment, the primacy of consumer citizenry, etc. are but a few of the many factors that have produced conditions which are not only inhospitable to masculine expression, but frequently hostile to its very existence.
Modern social justice discourse is in many ways a byproduct of this setting. Although many legitimate social grievances and inequalities undoubtedly exist and require ongoing attention, the growing specter of those expressing their subjective victimhood serves to outsource moral responsibility and deny personal failings. Rather than weathering the daily ibtila’ that come our way, we are told to hold structure, prejudice, implicit bias, or some other nefarious reality responsible. Our expressions and demeanor become more infantilized as we whine and moan about even trivial misgivings, and our ability to endure the trials of life acutely weakened. In such a state we seek solace from others who can tell us that we are right to be angry, thus catering to our petulance rather than advising us as caring brothers and sisters to occasionally bear life patiently.
The regularizing of abortion, premarital and extramarital sex, and pornography inure us from a life with stakes. The immense significance of family, procreation, and committed relationships falter under the weight of sexual recreation. Sexual fulfillment becomes a type of play to be joked about lightheartedly or casual encounter between those who possess little more than a passing interest in one another. Procreation as the locus of enduring life, as the sustaining of families and the raising of children into adulthood, of mutual and lasting commitment becomes foreign to the sensibilities of those raised to see sex as little more than an expression of the erotic. The high stakes of sex — like life itself — cease to hold meaning, thus making us incapable of taking anything seriously. Consequently, our sense of moral duty and personal responsibility never extends beyond ourselves. It should come as little surprise that we live now in a “golden age” of humor, with quality comedy in high demand and adolescent jokes circulated in memes and ‘viral’ clips constituting much of our daily online activity. Over time we become nonserious actors who recoil at those who ask more of us, while finding steady residence and comfort among others similarly averse to a life of moral duties and demand that extend beyond our fickle whims and desires.
Excessive exposure to digital forums atrophies male virility. Pornography, video games, and social media enter men into domains with no comparable level of intensity in the real world. Hard core pornography has no relationship to real world romance and often makes the achieving of real world romantic relationships impossible. The hypercompetitive nature of video games confers status over futile “achievements” between people whose “relationships” carry no expectations other than adept and skillful play. Social media provides a realm of sociality that is combat-ridden, suffuse with gossip, denunciations, and ridicule. As Philip Zimbardo notes in his work Man Disconnected, prolonged dependance on digital media foments social atomization while creating a world of “arousal addicts” who no longer find satisfying or meaningful the mundane rigors of daily life.
The “good religion” of what Rod Dreher terms “moralistic therapeutic deism” (MTD) often takes as its riding assumption the individual as a child, thus exacerbating this male infantilization. The MTD religious program is always affirmative, teaching parishioners that they’ve done no wrong, that they need not worry about wrong, and that the only mortal sin is an absence of kindness. Mentions of hell and moral judgment are verboten, and in its stead one discovers the ladder of love, the insistence that faith will always take the form of a ‘warm embrace’, and a promise that the life of faith is a life of ease and comfort. The faithful are thus spoken to and treated like entitled children who can never be told “no.” Everyone is given a participation trophy and no one is made to sense that they can improve or aspire for a better spiritual life, let alone reminded of the gravity of failure. Given the popularity of this ministry, truth-claims become difficult to take seriously, and scripture ever more difficult to see as God’s words and instruction for us in this world.
Given these factors, it is unsurprising that we find ourselves in a seemingly unending tussle with masculinity. Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs) recapitulate gender egalitarian assumptions and cry “female privilege,” seeking to divest even more of what little moral responsibility they continue to bear. Why don’t women provide for the household while men sit at home as caretakers? Why should men always be on the front lines of wars? These are some of the questions MRAs appear to have prioritized in recent years. Meanwhile, “toxic masculinity” reinscribes enfeeblement and enervation as the valuable and cherished feature of “male allies.” Men are here treated like wild dogs in need of domestication, after which they may roam the enclosed yard freely lest they get too unruly or attempt escape.
In sharp contrast to this environment, masculinity needs certain social and cultural conditions to flourish. It requires a society that values the virtues of provision, protection, responsibility, authority, and production. Such a world must not only demand of men lofty aspirations, but it must provide the opportunity for those aspirations to materialize through consequential action. Men must find in their labor meaning with tasks that motivate them to get out of bed. This masculinity, properly honed, asserts itself in the care of others and not self-aggrandizement. Chivalry is about toiling without recognition, about striving behind the scenes and finding public accolades a matter of great personal embarrassment, of hoping that one’s efforts, exhaustive as they may be, are done with devotion to God and, in pursuing His pleasure, caring for those over whom God has appointed them as shepherds. The shepherd sacrifices while living with discipline and care for those under his stead. He is capable and on guard for possible wolves and possesses the courage to intervene when a member of the flock is threatened. He leads and is given the authority to oversee, restrict, and provide for his flock while demonstrating ongoing diligence and dedication.
A world of play cannot promote such masculinity, nor can infantilized men muster up the energy, emotions, and willpower to take it on. There is thus a dual failing, both due to the conditions that exist and from the men being produced and formed within those conditions. Countering this requires concerted effort and a recommitment to a life with external meaning, with high stakes, and for a world in which courage, honor, bravery, justice, resolve, strength, sacrifice, passion, leadership, authority, consequence and moral significance, fortitude, etc. are regarded virtuous and necessary for the embodying of a life of faith and fidelity. This requires us to retreat from neoliberal consumerism which singularly focuses on commoditizing us and our thinking and thus radically undermines our willingness to cut against the grain, to be truly culturally and socially transgressive in ways that draw on meaning. The world of faith in which masculinity bears fruit must allow us to speak honestly to ourselves and reckon with our shortcomings as individuals, communities, and societies.
A moral world of faith cultivates these virtues, and the virtuous man and woman reinforces that very moral world. There is a reciprocal relationship between the two, and when one falters, the other follows shortly thereafter. In such a failing, revelation ceases to speak to us except as an atavistic relic of inegalitarian and patriarchal societies. It all made sense back then, but no longer makes sense now. The growing scale of these critiques pave the path for seemingly indiscriminate relativism, for far-fetched reforms of revelation to particularize and historicize clear and unambiguous sex-specific instruction, and for a faith that bears little resemblance to the words of God and His Prophet (ﷺ).
Recovering Muslim masculinity is therefore a task with more than a little urgency. As it stands today, many Muslim spaces have failed young men in providing them guidance and direction. Unsurprisingly, many men develop an apathy for faith and Muslim leaders who cannot speak to them with courage, resolve, and articulate for them the type of muscular faith that provides purpose and meaning. In its stead, a growing number of young men are turning to the “manosphere” for direction. Women are likewise failed in myriad ways in Muslim spaces. Though they avoid the occasional scoldings that men endure and receive rhetorical support from plenty of corners, they are celebrated in ways that can be profoundly patronizing, instrumentalized as they are by organizations and groups seeking to ward off scandal by those who monitor gender diversity quotas. Women are also subject to forms of alienation not always understood by men. The loneliness of being unmarried and experiencing spinsterhood, the loneliness of being divorced, and the loneliness of not belonging. Indeed, we have much work to do to recover the context needed to support both men and women.
The sense of isolation notwithstanding, contemporary Muslim spaces often require men to tone down their manliness rather than own and manifest the qualities of manliness that are required for living with dominion in the world. Men who can exert uniquely male forms of power, not merely in the interest of serving their wives and children, but in the interest of taking charge of their lives, of harnessing a sense of mission above and beyond their parochial desires. In order for such a setting to emerge, Muslims will have to work hard to develop countercultural spaces that consciously work against the pulls of neoliberalism, technopoly and its attendant algocracy, gender constructionism, secular materialism, and liberal individualism. They will need to navigate these spaces carefully in a way that is not simply at odds with the world as it is, but more forcefully works with an affirmative vision to live in the world as it should be lived in. May Allah give us the courage to rise to the task. Ameen.
Other notes:
It has been a while since I’ve published anything here. Mainly, though not exclusively, because I’ve been spending quite a bit of time getting this latest piece out at MuslimMatters:
Take some time to read it when you get the chance — it is lengthy, to be sure, but it (along with part 1) is perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of gender nonconformity brought into conversation with Islamic norms available to date. May Allah accept from it. Ameen.
I am hoping in the coming months to shift more of my writing, including ‘micro-blogging’ from FB to here. I am sure I’ll continue writing there, though to be honest the platform is beginning to wear on me, and the liabilities and dysfunctions of social media becoming far more difficult to ignore. We’ll see, insha’Allah.
And Allah Knows Best.
