Ikram Hawramani's Blog, page 37

Is it obligatory to say a dua or make wudu before sleep?

Question about sleep. Must one say dua before going to sleep. Is that obligatory? And what kind if it’s obligatory. Olso is it obligatory to make wudu before going to bed.

None of that is obligatory.

The income of a father who works in a usurious bank

Salaam. My father works in a bank, to which we all know that no bank is free from usury. When I have enough courage to tell him that his job involves usury, he made an excuse that it is totally fine. My question is, does this make his effort to make a living for the family haraam or will God Forgive him for trying to sustain his family?

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

It is your father’s duty to seek other employment. The money he earns is not entirely haram, it is a mix of halal and haram since the income of a bank comes from various sources, both halal and haram.

As for you benefiting from that money, according to a fatwa from the Qatari Fatwa Authority it is permitted for the child to benefit from such income since it is a mix of halal and haram. Benefiting from mixed parental income is not clearly forbidden in Islam, although you should try to encourage him to purify his income.

As for whether God accepts his excuses and forgives him, this depends on his intentions and his ability to find other jobs. If he prefers working at a bank because that is where he can make the most profit, then that is more morally condemnable than if he has no other job prospects.

Source:

Fatwa from the Qatari Fatwa Authority (Arabic PDF)

Responding to insults against the Prophet PBUH

Brother, I wanted to ask if Muslims are offended when Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) is being mocked, how should we respond to it? Is it correct if we condemn the person mocking or do we have to stay calm and brush it off?

The Quran’s message is clear with regards to dealing with such situations; we should ignore them and turn away from them. No good is served by getting upset and condemning the person(s), since this will only make them feel more powerful. Since they do not have the decency to respect what we consider holy and sacred, they will enjoy the feeling that they are causing us anger and upset.

They are those whom God knows what is in their hearts. So ignore them, and admonish them, and say to them concerning themselves penetrating words.

The Quran, verse 4:63.

When you encounter those who gossip about Our revelations, turn away from them, until they engage in another topic. But should Satan make you forget, do not sit after the recollection with the wicked people.

The Quran, verse 6:68.

Follow what was revealed to you from your Lord. There is no god but He. And turn away from the polytheists.

The Quran, verse 6:106.

Be tolerant, and command decency, and turn away from the ignorant.

The Quran, verse 7:199.

So proclaim openly what you are commanded, and turn away from the polytheists.

The Quran, verse 15:94

Learning martial arts in mixed-sex company

Assalamu'alaykum wa rahmatullah wa barakatuh. Hello, I'm a South East Asian Muslim women. I have a question, and hopefully you'd answer. Is it okay for me to learn martial arts? If so, then would it be permitted for a male teacher to teach me (side note: we learn it in group, not private one-on-one), while martial arts is a full physical thing and, one thing for sure, that we will come in contact with non-mahrams? Also, I have contacted a sunna-based martial arts teacher (Aikido, with Islamic principle of male and female not able to train or spar due to avoid physical contact with the opposite sexes), but they replied that the female teacher is currently not available. It is rare to have a female martial arts teacher. Due to such matter, can I just choose whatever martial arts dojo (place for training) regardless of the principle? The general manner of the people in my country is welcoming and caring, both men and women, so my personal opinion is that I'm safe enough to learn from male teachers. but I'm still unsure. What do you reckon? Pardon the long explanation and thank you very much for taking your time and I respect whatever opinion you have to offer regarding this.

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

There are no strict rules in Islam regarding the mixing of the sexes in public spaces. If the atmosphere of the dojo is respectful and dignified, then there is no reason why you cannot join it as a woman provided that this is something socially acceptable in your culture and approved by your parents and relatives.

Regarding touching between the sexes during lessons, this should be avoided.

Using the name “Niam” for boys

Hi, I would like to know if the name Niam can also be used for boys. On your website it says it's a girls name, but on other websites I see it's a boys name. What determines if a name is for a boy or girl? Kind regards

Hello,

It is only social and cultural customs that determine whether a name is for boys or girls. In some places for example a name is mostly used for boys while in others the same name is used mostly for girls. There is no religious ruling about this; it is your own choice based on where you live. I searched online and it looks like Niam is used for boys in Indonesia.

The morality and immorality of sexual fantasies

Sexual fantasies is not the same thing as having a "wet dream" where you are literally asleep and can't control your dreams. To fantasise means your are leading your thoughts to imagine and visualise and thus stimulate yourself. To entertain such thinking is not moral and thus not normal or healthy. Instead of answering hormones as if they are moral we should understand what sex really is and that only via romantic love does it ever serve a moral purpose. Train the libido, do not pander to it.

Also, by that reasoming, hormonal state excuses what we think or do. I am sorry but that is grossly irresponsible a thought. God made us capable of choosing what we say or do irregardles of how we may feel or how our hormones behave. What about bipolar? A hypomanic episode doesn't mean they lose their mind and no longer understand right from wrong. Your libido kicking up does not excuse what you CHOOSE TO DO. Our hormones are a part of God testing us, not excusing us doing something immoral.

Having sexual fantasies is not normal or healthy. And further more they are not necessary.Our hormones may act out but that doesn't mean you need to reply to them with the wrong answer.Your libido raising up doesn't mean you have to answer it. That is like saying a woman has to eat chocolate because their hormones are making them crave something fatty. I have that "emotion" and I ignore it because eating a ton load of chocolate isn't healthy, and it isn't what I really want.

When my libido raises I just ignore it and it goes away. Don't obsess over it. Ignoring it is not hard when you truly understands it has no value without a truly loved and wanted significant other. Entertaining a fantasy is just as bad as if one had done it. The imagination is a powerful thing, what God gave us is no joke. Any sexual act outside of us being with the person we romantically love and are willingly engaging with is not necessary. Do something good to get rid of that energy.

We sadly live in a world where sex is constantly given a value and role it does not deserve. Partly because people do not actually understand sex. It truly isn't the biggest way to express love or to feel good. Beauty shouldn't be the ignition to want intimacy, love should be, love born from knowing someone for who they are. People raised by other flawed people to think love is sex and beauty equals sex, instead of being taught love is so much more than the extra of sex….

..God granted us to enjoy with our significant other. People are raised to think sex is everything and thus people behave like it is, and it absolutely isn't. Raised to act on every feeling they have "do what ever you feel like doing, do not challenge yourself or master your body and mind". God tests us in so many ways, our bodies are one way. We are supposed to deny the impulse to do wrong, just because one has a hormonal spike such as this does not excuse one, we aren't animals.

To entertain sexual fantasies really is dirtying oneself, it is no better than masturbation.What should be a beautiful and intimate act meant to happen, if it is meant to happen, with your loving spouse, is turned to just another act of self indulgence and blind lust. The imagination is so SO powerful, it is very real. God gave it as a gift for good, not this.Raise people to be strong not weak. This is not a place to say that God only gives us what we can bear,

God does not make us fantasise. Us fantasising is us choosing to fantasise. We take something normal like a libido and we feed it with our chosen thoughts. If we simply ignore the libido the libido is not a burden but a mere passing hormonal occurrence. It is part of the normal hormonal cycle yes, but it does not need to be met like thirsting for water is needing to be met.

With how we perceive things we lower our libido's activity, if one constantly answer their libido with fantasies the libidos activity is prolonged. If one thinks a woman/man is a walking talking reminder of sex, their libido is constantly awakened. When the libido is not pandered to it goes away quickly. If one has problem with the libido passing they can find healthy ways to make it pass like exercising.

If the libido is very high, then it may speak of hormonal imbalance, even mental health issues such as bipolar, one should be directed to consult a doctor and receive help. The libido or our hormones in general shouldn't be treated as an force that we must surrender to and let choose for us above free will. The body has hormonal responses both independent and soul bound (example, hormonal imbalance caused feeling of unhappiness vs. unhappy event+understanding said event= feeling truly unhappy).

Example, an aware bipolar patient recognises the manic episodes as completely not their own emotions and purely as "hormonal emotions", and the soul, the sentience, is feeling its own feelings, but the body is in mania and produces hormones of euforic happiness and even aggression. The patient still has a choice, knowing right from wrong, they refrain from the bad and steer towards the good. God has given the greatest aid besides the second aid of medication, Knowledge of Him, of what is Right.

By these I try to give examples of the soul triumphing over the test. One must want to do good for God and thus learn Right from wrong and act upon Right no matter what. To say no way but God's way will do, in every matter.When we know right, understand right, act upon it, we become better and can recognise far better what is truly us, who God made us to be, and what we shouldn't be doing. Ultimately we choose what we do, the sentient creation who follows Sentience Himself Who teaches us Right

Thank you for your time if you read all these asks, I felt compelled to say something on the matter. Salam.

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

I understand your position. To me it is about a cost-benefit analysis: I believe that teaching people to obsess about the wrongness of sexual fantasies is more harmful than teaching them it is a morally neutral thing.

Since we do not have any clear texts on the moral wrongness of sexual fantasies, and since the brain has a strong natural tendency to generate sexual fantasies during the right physiological state, the balanced position is tell people not to worry about it.

Every strict moral ruling we create adds to the cost of religion, until a point comes when a person feels the religion is too demanding, inhuman, and irrelevant to their own inner experience. So I believe telling young people to feel guilty about giving in to sexual fantasies does more harm than good. When it comes to something neutral like this, the path we take should be one of easing things rather than making things more difficult.

Note that I do not recommend religious laxity just to make religion sound more easy to people. As I discuss in my essay The Philosophy of Pornography and Masturbation, since we have good reasons to consider pornography and masturbation wrong, we can take a strict stance toward them. But as for sexual fantasies, I am not at all convinced that a strict stance would be helpful.

Islam and the manners of sleeping

esselamu alejkum I have a question regarding islamic way of "sleeping". I read one must sleep on right side some websites talk like left is bad evil ect. Is that true first of all and how can it be? I sleep on L and R and back side, sometimes my back hurts and left side just feels better to fall asleep. I have slept on my belly too when I had some issues? Why would GOD care about that I don't understand the logic behind it. Also body constantly shifts during sleep because if you sleep constantly on now side you would be in pain/discomfort. What do you know about that? Thank you for your answer.

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

The Prophet PBUH preferred using the right side in most things, and from that the manners of things like sleeping is derived. This is just a recommendation. I know some Muslims make a big deal of it, but in my view, as someone who has read Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Muslim and other hadith sources, I can tell you that it is a very minor issue. Personally I sleep on whatever side I prefer. In fact I often sleep on my left side because the right side gives me stomach trouble.

As for sleeping on the stomach, please see this answer: Sleeping on the stomach is not clearly forbidden or disliked in Islam

The Philosophy of Pornography and Masturbation

Why is it wrong to watch pornography? Even if a person is not religious, they will still feel guilt and shame about a porn-watching habit. Where does this come from? Even the most free-thinking and atheistic person will have reservations about watching pornography with their family, even if everyone in the family is an adult. They are consenting adults, and no one is harmed in the film (it can be a computer-generated film). So where does the wrongness come from?

This was one of the most difficult questions I have had to answer for myself. My diaries contain many entries over the years where I argued why watching pornography is wrong only to defeat my own arguments. Being religious, I did not need to justify to justify the wrongness of pornography in order to avoid it. I already knew it was wrong; I just wanted a good intellectual argument for why it is so.

They key that opened this mystery to me and many other mysteries about sexuality was Roger Scruton’s 1986 book Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation. Finally I found arguments that could satisfy the most demanding and skeptical critic that I know personally; myself.

A popular argument against pornography is that people are harmed in its creation. This is true, but it does not cut to the root of the problem. Imagine if thousands of yours in the future a person discovers a computer hard drive filled with pornography. All of the people in the films or pictures are dead. Surely whatever harm was associated with the creation of those films or pictures would no longer be relevant. Enjoying them would be similar to enjoying visiting the pyramids in Egypt. We know thousands greatly suffered in those projects. But that does not prevent us from enjoying the sight of the pyramids; their magnificence and beauty.

Or imagine an artificial intelligence system that can generate pornography that is better and more realistic than the real thing. No one is harmed in the creation of such pornography. So what is the right moral approach to it?

Evolutionary psychology and the uniqueness of humans

The root problem with pornography is not the way it is created. It is also not the erotic enjoyment it creates in its consumer. It is also not exactly the way it is supposed to cause a person not to enjoy real sexual intimacy or to become lazy and disinterested in seeking out real-life partners.

The problem goes deeper.

The basic problem is that humans are not animals. Enjoying pornography means breaking a moral rule that is tied to our basic humanity; it is our humanity that is damaged in the process.

A main attraction of the evolutionary study of human psychology since Nietzsche and his Darwinian influencers has been the sense of perspective and knowledge that we gain over fellow humans when we view them as mere bags of matter controlled by built-in biological instincts; our relationships become so simple if we look at them solely through Darwinian eyes. My mother loves me because she has genetic instincts that make her love me. If she is just a mere collection of matter who is configured to be nice to me then that takes away all of my duties and responsibilities toward her. I may still be nice and dutiful toward her because I have genetic instincts to be this way toward her, but I will not pretend that there is anything to this relationship between selfish genes using us for their own ends. Looking at humans this way, we feel like our eyes have been opened. We see the cold, harsh reality of existence and have at least taken a first step toward dealing with it, a step that (we think) most of those around us cannot even conceive of taking.

And yet, our actual, lived human experience proves the utter falseness of the above way of seeing the world. My mother is not just a mere collection of matter; she is also a person. Persons possess self-consciousness, inviolable dignity and infinite worth. A single uninteresting and “average” person is worth more than any amount of money you can imagine; all great moral philosophers would agree that even if a country could gain trillions of dollars by killing a single innocent person, it would be evil and morally unjustified for it to do so. Somehow a single person is worth more money than the entire world can offer.

We live between two completely opposed views of humans. One of them is only too happy to reduce humans to mere collections of atoms. The other one accepts nothing less than infinity as the worth and dignity of each and every human.

If were to commit genocide by eradicating an ant colony, most people would not think the worse of me. Yet genocide against humans is widely agreed to be a terrible crime. There is something unique about humans that makes it inappropriate to treat them like insects or animals. There is no agreement on where this uniqueness comes from. Science can only view humans as clever bags of matter, so it cannot enlighten us about why humans are special. According to some religions humans possess a soul, breathed into them by God, that makes them unique and unlike other living creatures.

Whatever the source of the uniqueness, what concerns us here is that most thinkers agree on the fact that such uniqueness exists.

Being human

Knowing the uniqueness of our humanity, we are pushed to ask how this relates to our conduct toward others. How do you treat something that has infinite worth?

The German philosopher Kant proposed the famous principle (or categorical imperative) that humans must be treated as ends rather than means. This idea nicely encapsulates the basis for all of our modern thinking about human rights and dignity.

To treat a human as an “end” means to not treat them as a means, instrument or tool for one’s own benefit. The word “end” here is being used in the sense of “final aim”, “goal”. A human is an end when you view them as an inviolable entity that cannot be used, dominated, sold, raped or killed for another’s benefit. While we can pick up a rock, lump of wood or some other object and use it as a tool, humans, by the mere virtue of being human, are excluded from this category of “objects”. Humans are subjects, inviolable entities that look out into the universe while somehow being independent of it. Humans can use anything they want as a tool, except for other humans.

Humans possess what I call personhood; personhood refers to our uniqueness. Persons are not objects. Treating persons morally has its own universe of rules that have nothing to do with the animal world. Yes, we have a natural or evolutionary genetic inheritance; we are animals and a study of our genes and hormones can easily show our closeness to other animals. But we are not just animals. We are also persons. We have a dual nature: both the animal and the person.

The problem with pornography is that it is only concerned with the animal in us.

Obscenity

Obscenity is anything that treats or depicts humans as if they were mere animals. A picture of one’s parents naked is obscene because it stressed upon us their animal nature to the exclusion of their personhood. We are forced to see them as animals; their personhood is not in the picture.

A picture of a dead loved one who has suffered a terrible accident that mutilated their faces and bodies is also obscene. It shows them as a mere collection of atoms that has been turned into chaos by the physical world. The world has turned them into an object. We do not want to see our loved ones as objects. So we turn away from such a picture with disgust, try to forget it, and continue to imagine them as they were when they still lived.

Pornography is obscene because it depicts humans as reduced to mere bodies. It does not capture the personhood of the humans; they might as well be corpses that are animated to perform the sex act. And enjoying pornography makes us feel guilt and shame because we join this partying of corpses. In a small way we become like the great tyrants of history, happy to watch humans reduced to animals that can be used for our pleasure. In that world that we join during the watching of pornography these humans become mere objects. If during the pornographic scene we watch an explosion tear these humans apart, it is merely an interesting data point. The corpses are rearranged in a new way and nothing fundamental is lost, because they were already corpses when we were enjoying their flesh to the exclusion of their personhood.

Hentai and erotica

If online forums are to be believed, many young men progress from viewing erotic pictures to “hardcore” pornography, to watching the genre known as hentai (Japanese-inspired cartoon pornography). Hentai has no rules and it is famous for its depiction of extreme violence during sex acts. It depicts beautiful females torn apart by tentacled monstrosities. The viewer is surprised to find that they actually enjoy seeing this. That is because the tearing apart of humans in cartoon pornography does not break any moral rules of pornography. When humans are reduced to mere objects, as if they were corpses, it is only the next logical step to explore what can be done to corpses.

The same applies to erotic novels like Fifty Shades of Grey. Erotic novels are merely pornography intended (mostly) for female use. The intense violence does not feel wrong because it is not being done to human persons but to depersonalized humans, virtual corpses.

Since pornography breaks the first rule of morality toward other humans and objectifies them and takes away their personhood, in the moral universe of pornography violence and death are merely the logical extension of taking pleasure in the objectification of humans.

Moral self-creation

I think it was Christopher Hitchens who said that he cannot see an American woman without imagining her lips around his own penis. This is a good illustration of what pornography does to our psychology.

Moral self-creation refers to the fact that every time we treat a fellow human in a certain way, this reflects back on us and changes who we are. Every time you treat some cruelly, this feedback into your own internal universe and changes you. You create yourself morally by the way you treat others.

We cannot treat other humans in a moral vacuum. Every choice we make toward others is always associated with a moral cost or benefit. You can justify to yourself that a particular person deserves cruelty; they have done you harm and they have no sympathy or mercy toward you. Yet the moment you perform an act of cruelty toward them, you feel yourself lessened and damaged by this. The Islamic theologian Ibn Taymiyya took note of this when he said:

No one has ever taken revenge for himself except that it created in him a degradation and humiliation in his psyche, because revenge looks like strength and power on the outside but on the inside it is degradation and humiliation, while forgiveness creates strength and power both on the inside and out.

By harming us, a person damages their own internal universe. Taking revenge on them only causes damage in the other direction; in our own internal universe. Revenge can taste sweet to the animal in us, but to the person in us, it is always a degradation.

I call this moral self-creation. You create yourself morally by the way you treat others. Every one of your actions feeds back into yourself and changes you. And if the action is immoral; if you break Kant’s categorical imperative and treat other humans the way you do not like to be treated yourself, you degrade yourself. No reasoning or pretense can undo this damage. The person in you only knows and recognizes itself according to the way it treats other persons. You cannot say to yourself, “I utterly damaged this person but I cut off myself from the consequences.” The very knowledge that you damaged a person makes you recognize yourself, see yourself and feel yourself as the person who did that damage.

This is why our guilt follows us around and does not leave us. The guilt is the recognition of the damage you have done to yourself. You mutilate your spirit by every damage you do to another person. The mutilation remains and cannot be erased except by treating other persons in a better way. Every treatment of others creates you morally. You are the architect of your spirit by the way you treat others. Your guilt is the recognition that you damaged this architecture. And the only way to undo it is by doing what is necessary to rebuild it and improve it. Reasoning to yourself and justifying things to yourself does absolutely nothing to your spirit’s architecture. It will lay in tatters and ruins until you learn that you have no access to this architecture. You have no key to it; it is closed to you. It is only open to others: only others can take away your guilt by the way you treat them. Other persons are the only key to our spirit; the way we treat them feedback into it and changes it.

Pornography involves treating other humans as if they were merely animals. It is the worst degradation of a human’s personhood that can be imagined. We tear apart their dual nature, the animal and the person, throw away the person, and enjoy the animal. Since pornography generally involves pictures and videos taken by others, we can delude ourselves into thinking that there is no harm in it; the wrong was done by others, not us. Pornography can even be computer-generated, so where is the harm in that?

The problem is that the process of moral self-creation is always in force in us. Even if you reason to yourself that no one is harmed in that picture or video, you are harmed. You recognize yourself as a user and degrader of other humans. You are willing to treat other humans as animals and this knowledge feeds back into you. Your spirit does not understand your reasoning that no one is harmed and has no use for it. It only recognizes that you are a human who uses other humans. You are willing to enjoy the tearing apart of humans from their personhood, you are willing to objectify and use them. The treatment of other persons in pornography, even if computer-generated, makes the architecture of your internal universe open up and take in the damage.

Afterwards you feel guilt. You recognize that you have been lessened and degraded. Your guilt is the pain you feel at the damage you have done to yourself. You have gone from a person existing in the warmth and dignity of human society to something less. You recognize the infinite worth and dignity of other humans, and by transgressing against this recognition, you feel that you are unworthy of human society. You feel that the persons around you, your mother and father for example, are giants, whole universes, but you yourself, by partaking in a dehumanizing, dirty and furtive pleasure, are something less. You are a damaged and polluted universe that cries out to become whole again.

Sinking into obscenity

A pornography addict will one day discover that they live in a new world. They may have a memory of the warmth and innocence of the world of their childhood. But everything is now harsh and cold. They feel alienated from their fellow humans and from their societies. Family life, love, the beauty and solemnity of classical literature, all these things seem to them to exist in a different reality that is closed to them.

By making it a habit to depersonalize other humans, the pornography addict can no longer relate to other humans with solemnity and seriousness. They feel that we are all animals pretending to be something more. They daily experience of pornography constantly reinforces this animal view of humanity. Morality starts to feel like a pretense. They become cynical and in social situations such as family gathering they feel that they are only playing a part assigned to them by “society”.

This cynical view also pervades their relationships. The male pornography addict cannot enjoy the innocence of love; of treating a woman as if she is the most important person in their world. She is just a body and personality with various failings and annoying habits. Opening his heart to her and treating her as if she is more than an animal feels strange and unusual.

Pornography equalizes all humans into a new world order of bodies. One body can be as good as another for satisfying one’s needs. But love and romance require treating a person as if they are infinitely worthy and irreplaceable. The “morality” that pornography teaches is entirely opposed to the morality of love. The two cannot coexist.

Lust and erotic love

Lust is obscene while erotic love is beautiful–even though they both involve sexual desire. Lust is depersonalized sexual desire; lust directed at someone does not care for their uniqueness and personhood. A man who lusts after Elizabeth can be be satisfied with an equally attractive Jane. But erotic love is directed at a specific person; a man who is in love with Elizabeth and desires her will not be satisfied by any other woman of equal attractiveness.

Erotic love allows us to engage in sexuality while remaining fully human. We continue to see the other human as a person even during sexual intimacy.

But lust is inhuman and bestial. It is the fact of one animal desiring another. Obviously pornography can only stimulate and celebrate lust. It is impossible to connect with the depicted person on human terms, person-to-person. And by training us to relate lustfully to fellow humans, this becomes the rule in our minds. Like Christopher Hitchens, we see every attractive person as a potential actor or actress in a pornographic scene.

Masturbation

Masturbation is one of the obscene pleasures that is very often associated with pornography. I consider masturbation obscene for two reasons. First, it nearly always involves the fantasy of using another human for one’s own pleasure–a human that cannot answer back. It lacks the aspect of the union of two conscious and willing first-person perspectives that is the gold-standard of non-obscene sexuality.

Second, it involves the aspect of a first-person perspective turning to itself; using its own body as if the human is merely a body. The is no respect for personhood involved; the human and its personhood turns to its own body, treating themselves as if they are something to be used. It is a form of self-use that is quite similar to, if not the same as, using another’s body for pleasure without respect for their personhood.

This then brings us into the strange reality that a person’s own body is forbidden territory to themselves. This is strange, but even if you reject the above argument, you can still feel the reality of it: masturbation is always associated with a sense of shame, loss and degradation once the pleasure is over. It is a form of lusting after one’s own body: a body with no humanity, a body that cannot answer back; a corpse.

Masturbation is therefore an attack on a human’s personhood. It makes no difference that in this case the attack is against oneself.

Recovering from obscenity

I have heard Western men say that they see themselves as mere children in comparison with their grandfathers and ancestors. Looking at pictures of these solemn ancient men, they cannot help but feel their own inadequacy.

General Pershing

I believe that it is our pornographic culture that has filled the West with men who feel degraded in comparison to their ancestors. There can be no sense of solemnity and greatness in a person who has habituated themselves to obscenity.

It is only by following the iron rule of Kant’s categorical imperative in our lives that we can maintain a sense of our infinite worth and dignity as humans. And this means turning away from the obscene in all things. By treating fellow humans as infinitely worthy of respect, this treatment feeds back into our own internal universe and rebuilds its architecture into something solemn and beautiful.

A man who follows this rule in his life will feel no inadequacy in comparison to his ancestors. He will in fact feel in a position to critique them as his equals. Through moral self-creation, a man has the chance to enlarge himself until he towers over all of his ancestors.

The difference between sexual fantasies and reading erotic novels

Assalamualaikum, I read your answers for not reading any erotica in novels but how is this different from it being okay for young persons to have sexual fantasies as another question determined? Jzk

Alaikumassalam wa rahmatullah,

The difference is that sexual fantasies are a consequence of a natural hormonal state. Since God does not burden us with what we cannot bear, if a person’s physiological state makes them think sexual thoughts then we do not find anything morally wrong with that.

But when it comes to erotic novels the line of causation is in the opposite direction. The person uses it as a tool to stimulate themselves sexually (similar to using pornography), so it has to be dealt with separately from sexual fantasies.

As for why reading erotica is “wrong”, the reasoning is complicated and philosophical. Reading erotica is a form of voyeurism where a third-person perspective is introduced into a sexual act. For human sexuality to be non-obscene, it must always involve the union of two first-person perspectives. The third-person perspective is always obscene (as argued by Roger Scruton in his 1986 book Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation).

But even if someone does not understand these arguments, we still have a natural instinct that allows us to tell the obscene from the non-obscene, which is why things like pornography and erotica are always associated with guilt and shame even among people who have had a completely non-religious upbringing.

A sexual fantasy can also be obscene if the person imagines themselves watching others having sex. It is just that due to the difficulty of controlling one’s mind when a person is naturally sexually aroused, we can excuse it. But a person who wishes to always live up to highest ideals will do their best to avoid obscene fantasies.

The name “Ahil Fasih”

What is the meaning of the complete name ahil fasih and also tell me it is right name or not?

The Arabic word Āhil means “inhabitant”, “native [of some place]”. It can also mean “domestic”, as in a domestic animal. Fasih may be the Arabic word Faṣīḥ, which means “eloquent”, “one who speaks according to the proper rules of grammar and expression.”

Since both names have good meanings, the full name is good and acceptable.