Families: The "Real Work"
Blog Post 41
May 15, 2021
Warning: This blog post contains challenging content dealing with sexism, misogyny, abuse, violence, injustice and oppression.
Eid Mubarak!
This is not the time to celebrate though. There's too much oppression and misery in the world.
Listen. I set out to write about families in my February 10, 2020 blog post, He, Him, His, Himself, but once again my fingers typed out something else altogether. This happens sometimes to writers. We sit down to pour our hearts into a piece with good intentions, good vibrations and good
material, but somehow our minds and hearts and fingers lead us down a different route. Perhaps they had to.
I was asked:
What was the purpose of the piece?
What did I intend to get out of it?
What did it do for me?
All good questions. The answers?
Purpose: Express myself, help and enlighten others, get others thinking
Intention: Write about families
Do: Got things out of my mind and into the open, relieved some stress, added some other stress, got people talking
So actually, the questions are related. I expressed myself, intended to write about families and side-stepped that somewhat, got things out of my mind, exposed some things, relieved and added stress, sparked some people’s voices.
But the real question is:
Why did I choose to publish it?
And my answer is: Why not?
Does the February 10, 2020 blog post add anything? Does it hurt anyone? Does it skirt the truth? Does it speak for itself?
True, it sounds like male bashing. It sounds like I’m sick and tired of men. It sounds like whining. It sounds like…. The feminist agenda is that. As a Muslim woman, I’m definitely not a feminist. As a Muslim woman, I’m definitely against oppression. As a Muslim woman, I’m definitely going to speak out against oppression whether it’s here, there or anywhere. And from my viewpoint, men oppress women. And although women can oppress men, the quantity and quality of that is nowhere near the same.
True, men oppress men, too. Duh. That’s what war is. That’s what bossmen do. That’s what corporations are. That’s what road rage is. That’s what prison is. That’s what torture is. That’s what boxing and sports with sticks and tackling and bumping and shoving are. And that’s what we’re talking about.
True, men have been hurt, too. Duh.
True, men have been led around and duped by the system. Duh.
True, men want to live free of violence, free of death and destruction, free of lying and cheating, stealing and murder, free of sinning.
True, men want real relationships with other men and with women.
True, men want healthy, loving families.
True, men want emotional connections with their wives and children, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers.
True, men want to be loved and appreciated, respected and honoured.
This is a human issue.
Men and women want the same things,
the human things, the right things,
the Islamic things.
But to deny that men have had and continue to have the upperhand is not helpful. That needs to change.
I’m not saying that men don’t take care of their families. I’m saying they don’t want to. To chalk that up to, men are lazy or men will let their wives take care of them or the family is not the whole story. Women don’t want to live in poverty, see their children go without food, shelter, clothing and education, so they’ll pinch and work and save and scrimp and the men will let them. Is that enabling the men, as I’ve been told? I don’t think so. It’s women taking the lead once again to take care of things.
What’s been happening is that women have been trying their damnedest to help men, help them get ahead, help them stay sane, help them understand themselves and women and children, help them be compassionate, help them be gentle and loving and kind. And rather than accepting that help from women, they try to silence the women’s voices and push them down and away and end up abusing them emotionally and physically so that the women can’t function the way they know they should. And that’s a crying shame.
I feel for all women.
I feel for all women who suffer.
I feel for all women who suffer from men,
especially from men they love.
And I feel for all men. I feel for all men who suffer. I feel for all men who don’t know how to be a man, don’t want to learn that, don’t want to give in to the feminine side for fear of losing their manhood, don’t want to listen to women. I feel for men who can’t accept and feel and heal in their women’s love.
But I don’t feel for men who hurt women.
In the end, it won’t be the woman, the situation they were in or the system that caused them to hurt the woman. It’ll be their own decision, their own nafs, that caused that behaviour, those words, those looks and Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala is The Best of Judges. Cause definitely every time they hurt the woman, they knew it was wrong.
When the respected man and I were talking about “the real work” – strengthening families – I said in reference to the protests and demonstrations about injustices and oppressions that are taking place around the world and mending family relationships:
“That is the truth. Those injustices are taking place far off or not so up close. But the day to day is right in our faces every day. Harder to work on cause it’s emotions people don’t want to work through, deal with, acknowledge. People aren’t truthful about their feelings and they hide them deep down and then let them jump out in hurtful ways. This is the situation in many Muslim families and parents and their children suffer. Then to mend that… Impossible without Allah’s Help.”
So, that’s what I set out to write about.
Families.
Mending families.
Beginning families fresh.
Strengthening families.
Cutting the cycle of emotional turmoil, hurt and abuse.
And yeah, maybe it leapt to men. And yeah, maybe men need the most assistance. And yeah, maybe men are just starting to get it and work on it and help each other understand how to be a man, how to be a Muslim man. And yeah, we’ll be there alongside them, helping and honouring, supporting and loving, guiding and tugging, cause we love our men, our fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, grandsons, nephews, cousins, uncles, grandfathers, sons-in-law. We love them.
It’s easy to say that we all know how to behave. It’s easy to say that we need to control our self, our nafs. It’s easy to say just be nice. But verily we are products of our environment, our own families’ upbringings, our lack of knowledge and spiritual growth. And our nafs is very strong and always looking out for itself. Our nafs needs help!
What we ache for is the scholarly instruction, the Islamic way to live, the understanding of what’s going on, what’s going on wrong, and the step-by-step way to live together, in peace, love and harmony, as true Muslims striving to make it to Paradise all together. A lot more of that, please, inshallah.
Cause that’s the real work.
So as we step out of the house to protest against the zionist state of Israel’s oppression and murder and crimes against the Palestinian men, women and children, and indeed the whole world, we are reminded that the zionists’ behaviour is a vivid example of the end result of nafs running wild, shaitanic whisperings out of control, violent hatred and criminal psychopathic rage. And we pray to Allah Subhanahu wa ta’ala to save us from that whether it’s outward or inward.
NO JUSTICE! NO PEACE!
Note: This blog post was written on February 24, 2020, but I held onto it for this long. It’s being published now due to various reasons: one of which is the suffering families and women and children are going through during the plandemic, in Palestine, in Black families and so many places in the world; and two of which is first-hand knowledge of the suffering women, children and men are going through. And I know for sure the destruction of the family is at the top of their agenda.
Disclaimer: Men and women are being generalized in this blog post. I know that.