Sex sells.. as does loneliness 🔞

When I think of the term fardh kifaaya, I think of a village. The work of multiple people actively coming together to build a life, with all its nooks and crannies. Not too long ago we had thriving towns and villages where strangers broke bread and looked out for one another. Knowing the local postman, baker, butcher, cheesemonger, uncle at the corner shop, or tailor by name was part of everyday life. We’d see the same people regularly, rely on one another in small ways and over time, familiarity would naturally turn relationships into community. Religious communities also had their own form of suhba which extended beyond Friday prayers, Sunday schools or the odd event. There was a sense of camaraderie amongst us, where these regular check-ins became a launchpad for regular suhba outside of them. We may still find small pockets of these in the UK which operate like Balamory, the Shire or idyllic Muslim communities to this day, but they’re few and far between.

We’ve somehow built a culture that’s made it easier than ever to access people, yet made genuine human connection increasingly difficult - with ourselves, between one another and within communities. Community wasn’t something we scheduled, it was built into the structure of everyday life. We didn’t have to try to meet people, we encountered them. We didn’t have to buy a ‘community experience’, we simply lived amongst each other. We seem to have lost this warmth over the years.

The architecture of loneliness and the disappearance of third spaces

Ironically, lower-income areas and ‘under-developed’ regions often have more genuine community and neighbourliness than upper-class suburbia. Intergenerational homes are the norm, with older people still a part of everyday life and families living within walking distance of one another. Living at home after a certain age isn’t seen as taboo, while putting parents in nursing homes is. Inviting others over for food, with low-effort social interactions that don’t require a perfectly curated dinner or entertainment allow for casual gatherings. Even going as far as eating from one dish is a way to bring people together. When I lived in Morocco, I often ate couscous on Fridays from a large, family-style platter with others, and it’s still one of my favourite memories of that time. I.. like my lamb chops, so I won’t be getting a diverse platter to share anytime soon, but the sentiment is there. One of the closest comparisons in mainstream media is how Latino cultural roots are depicted in Fast and Furious via communal meals and emotional dialogue - mi casa es tu casa. Other Latin American focused shows such as Ugly Betty are depicted in a similar fashion. The lack of space, being tight on money and the 9-5 grind becoming increasingly taxing makes it difficult wherever we are - but if we did have the capacity, would we extend a hand?

The increase in globalisation has brought modern Western individualism deeper into the everyday lives of traditional communities, in turn moving us further away from these traditional values. Outside of the home or work, we had free ‘third spaces’ where we could meet communally. Teens and young adults played and gathered on street corners, on public transport, at public libraries, the local pub or social clubs, parks and even public benches. There were places to simply be around other people without spending a few quid to justify our presence. There’s been a notable decline in these spaces over the years, arguably contributing to the loneliness epidemic. With these changes, conglomerates have increasingly replaced independent businesses under capitalist pressures. The local baker, butcher and cheesemonger have become another branch of a chain, while purpose-built anti-homeless and anti-lingering architecture tells us, quite literally, not to stay. Even when we do see pop-ups of local independent shops, instead of feeling nostalgic, they can feel trendy and gentrified, catering to religious or socio-economic cliques which only isolate us further - think coffee shops. The lack of walkable cities and the uptake in private transport over the past few decades [with some homes having over three vehicles] cause us to retreat into our comfortable gated communities in the name of safety and security, subsequently creating anxiety when we do encounter others. We become more suspicious of strangers because we no longer know them, but knowing eachother is what relieves us of this suspicion. Maybe ditch the car and take the bus occasionally? There’s something grounding about being forced to share a small space with people we wouldn’t otherwise encounter.. every now and then.

It seems our third space has become online social platforms, chat services, gaming and other means of digital communication. As a result, community slowly becomes something online, curated and branded rather than something that simply exists. When we remove the places where people naturally encounter one another, people are bound to suffer from loneliness and anxiety. Loneliness isn’t simply a psychological problem, it’s becoming partly structural. When something that was once built into the fabric of everyday life disappears, we inevitably start looking for substitutes - purchasing what we once built. 

The Consumer

Patriarchy breeds capitalism which breeds individualism - they reinforce one another. Hierarchy creates systems of power, capitalism turns those systems into markets and individualism teaches us to navigate those markets as individual consumers rather than members of a community. We become less reliant on one another and more reliant on companies to do the work that communities once did collectively, whereby community now becomes something we have to purchase access to.

Capitalism has stripped us of design, craftsmanship and character in favour of mass production. We pump out cheap, bland products that are designed to be replaced rather than treasured. Old suitcases, the interiors of planes and trains, or clothes from previous decades indicate how much more thought went into long lasting durable products or experiences. Similarly, intricate carvings of sacred scripture and geometry across the Muslim world such as the Alhambra and zawiyas compared to soulless architecture we have today show how the presence of God and perfecting our craft was once in our day to day. Everything has now been optimised for efficiency and consumption, where we subscribe to things instead of owning them, order meals instead of cooking them and upgrade instead of maintain. There’s always another version, service or convenience being sold back to us. At this rate, it feels like we’ll be subscribing for the rest of our lives with no place for retirement [which seems increasingly intentional].* We’ve outsourced so much of everyday life that we’ve forgotten what it feels like to build things thoughtfully and collectively. Instead, the core of our production and consumption is individualism.

*Capitalism has even shaped how we decide who is allowed to belong and where. Increasingly, the right to live somewhere is conditional on what economic value we can provide through a job, an investment or a business. Our ability to participate in a society is often tied to our ability to contribute financially to it.

Our media consumption is also contributing to this feeling of isolation. We’ve created a culture where people experience FOMO from not seeing the latest show, consuming the latest trend or whatever the algorithm has decided we should be watching next. Everything is designed to keep us stimulated - the constant context switching, fast-paced action and endless story development. Older shows had considerably longer screentime, episodes and seasons, but now we have 30 minute episodes with 10 episodes a season, no slow burn or what we once considered filler episodes.* We rarely sit with boredom anymore. Eventually, real life can start to feel dull by comparison. Our lives don't have the constant plot twists, novelty and stimulation that we're consuming every day, so we start feeling like something is missing. We feel bored, lonely or dissatisfied with our lives, so we consume more media to escape it. And the more we consume, the more ordinary life can feel inadequate. We need to fabricate excitement just to feel alive, whether that's through unhealthy coping mechanisms, constant consumption or chasing experiences that give us the same dopamine hit. Then we're sold another product, another experience, another form of self-improvement to fix the emptiness that the consumption helped create. Corporations are increasingly creating the problems, capitalising from them and then selling us back the solutions.

*Our lack of ability to now sit through a 45 minute episode without becoming restless or reaching for our phones is concerning.

The marketplace for intimacy

It’s difficult to talk about modern relationships without talking about consumerism, because the same mentality that tells us that there’s always a newer, better version of something has quietly made its way into how we relate to one another. The same logic that makes a suitcase disposable can eventually make a relationship disposable. There’s now a marketplace for people, with dating apps, rishta groups and social media being the clearest examples of shopping sprees. Swipe culture gives us an infinite number of options and with this comes the constant feeling that the grass is greener elsewhere. We swipe through an endless catalogue of people, comparing faces, lifestyles, careers and personalities within seconds. Profiles become ads, personalities become carefully curated selling points and beauty becomes a form of currency [yay for the blessed.. until we inevitably attract someone performing just as much as ourselves]. Even modern language reflects this - plenty of options, high value, low value, matching, upgrading and the list goes on. We present ourselves as products and then browse other people as consumers.

Social media enables greater control and even fabrication of self relevant information, making idealised self presentation more easily enacted online than in real life

Somewhere along the way, that mentality has bled into the way we treat people. If a person becomes inconvenient, we disappear - discard and ghost, onto the next. We serial date [physically and emotionally] based on infatuation rather than compatibility and optimise ourselves to best manipulate the next, and then wonder why our relationships feel transactional. It’s difficult to build attachment when we’re constantly reminded that there are thousands of alternatives available on apps designed to keep us engaged. Social media worsens this. We’re constantly consuming other people's lives, most of which are curated, filtered and completely detached from the reality of actually being with someone. It skews our sense of what relationships are supposed to look like and leaves us wondering whether we're settling when mundane life doesn't look like the highlight reel. When people meet the real us they can almost feel disappointed and frauded, increasing the feelings of isolation and insecurity.* Why work through a difficult conversation when there’s someone who wants fun with no strings attached? Why tolerate someone's flaws when there’s always the possibility of finding a better match? Why invest deeply when we can simply move on to the next best thing?

It’s easier to discard a person when we’ve subconsciously categorised them as a product that no longer meets our needs. We don’t have to explain ourselves to a product we no longer want, we simply replace it or throw it away. This explains why we’re struggling to nurture relationships that require patience, inconvenience and commitment. We’ve been taught that the answer to dissatisfaction is more consumption, but a relationship can’t be judged by how much immediate satisfaction it provides because relationships require us to stay long enough to know another person beyond what they can offer us. Consequently, we move from being members of a community to consumers within a marketplace and stop asking what can I contribute? and start asking what can I get?

I post therefore I am

*Influencers and politicians are frequently seen trying to be more relatable to garner more viewers through cosplaying poverty, what they wear or their ‘lived’ surroundings vs the typical clean girl persona. Both can be as performative as the other.

The Death of Intimacy

Traditional dating gave people time to observe and understand what we want before becoming physically entangled with another person. Essentially gauging compatibility and seeing how they behave when they aren't trying to impress us to some degree. Hookup culture on the other hand has unfortunately made its way into modern dating changing the relationship between sex, intimacy and commitment. Calling it ‘casual dating’ or 'friends with benefits' is a nice way of making it sound less problematic than it actually is. This behaviour can become a culture of emotional avoidance, commitment, avoidance of having to confront what we actually want from another person and eventually contributes to the breakdown of the traditional family unit*. We can have the benefits of intimacy without having to accept the responsibility of a relationship. In the case that it doesn’t work, there’s always the next person.. after or even during the relationship. We’ve normalised immediate sexual access to the degree that people find themselves in situationships they never intended to enter, prolonging the confusion attached to it. Physical intimacy can create an emotional attachment that makes it harder to think clearly, resulting in attachments which linger longer than they should. Hookup culture, romance and loneliness combined unfortunately have us forgetting that we actually have to like the person beyond sexual chemistry. It causes us to associate with people we otherwise wouldn't if we were secure in ourselves - even platonically.

*Many feel that physical intimacy is much safer than emotional intimacy [naked body vs naked soul, implying a lack of depth or that sex is used as a form of escapism to hide the parts they don't want others to uncover].

Hyper-sexualisation of modern media

To take it a step further, pornography offers sexual gratification without communication, compromise, vulnerability or consideration of another person's needs. We can consume the experience entirely on our own terms, offering the sensation of sexual intimacy without requiring another person to participate in our life.

Pornography is deeply connected to the wider culture of hyper-sexualisation to the point where I’m not sure what we can call soft porn anymore. Sexually suggestive marketing [influential women on their knees], music videos/lyrics, reality tv and film where hyper-sexual behaviour is treated as completely ordinary are making us so accustomed to it that we hardly register it. I remember a time where movies with a particular rating weren’t shown before a certain time or certain scenes were cut during the day [I had no idea titanic had nudity or sex in it until my 20s, I’m sure you can imagine my horror when I re-watched it on the big screen], but streaming services have made almost everything available whenever and wherever, which is highly concerning for children. Adult humour that used to be a passing joke is now much more explicit and as a result sexualisation has become background noise. It feels like a loss of control and as a result the onus is now put on the consumer, similar to other industries - waste recycling and now water consumption. In their defence, I have recently read that efforts are being made by the government and Ofcom to ensure major streaming platforms are put under similar regulations TV broadcasters are placed under. So.. we'll see how that pans out.

Sex sells and is a tool used to lure viewers in. Over the years almost every show has some elements of pornography and nudity compared to a decade ago. As the contentions highlight, Marx argues that religion is the opium of the masses, but opium has clearly become the religion of the masses, and sex is the drug. Shows like Game of Thrones and Euphoria are famously known for this. Euphoria is particularly concerning because of its depiction of high school students. We’re essentially watching shows depict children being highly sexually active on screen and the consequences of this are disturbing, not only for children but for viewers [I can imagine] the shows are ultimately attracting. The increasing normalisation of large age gaps - either way, teacher-student, step sibling relationships and infidelity alongside other taboo dynamics that overlap heavily with pornographic fetishes are also increasingly depicted on screen - with sexualised terms like daddy or papi making their way into our everyday language. People who are supposed to occupy protective or caregiving roles are placed into predatory or sexual ones for entertainment, creating a novelty or high surrounding taboo. When boys are the victims of sexual abuse at the hands of a teacher, they often describe it as ‘scoring’ than abuse or trauma. Comedy shows are also increasingly becoming an excuse to be highly sexual, racist, homophobic and offensive - it's locker room talk with a platform. If you can't crack a joke without insulting someone [past funny stereotypes] or enabling problematic behaviour, then I hate to break it to ya, you're just a prick with a mic.

Additionally, women being mistreated on screen via rape, murder and other forms of abuse are repeatedly used as entertainment, often presented with a casualness that makes us question the intent behind showing it. Sexual violence isn't an abstract concept either, it’s used as a weapon of war and as a tool of power, as Angelina Jolie has relentlessly brought to light, particularly in the case of the Bosnian genocide. A recent case involving a French woman is one of the most disturbing examples of what happens when women are stripped of their humanity. For almost a decade she was drugged by her husband who invited dozens of men to their home to rape her, while recording the assaults. It seems like an extreme example, but women are often pimped out for multiple reasons - usually for the pleasure of other men. Sex trafficking rings and large scale prostitution operations are often headed by men with women working as aides. The secret service also use beautiful women as bait to manipulate men and are often treated as disposable. When women are constantly depicted as objects of sexual violence or humiliation, these dynamics seep into the way people understand sex and relate to one another.

This interestingly ties into how women are expected to dress in professional sports. A recent sports trading ad featuring a well-known, highly sexualised actress has faced significant criticism for using sports equipment to cover her modesty, barely. The backlash has sparked a wave of reels from women highlighting the dedication, discipline and skill required to succeed in what remains a heavily male-dominated field. The advert is likely aimed at a particular demographic, and from a marketing perspective, we know even bad press can be good press. Tennis, gymnastics and olympic games also depict women in barely-there attire and the cameramen do a good job in taking away from their expertise. Pole is where calisthenics meets dance and is an excellent way for women to strength train while having fun. When slow and sensual, it's just as graceful as ballet and when fast it’s akin to vertical break dancing. What’s associated with it has unfortunately sullied it, but women know that dance is healing. The issue isn't that a woman can’t be attractive, sensual or successful at the same time, nor is it about policing how women choose to present themselves, but a culture where women's sexuality is repeatedly used to sell everything from entertainment to financial products, her actual ability becomes secondary to her sexual appeal. Interestingly, Muslim women are constantly told they need to be liberated, but the conversation rarely covers who defines what liberation actually looks like. Our choices around dress are often treated as inherently oppressive, while undressing is assumed to be an expression of free choice - are you hot under that? you know you don't have to wear that here? Ironically, feminism is often used to benefit corporations and cater to the male gaze in the name of liberation. Instead of protecting our skin from the sun.. using clothes, we now buy products as a replacement.* Beach attire is no longer beach attire, it’s worn everywhere. Bikinis have shrunk over the years, barely covering anything front and back. If women are shaped by generations of conditioning that equate sexual exposure with empowerment, how can we assume that one is freedom while the other is oppression?

*I’ve seen people laugh at Berbers for their desert attire - with obvious racist undertones, insinuating under-developed regions are less intelligent. Cottons, linens and other materials are commonly known summer fabrics because they keep us cool while protecting us from sun damage. Now that Korean culture has become more popularised, conversations surrounding the benefits of full coverage at the beach have been raised, mostly for anti-ageing reasons.

Sexualised trends, imagery, humour and fashion also bleed into content consumed by younger audiences and heavily blur the lines between adult and child-oriented media. I recently watched the new Shrek trailer, someone tell me why the gingerbread man is caked up and twerking? Duolingo also twerks as a celebratory gesture. I passed an Ann Summers with highly provocative window ads, visible to everyone walking by, including children. When children grow up seeing sexualised behaviour and imagery as ordinary via entertainment, trends and celebrity culture, the threshold for what we view as inappropriate eventually shifts and will most definitely become harder to recognise as a problem elsewhere - in schools, public spaces and social environments. I’ve read countless comments of people arguing that the ones concerned with toddlers wearing bikinis are the ones sexualising them - one way to flip the narrative I guess. Some argue that many beauty standards are rooted in paedophilia and although it initially sounds far-fetched, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced of it. Many artists are popularising childlike clothing while dancing provocatively which has obviously garnered a lot of criticism over the years. Women report more sexual advances as teenagers than in their mid to late 20s - I know I’ve been followed in my uniform multiple times. The school girl roleplay is very obviously rooted in paedophilia yet is a commonly spoken about sexual fantasy. Anime highly sexualises school girls through their dress, assets, demeanour and.. moans every 2 seconds. The valley girl, vocal fry or high-pitched childlike voice to sound less intelligent and more vulnerable is relentlessly mocked by women, as men deem the infantilisation and dependence of women attractive. Figures like Paris Hilton have noted that this behaviour is ironically a protective persona until they no longer felt the need to perform. We eventually stop seeing these behaviours as abnormal which is what makes the hyper-sexualisation of children disturbing. With such easy access to pornography, children are being exposed to it far more and at a younger age. The one thing that distinguishes children from adults is their innocence.

Down the rabbit hole of pornography

Colloquially, the language surrounding sex has increasingly become inherently violent - smashed, banged, hit, cracked. Pornography reinforces the notion that sex is done to someone rather than with someone, with power being eroticised. What was once considered extreme eventually becomes normal and then boring, and what’s now considered ‘kinky’ can become synonymous with humiliation, pain or violence. Certain activity in the Middle East where net traffic has been cleverly diverted via SEO highlights this. Women are selling questionable things simply because there’s a market for it - from feet pics to dirty underwear, bath water [honourary shoutout to my sister who suggested this], footprints on a slice of bread and farts in a jar [yes, you read that right]. When they say there's a market for everything.. there really is. It doesn’t just warp our view of sex, but changes our individual types, desires and we become one homogenous group attracted to what’s trending.

Men are the largest consumers of pornography [the Muslim world being some of the highest traffic] and women are expected to participate in this and subsequently find themselves performing and adhering to these standards because they believe it’s what being desirable requires. Sexual confidence can become a performance in women because they know it makes men feel desired, not necessarily because they enjoy it - even to the point of faking an orgasm. Many women state their lifelong partners have never made them climax, indicating the self-serving nature of men in the bedroom, and I’d argue pornography and general misogyny are to blame. The contradiction lies in women being told to be modest and shamed for their body count while being constantly sexualised in advertising, entertainment and social media - with everyone recognising a well-known director’s foot fetish because it's very obviously depicted throughout his discography. It seems men only want this sensuality if it’s only performed for them. The normalisation of pornography or hyper-sexual behaviour has conditioned us to accept 3^rd parties within our relationships and women are often shamed or mocked for expecting otherwise - even within the Muslim community, because boy will be boys right? Bachelor parties tend to be coined as a man's last night of freedom. Behaviour that would otherwise never be tolerated within a relationship is expected to be forgiven, mostly by women.

Technology has only made all of this easier. Deepfakes and AI mean anyone can be generated into sexual content without their consent, including children. Recent rulings in the US found that the possession of AI generated child sexual abuse material isn’t considered child pornography, thus protected by the first amendment because it’s purely artificial. My understanding is that AI is a tool that needs material to generate from [machine learning] and therefore would be using child imagery garnered from online material.. but what do I know. Children are innocent, malleable, easily influenced and haven't had enough life experience to know any better, and as a result are easy targets. It’s giving those who already dabble in child abuse a green light. With the blurring of lines between what’s real and what’s fake, we’re rolling down a slippery slope which almost feels intentional [ep stein and bal en ciaga scandals], especially since tech is moving faster than laws can be created. VR sex, sex dolls and sex robots take the idea of sexual consumption further, offering a simulation of companionship without the inconvenience of another human being. We've found a way to monetise loneliness without thinking of the implications, while slowly but surely normalising it through media. Many movies depict new age robots as maids and sexual partners with no other expectation but to sexually and domestically please. The dangers of using a lifeless doll who can’t say no are pretty clear. The widespread internet notion that morgues prefer to hire women and the assumption as to why Marilyn Monroe’s body ‘disappeared’ for a few hours upon her death only solidify this point further.

Pornography and hypersexual behaviour have their place in the case of rape and murder. When women are victims of general violence, whether through burglary or assault, there’s also a fear that sexual violence will occur. Unaroused women in a state of panic naturally tighten up leading to pain on their part and pleasure on the perpetrator's, indicating that not only is it a carnal desire, but sexual pleasure is derived from hurting women. An FBI study [1980s] conducted on serial killers and sexual murders found that 81% admitted to heavily consuming pornographic material. One could argue that correlation doesn’t mean causation, but I’d argue they’re using 1% of their brain in this instance. Add ‘emerging tech’ to the mix and we have the ingredients to further this depravity. A slow and steady conditioning seems to have affected us so much so that we’re willingly participating in creating harmful technology or deriving pleasure from inflicting harm on another.

Unfortunately, this isn't exclusively a male problem. Men have pornography and women have smut. The stimulation and formats may be different, one being visual and another emotional or narrative, but both can provide an escape from the reality of intimacy. Romance can create unrealistic expectations just as pornography can, with manhandling and the recent [somewhat innocent] booktok door lean trend. Women can be placed into a kind of saviour mode, waiting for a particular type of man who romantically and sexually performs in a particular type of way to come and rescue them, sweep them off their feet and worship the ground they walk on, while men are taught to expect women to perform fantasies that have little to do with real relationships. Both are problematic and can desensitise us to ordinary intimacy.

Over the past few years, with the increase in individual contributors and new platforms bolstering pornographic material, there’s been a huge wave of sex positivity - with a focus on the financial benefits. Anyone shaming sex workers feared being cancelled and deemed prude. I guess I’ll be the one to say it - the eradication of the sex industry is how we empower women. It’s undone years of feminism, which is also mainly misunderstood at its core. Choice is significant, but to use that choice to further harm women, create unrealistic expectations and cater to the male gaze is counter-intuitive and only increases the sexual objectification of women while providing no benefit. People with no purpose tend to distract themselves with pleasure. An addiction to pornography coupled with deep depression from loneliness will more than likely kill libido. It could easily be one of the underlying factors for the high rates of erectile dysfunction in young men.

Sexual exploration within a marriage is healthy and keeps things fresh, but when it begins to cross certain territory, eventually novelty requires escalation and anything outside of it is considered vanilla. Authors and poets have written about sexuality within the context of deen such as Habeeb Akande. Islam is sex positive, within bounds.

Addiction is devotion with nowhere to go

Women as products and men as consumers

Women have become hot, wife material, promiscuous, the trophy wife. Men are high value, providers, simps, alpha, beta. We’re categorising eachother.

Women’s bodies are constantly curated, criticised and presented for consumption. Bras, corsets, bikinis, heels, beauty standards and the anti-ageing industry all exist within a wider culture catered for the male gaze and beauty eventually becomes currency. We're filling our lips, butts and cheeks while defining our jawlines and changing our noses.. all for a new trend to emerge a few years down the line. Our faces tend to be harmonious naturally. When we change one thing, we often need to change another, repeating this cycle until balance is restored, leading to an eventual unrecognisable face - which I guess is the point. The more desirable we are, the more valuable we are. I don’t think it’s an accident that Aunt May has looked progressively younger in each of the Spiderman productions or when older women's faces are very obviously blurred in film to present a more youthful appearance.

Modern technology gives us access to beautiful women across the street, across the country and across the globe. Once upon a time, we’d cross a head-turning beautiful women maybe 5 times in our lives. With social media, it’s a constant feed of perfectly curated features slowly affecting our expectations. Ironically, being beautiful can sometimes feel less like privilege and more like punishment. Men are either intimidated by, lust over or try to humble conventionally attractive women due to their own inadequacies, while women envy, project and compete with them - ironically while befriending them, because they desire access to what they assume these women have access to. As a result, attractive women tend to attract shallow, insecure individuals who may want to eventually knock them off the pedestal they put them on. The assumption that life is easier for them, opportunities come their way, the options, support and compliments are endless become a barrier in developing relationships. Pretty privilege exists but so does pretty punishment. This is a known phenomenon in psychology called the ‘beauty penalty’, where negative attributions are often associated with conventionally attractive people and as a result, social affection is purposefully withheld. Assumptions around promiscuity, intellect or arrogance without saying a word are commonly discussed online, while women cite that they often need to overcompensate in social settings to make those around them feel secure in their presence. This ironically isolates women further, reinforcing the assumption that they feel far superior to others - simply existing becomes exhausting. Viral clips of the movie Malena perfectly depict how beautiful women are constantly lusted over by men and hated by women, with the final scene in the market showing how admiration leads to envy and hatred if not validated by those they pedestalise. Celebrities also garner criticism with comments like, what does she have to be sad about, as if beauty, wealth or fame somehow relieve us of everyday problems. It could arguably make it far worse and far more isolating. Angelina Jolie is so intimidatingly beautiful in the majority of her movies - The Tourist being one of them. So much so that she possesses a poise that exudes quiet confidence that has Jonny Depp’s character stumbling over his words. Would you approach a beautiful woman who embodies quiet confidence or assume she has better options or is purely arrogant? Beauty is one thing, but when coupled with depth, class, wealth, a healthy secure mindset and mannerisms - admiration by others can often lead to envy and eventual social suicide. Others tend to see our potential before we do and may assume beauty = wealth = confidence, as if something so shallow could define us. It’s the very fact that they don’t that gives these women a certain aura. No one hates women more than women.

By default, women are expected to be social butterflies who constantly smile, appease others and bring joy to every room. We should have a good opinion of all, but there's a common misconception that niceness = kindness. Many people are nice to be nosy, nice to be liked, nice to overcompensate for their insecurities, and to think otherwise in naivety. Women who don't have a naturally extroverted temperament are often misjudged - silence is automatically interpreted as hostility, judgement or arrogance. When a reserved personality is combined with being conventionally attractive, it adds fuel to the fire - even deeper resentment and assumptions are held.

Being hated by losers is the price you pay for not being one

Unfortunately, many men struggle to relate to women outside of sexual attraction. Many of their female friendships are based on attraction and women often fear that their closest friends are only waiting for a shot. If every female friendship is ultimately based on attraction, then it isn't really friendship, it's access with a different label - women being desired rather than known. A term like the fridge protecting the snacks shows the crass nature of how men view women they aren’t attracted to because they’re not receiving any benefit from them. In the context of relationships, when men who don’t show kindness to all women suddenly become overly friendly, it creates suspicion.

The same type of men tend to separate love from desire and categorise women accordingly. Common language surrounding women as ‘baddies’ vs ‘wifey’, you can't turn a hoe into a housewife and bros before hoes further this damaging red pill notion. One woman is virtuous, respectable and worthy of commitment, while another is sexually desirable but less deserving of respect. This is known as the Madonna-Whore complex [my roman empire] and depicted clearly through class where certain women are considered suitable for high society and marriage - slim, prim and proper and socially acceptable looking, while other women are fetishised as exotic or sexually ambiguous - desired but never respected. Freud argues, where such men love they have no desire, and where they desire they cannot love. This could also be partly due to an insecurity in men who may not be able to keep up with the attention a voluptuously beautiful woman may gain [lol]. We see this in The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments through the expectation of the women of Gilead vs escape through the jezebels. Shock horror, these categories aren’t mutually exclusive and only result in a deeply unhappy marriage leading to infidelity.

Even when women aren’t categorised in this way, when men marry, it often uplifts their social status because it signals that he’s worthy of being chosen. Married men are seen as an asset and far more likely to receive promotions while married women are seen as a liability. Now put a beautiful woman beside him and in some circles his status rises again. A beautiful woman becomes social currency. Men seek validation from and often perform for other men. The trophy wife* is rarely about love, it’s about what having her says about them. The more beautiful the woman, the more validation - an ego boost of some sort. She becomes another thing to compare and another way to prove that he's won amongst his peers. These relationships tend to be transactional and devoid of genuine intimacy - all that’s derived is usually sex, status, beauty, domestic labour, validation and financial security [if that] from both partners. I’m not denying the fact that women aren’t social climbers and opportunists, of course they can be distracted by the glits, glam and status that marriage can outwardly provide, but societal structures allow men to have more frequent imbalanced access than any benefits women may gain from marriage - especially now that women work. Comments made by women online usually argue that men are the real gold diggers, and I hardly disagree. I’d assume this is why many men are threatened by their assumption of feminism. To them it means a lack of access and potentially projecting the notion that women would treat them as they’ve treated women for centuries - as subordinates. Feminism is women wanting the boot off their neck, not putting it on anyone else’s neck. Feminism is a direct response to misogyny.

*A trophy wife not only refers to beauty, but anything men value. It could even be wealth or status.

Some thoughts to resist this mindset for men:

• Recognising their privilege rather than enabling the systems that seek to oppress women.
• Humanising women rather than pedestalising or using them. Women don't exist to provide sex, children, validation, domestic labour or status.
• Humanising themselves prevents men from transactionalising themselves through roles and responsibilities - finances and sex are not the only thing men bring to a marriage and it shouldn't define them.
• Emotional intimacy isn't emasculating. In fact, secure men are less lonely because they’re capable of forming deep emotional bonds [see my article titled ‘overcoming limited beliefs’]. They don't need to perform for other men, aren't threatened by vulnerability and don't need women to be smaller for them to feel bigger.
• The term ‘emasculation’ is problematic - nothing should shake masculinity. It insinuates that stripping one of their ‘powers’ make them more feminine and 'less than', which is rooted in sexism and patriarchy. Emasculation is ego.
• Beauty eventually fades into familiarity. Marry for deen and character.
• Operating from a place of love or kindness [to all] removes the need to perform.
• Protective roles should extend to all women, not just those in their inner circles or those they're attracted to.

Some thoughts to resist this mindset for women:

• Playing small gets women nowhere. Be bold and educated. We have a purpose beyond marriage and motherhood.
• Make sure life changing decisions are consciously made.
• Invest deeply in female friendships. Many women invest in men [who aren’t their man yet] more than they would their closest friends.
• Seeking validation from men coupled with an unhealthy attachment to romance means romanticising every man that comes our way. Big no.
• Do you like them, or do you like that they like you? To take it one step further, sometimes we’re deluded into thinking there’s chemistry when infact we bring the energy and they’re simply.. there.
• Transactional relationships take less effort to acquire and even less effort to fall apart - women need to flutter their eyelashes, pretend nothing works upstairs and act dependent and helpless, while men can fake their personalities and personas to be liked. Marry men who actually like us beyond attraction and what we can provide even if it takes considerably longer. I’d even go as far as to argue that in the courting period, be useless to a man. Befriend them and support them, but don’t play wife without a ring. If it happens to get that far, set the tone by sharing the load. Women are often expected to do all the organisational management alongside labour at work and home [often the health of their husband is also their responsibility].
• There’s a certain level of expectation that comes from a man financially, deen-wise, but men are not machines and shouldn’t be treated as such. They shouldn’t be expected to tire themselves out to provide a lifestyle we expect [especially if the woman in question doesn’t understand the pressures of financial responsibility]. He should be given a soft place to land.
• The softest way a man can express his vulnerabilities is though words or tears. If it doesn't come out this way, it'll come out another. Shaming men for expressing vulnerabilities will only deepen the loneliness felt collectively in a marriage. They’re human too and are already heavily criticised for this.
• Reactive abuse is still abuse. The transition from oppressed to oppressor is a slippery slope.
• There is no shame in leaving a marriage, it could actually be seen as a milestone in growth. Overcoming abuse and a man who has willingly and consistently made life unbearable is something to be proud of. We should leave for ourselves first and foremost, but also for the children. Children are a direct byproduct of their environment. A healthy primary caregiver results in healthy children. We are living examples that our children will eventually emulate, and staying is teaching them what they should tolerate. Men don’t initiate divorce because they have far more to lose. Make dua and walk through the door when it opens.

There are archetypes of people that often lead to specific archetypes of marriages which need unlearning in order to heal. Real relationships should be collaborative healing projects. They should be sanctified spaces where we love, admire and respect our partners [regardless of whether it was arranged or both met organically]. We should enjoy their company, conversation and still be curious about them years after the novelty’s worn off. We should be able to look at our partner and see a whole human being with dreams and passions, rather than a collection of roles and responsibilities. In Muslim circles, many men assume that having taqwa in providing for their families financially and fulfilling rights is enough. Suddenly the relationship becomes a list of services exchanged rather than two people building a life together. Relationships will be devoid of anything worth having with this mindset and completely stripped of its essence.

Your spouses are a garment for you as you are for them [2:187].. that you may find tranquillity in them, and He placed between you affection and mercy [30:21]

Capitalism transactionalises love and hyper-sexuality is consumerism in another form. The dopamine rush, the validation, the novelty, the attention - all give us a temporary feeling that we're filling something. But every hit eventually wears off, so we consume again. How can one person satisfy us long term when we’ve built a habit of receiving validation from multiple sources and recognise how easy it can be? It's destructive in maintaining long-term healthy relationships without the fear of infidelity. The only way to protect ourselves from self-destructive behaviour is to build our self-esteem, to not be overly reliant on how we look and to place value on our morals, character and brains instead. We have to be confident in who we are, no matter our circumstances. Loneliness will always fester if we don’t feel like we belong in ourselves.

Every sin is an attempt to fill the void

Maybe we're not actually addicted to sex, attention, pornography, beauty or validation but the feeling we get when, for a brief moment, we don't have to feel lonely. We need to understand why we became so hungry for substitutes for intimacy in the first place.

The Death of Community

We’ve become lazy communicators with a like here and a reel sent there, with very little substance behind the interaction. We react to a story and occasionally reach out to catch up which is rarely followed through. We watch friends, acquaintances and colleagues’ holidays, their new job and other life updates and somehow feel like we’ve checked in without ever actually holding a meaningful conversation. We subconsciously convince ourselves we’re maintaining a friendship because we’re seeing what people are up to and as a result there’s no need to ask. Some friendships naturally call for that kind of communication, but when it becomes the norm, we end up with relationships that require almost no effort from either side. We can connect to thousands of people without ever having to leave the house yet feel more disconnected than ever, giving us the illusion of proximity without intimacy. Online communities are built and maintained entirely online and friendships are reduced to interactions on a screen.

Real friendships and relationships require patience, selflessness, reliability, putting others needs before our wants, vulnerability and inconvenience. Access and familiarity isn’t connection and we’re mistaking this for genuinely knowing someone. This low-level communication can’t substitute the work required to build friendships and has begun to affect the way we approach relationships in general. If we’ve already seen someone's life through their Instagram, what’s left to ask? If we can keep up with someone without speaking to them then we can convince ourselves we’re interested without investing any effort. Early dating falls into this trap as the lack of effort could be misinterpreted as a lack of interest, especially with the rise of the emotionally unavailable nonchalant man. I’d go as far as to argue we shouldn’t have people we’re pursuing on social media early on - it creates unnecessary attachments and we begin to feel like we know someone more than we actually do, or a particular side of them they want us to see. Do it the old school way - meet offline organically, become friends where you admire them and enjoy conversation with them, ask for their number - not their socials, make an effort to invest in the process of getting to know someone, with romantic gestures and the boombox apology. Maybe not that far, but you know what I mean - even if long distance. We should be sharing experiences, making memories and allowing another person to know us beyond the version we’re happy to post online.

We want deep friendships but have conditioned ourselves to not have the capacity to provide the effort required to build them and then wonder why we’re lonely. As the quote goes, to have a village, you must be a villager. Community is inherently inconvenient because people have needs, problems, bad days and expectations. Sometimes protecting a relationship means having an uncomfortable conversation. Sometimes loving someone means putting their needs before our own. Sometimes being a good friend means showing up when we’re tired, travelling when we’d rather stay home or listening to the same problem for the third time*. Unfortunately, over the years individualism has slowly disguised itself as self-care, subsequently affecting our ability to develop lasting relationships. We’ve taken perfectly healthy concepts like boundaries and turned them into a culture of avoiding anything that disrupts our comfort, which can slowly become refusing to participate in community. Cutting people off and avoiding difficult conversations, refusing responsibility and treating every disagreement as proof of incompatibility are some examples of this. This doesn’t mean to say that we should commit to unhealthy dynamics where our wellbeing is rarely considered [especially in relationships where a certain level of loyalty is expected], and it also doesn’t mean the only community we subscribe to is the one we’ve been raised into. Arguably, it’s the one we’re aligned with as we grow. The problems that come with surrounding ourselves with people who embody a stark difference in mindset are too much to address. We can choose our circles.**

*It's unfairly assumed that singles have no responsibility or a clear schedule, and more is expected from them.

**This doesn’t mean we demonise others as bad influences on ourselves or our children and make it known through action or inaction. Maybe the issue is less that others are a bad influence but rather we or our children are easily influenced. We should be so concerned with our life and growth that we don’t have time to think about others - lowering our gaze to the faults of others. We naturally incline to people similar to us, in mindset, emotional intelligence and even deen.

Roles within community

What happened to the expectation that men would protect and provide, that women and children should feel safe regardless of circumstances, that older people would be looked after and that everyone had some responsibility for the wellbeing of the people around them? A community only works when people recognise that they have responsibilities towards one another and everyone plays a part. We should all be contributing to the safety and wellbeing of the people around us.

Below are some [lol] observations preventing healthy gender relations in Muslim communities.

Within families:

• Many parents unfortunately care more about their image than the health and wellbeing of their children. Log kya kehenge?
• Sons are valued while daughters are seen as a liability.
• Oldest daughters are expected to ad hoc parent.
• Because reputation is highly tied to their daughters, men tend to suffocate their daughters rather than raise them [even forcing them to fully cover infront of mahrams]. Protecting their ego is often disguised as protecting their daughters, if and when they do.
• Over-segregating children, particularly girls in Muslim schools can foster narrow-mindedness, xenophobia, an over-romanticisation of the other and a superiority complex rather than teaching them how to navigate differences and spaces responsibly. Children should grow up around diverse people, including non-Muslims to widen their capacity for understanding and empathy, and develop enough conviction in their deen that simply being around others doesn’t threaten it. Control keeps us stagnant and limits our expansion for growth, including tawakkul in new experiences. Our purpose is da’wah, not to isolate ourselves in cultural hubs.
• Outsourcing their parental responsibilities to community fully.. and hoping for the best. Children are at school, mosque and then come home at 7pm to eat and then sleep. People even argue that moving to a Muslim country would fix their children, particularly their daughters [so much fitna for us innit]. Seeing Muslims do haraam on a daily basis could have far more detrimental effects on a child than seeing a non Muslim do something we'd expect from them. It's our responsibility to consciously parent.
• Mothering sons to the point of incompetence is only hurting them in the long run. If he can climb the corporate ladder or take a computer/bike apart and put it back together, then he's more than capable of following a recipe or managing the home just as well.

Within marriages:

• Some men want a wife, they don’t care to be a husband or father.
• They want the trophy wife but couldn’t care less to maintain her.
• Women are heavily criticised for certain parenting styles, especially ‘outsourcing’ help. Men outsource their children to the women around them far more frequently than women. Women don’t know how to be mothers, they're learning just as much as fathers. It’s not innate in us. There should be equal responsibility and effort in raising children.
• Many parents have children for the wrong reasons which builds resentment over time. It can be an escape from an unhappy marriage, a ‘fix’ for an unhappy marriage, the general thing to do or a ‘legacy’.
• Women are expected to hold the fort while their husbands galivant around the world [sometimes for long periods of time] in the name of deen. Upon their return, the knowledge is rarely dispersed - it’s self-interest cloaked in the preservation of their deen.
• They're expected to compromise - on their health, passions, career and living conditions. It's hardly compromise if one party is constantly expected to sacrifice. Women are even expected to look after their husband’s family and self-abandon, while they never have done.
• There are 2 subcategories of problematic men [maybe more, who knows]. We have the narcissist who uses control cloaked in deen, keeping those around them weak, frail and dependent through financial, emotional or physical abuse - secretly terrified they’ll lose their grip. Then we have men who want to raise strong, disciplined and educated daughters while ensuring their wives aren’t this way. Take that as you will.
• One of the loneliest demographics is married women. Women are often at the mercy of men - sometimes abusive men. I'd argue that men’s loneliness usually stems from ego, not circumstances. Patriarchy hurts men just as much as it hurts women.
• Amongst certain generations and cultures, women are expected to refer to their husbands with a title and calling them by their name is deemed disrespectful. I can't imagine how that would create a loving, safe and open relationship for both, instead it feels like a power move. Certain hadith are cited relating to the status of men in a marriage to bolster this, but I'd look at it from the standpoint that the privilege was taken away [while still recognising the general status of a husband]. Coupled with treat women well, it's clear that it was common knowledge that many men already have a God complex and mistreat women. This would only give them a green light to further their abuse.
• A lack of physical safety outside of the home and emotional safety inside the home results in hyper vigilance and survival mode in women.
• If all women in abusive marriages left their spouses, we’d be riddled with single mothers. We should be encouraging men to become better husbands, fathers, brothers and members of their communities. When a woman would genuinely prefer the difficulty of doing everything herself than the burden of having an incompetent partner, we should probably ask ourselves what’s led us here.

Within communities:

• Eurocentric features are deemed professional and the beauty standard worldwide. Children in schools [and home] are often bullied for their 'messy', curly hair, darker complexion and ethnic features, with an eventual lean into their natural look later on in life. In the workplace, women are expected to look 'clean', adhering to the model white woman.
• Mosques can often be restrictive or unwelcoming to women.
• Women are often valued by what makes us desirable - our age, if we can cook, clean and comply without complaints.
• Grown women are infantilised and not taken seriously unless a man or child is attached to their hip. We could be highly successful in other areas of life but it wouldn't matter or would be deemed a waste.
• I did it alone/adhered to these cultural expectations without complaint so everyone else must, from the older generation of women. It may sound far-fetched but insecure mothers are envious of their daughters - their youthfulness, the attention they receive from men or just the mere fact that we now have more opportunities than previous generations did. The internalised misogyny runs so deep it’s like talking to a brick wall. Don't save her, she don't wanna be saved.
• There is still a taboo surrounding single mothers when the majority of time infidelity or abuse are at play. A man could very well be on his third wife with no criticism.
• Many ways women are treated by societal expectations, men and local community leaders turn them away from deen, or possibly to a version that caters to their ego, especially after facing abuse. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Muslims are put off deen because of the malpractice of those around them, rarely deen itself.
• Women are shamed and ostracised for speaking out about issues. Mulan and Belle are clear examples of women pursuing their values, passions and dreams unapologetically. Although Mulan is averse to it, she's expected to perform her role well through the matchmaker and her father’s expectations, while Belle is highly intelligent and sees a life outside of being a simple village girl. Both are isolated and mocked by the community at large. Something to note - men didn’t give women rights, we fought for and died for them and continue to do so, even in Muslim countries where our rights are God-given. Women were burned at the stake for intuition and knowledge men didn’t possess. The reason people suffocate or bully others is because they’re deemed a threat. Threatened that they could be better than them, threatened that the golden age of Islam could potentially be rekindled [so efforts are made to destabilise nations], threatened blacks may overcome whites [so they purposefully created systems of oppression]. It's always rooted in some sort of fear of loss.
• Sometimes women will be so anti-patriarchy that they'd rather counter anything men expect from them, even if self-destructive.

On social media:

• Women who travel frequently are heavily criticised as red flags. This one's projection and insecurity.
• Hijabis can’t have fun on social media without being heavily criticised with every second comment being ‘hoejabi’ or ‘dayouth’.
• Natural bodies are heavily critiqued online indicating a warped view of what ‘normal’ should look like - women age like milk, men age like wine, or natural breasts.
• Mansplaining has ironically found its way into our own rhetoric. 'Explaining it to the girlies' sounds innocent, but it can reinforce the idea that women lack the intellect to understand basic concepts like investing without having them translated through shopping or makeup. It has its place, but it can deepen the divide between 'bro-coded' skills and everything else. Terms like 'girlboss' or 'boss bitch' carry a similar undertone, implying that these roles are masculine by default - female doctor.
• Interestingly, the red pill movement tends to prioritise high levels of discipline.. except sexual discipline - apparently it’s in their nature. A high body count means a higher risk of infidelity and men know this, which is why they’re highly critical of sexually active women. Pro jec tion.
• Self-proclaimed scholars are often seen arguing for temporary marriages, treating women as disposable for their personal pleasure and gain. This is what happens when our appetites and ego drive us with little inherited deen. The Handmaids Tale is an excellent example of how men could ultimately use religion to create their version of idyllic communities.

Safety of women in general:

• Women fear their safety daily. They use pepper spray, keys, lock doors and other tools and habits to keep themselves safe outdoors. Women don’t need protecting from women, they need protecting from the men who should be doing the protecting.
• Being conditioned to not like women often results in mockery of them when they display feminine traits. Well-known hadith insinuate that the Prophet ﷺ loved the feminine traits of women.
• Women say they have a boyfriend to stop advances from men, because a simple no doesn't cut it. Men respect men more than they respect women.
• Women and children are often heavily sexualised, criticised and shamed for simply being seen - policing women's bodies in the name of deen. Some cultures have a default expectation that women wear black [to be less noticed], and anything other than this is deemed immodest. An abaaya or shalwar kameez is the standard and anything else is again, deemed immodest. The rules pertaining to covering our awrah are the same for both men and women, except what needs to be covered.
• Women are told to cover up or segregate themselves to avoid being harassed, rather than communities asking why men feel entitled to behave this way in the first place. Men undress women with their eyes, no matter what we’re wearing or where we are. Women are gawked at and followed in malls and Islamic circles while these men are stood by their wives. Women are even groped while performing tawaaf.
• Deen doesn’t expect women to hide but men to behave, culture has ironically inverted this - boys will be boys. Many men are given the leeway to do whatever they want, whenever they want and with whoever they want, aslong as measures are taken for it to be on the down low. If deen was our priority, sons and daughters would be treated relatively similarly.
• Communities continue to do little regarding the molestation of children. Rapists and paedophiles are protected and the women outing them are shamed. Sexual abuse in children can cause hyper-sexual behaviour in them as adults as a trauma response continuing the cycle.
• Many men don't appreciate such conversations because they realise they've played their part in the mistreatment of women and take offence. Out of ten men, one makes a sexual joke at a woman, two laugh, three fake a chuckle to fit in and four stay silent. None of them speak up. Later, nine of them still believe they’re the ‘good guys’.. not every man harasses women, but most men protect the system that does.

If people hated women less, they wouldn’t hate men when they display feminine traits

If men aren’t participating in misogyny or patriarchy, they’re enabling it. If not enabling it, they’re still not doing enough to dismantle it. The easiest fix is by men calling men out. They should be standing alongside women in dismantling the systems of power that seek to oppress us. I can only imagine the reason it’s so infrequent is because they benefit from the injustices done to women, which is a reason why they’re threatened by movements like feminism. It’s the responsibility of Imams to address abuse within our communities than far less pressing issues, usually concerning women's attire. The 4b movement which originated in Korea has gained traction in the West, with many women choosing to remain celibate, child free and single to avoid the difficulties they’d otherwise face in heterosexual relationships. Many Muslim women would also rather be single, and I don’t blame them. A community should be safe for men, women and children without requiring them to make themselves smaller to accommodate the lack of sexual discipline and self control in others. We need communities of men who are secure and emotionally regulated. They should want to provide and protect, understanding that caring for those around them is an amaanah which they'll one day be asked about. We should all be Islamically educated in our fardh ayn as a bare minimum as it would help limit continuous issues within Muslim communities and between parties.

Controversial take, but I think masculinity and femininity in healthy adults is intuitive. It’s when they’re nurtured through a lens of misogyny that things become distorted. That’s partly why the red-pill/incel movement can become attractive because it gives men a simple explanation for their frustrations and redirects those frustrations towards women. We see versions of this within religious communities, where people can become so preoccupied with policing women that they forget the moral responsibility placed upon themselves. 'Men are visual creatures and men have needs.' 'I make the money, so I make the rules.'

The Loneliness Epidemic

Mental health has been a trending topic over the years, especially within the workplace where wellbeing support tends to be a perk of the job. Regardless, it’s still something many of us manage privately, especially in communities where this concept is still taboo. We resort to a myriad of solutions and the options are endless - traditional therapy, medicating ourselves, downloading an app or using AI as therapy, practising mindfulness, optimising our routines, building better habits and working on ourselves. I think if the root of the problem isn’t deep set trauma, it’s a lack of belonging. It’s a lack of belonging regardless, because isolation coupled with trauma would only deepen the wound. A therapist can listen to us for an hour, but the cultural and religious context that they’re unaware of that community provides could do more harm than good. Historically, communities alleviated a lot of the problems we now need professional help to manage. Someone older could notice when we aren’t ourselves and to have the wisdom to advise us to rest, while someone younger could give us a reason to get up. Family members were around, neighbours knew us and we all had roles within eachother’s lives - til death do us part.* This doesn't mean the past was some utopia where nobody experienced depression, loneliness or even the negativity that community can bring. Communities can also be highly dysfunctional, oppressive and extremely harmful when imbalanced, as mentioned above. If people weren’t trying to constantly one-up one another or cause harm, the need for professional care would be few and far between.

*Male suicide rates and the high number of men who die alone in nursing homes without family around them is alarming.

Ironically, while we have more ways than ever to reach people when we need support, our online presence can make us feel more isolated. We’re surrounded by notifications and still have nobody to call. We participate in pockets of online communities which stay online. We can know what hundreds of people ate for lunch, where they went on holiday and their political takes while nobody knows that we're struggling because we don’t want to inconvenience them.

Selling us solutions to the problems they create

There’s an entire industry waiting to tell us what’s wrong with us and conveniently what we should buy to fix it - essentially marketing our insecurities back to ourselves. A few marketing slop examples were highlighted earlier such as the dating scene and the sex industry, but it runs deeper than this. It rebrands vanity as self-improvement, whereby eating disorders are repackaged as wellness and the obsession with appearance becomes 'looksmaxxing' and 'mogging'. The vulnerability which accompanies loneliness becomes a reason to buy into a certain lifestyle which may not entirely represent us. 'Aura farming' and 'larping' are recycled terms for clout chasing and performative or opportunistic behaviour, which I’d argue are a result of insecurity and a need to feel seen and heard. Masculinity is now branded via the right supplements, foods, grooming products, clothes, routine and lifestyle. Men are being told that they aren't attractive enough, successful enough, muscular enough, disciplined enough, masculine enough and as a result, products are marketed back as a quick fix via trends - Clavicular being a prime example. Huel is also an interesting example. It sounds like fuel, a common marketing tactic to target a certain demographic, in this case men. This product is specifically damaging because of the underlying concept that eating disorders are only associated with women. Counting macros and focusing on the number on the scale to the point of delusion is bad enough, but powdered meals is giving weight watchers.

Online communities and terms built around this are also damaging where genuinely useful habits can actually create an endless loop where we have another flaw to correct or another product to purchase. If the problem is us, there’ll always be something to sell back to us. This results in insecurities, then a product providing us with temporary relief, to then only cause a new insecurity and a new product.. and the cycle continues. Pornography takes loneliness, sexual frustration, boredom or the desire for intimacy and offers a simulation of the thing we actually want. It gives temporary relief without requiring us to solve the underlying problem. Marketing operates in the same way. It doesn't aim to solve our insecurity but keep up insecure enough to keep consuming. The lonely, insecure, sexually frustrated and socially isolated person becomes a consumer. Even our attempts to escape loneliness become products. Community can become something we literally subscribe to, with third spaces becoming trendy, somewhat performative experiences and wellness becoming an aesthetic [supper club/gym culture]. It all becomes another form of consumption where we ask ourselves, what do I need to buy to become the person I want to be? Consumption can give us many things, but it can’t give us belonging. And despite having access to more.. of everything, we’re still lonely.

How do we begin to fix this?

We need to rebuild third spaces, physical spaces where people can exist, rest and collaborate, especially in religious circles and communities*. They should be places where different generations can naturally encounter and exist alongside one another rather than being separated into age brackets and carefully curated lifestyles. We need to create opportunities for repeated and ordinary interactions. A third space shouldn't require a certain income, aesthetic, social circle or financial status to enter. It shouldn't feel like we're auditioning or performing for belonging. There has been an uptake where local clubs are already beginning to form through evening craft and game nights in casual environments with no fee for entry. The new Helsinki central library is a large complex in the city centre which provides free 3d printing, sewing machines, recording studios, lounges and nowhere where we’re expected to spend money. A recent free and public Qawwali show in NY brought hundreds of people from all walks of life who otherwise wouldn’t have attended or crossed paths with eachother. I'm currently sitting in the library and there are three elderly women gathered around a table playing rummikub. People walking by are noticing them and glancing over, smiling, almost with a sense of nostalgia.

* I’d argue these places currently exist even if underfunded but unfortunately coupled with the need to be in aesthetically pleasing environments for the gram, we’re avoiding what we already have access to.

On a wider level, architecture plays a huge role in how we interact with others, as briefly touched on earlier. In some cultures, homes were specifically designed around an internal courtyard allowing women to relax and invite guests where they had the benefit of the outdoors without the need to leave their homes - particularly beneficial for Muslim women. The slow changes are even apparent in some new builds where property developers have intentionally designed complexes facing inwards towards a shared courtyard instead of balconies facing outwards. Of course outdoor porches, streets and sidewalks can be seen as social spaces, but car centric infrastructure or a lack of intentional design promoting social cohesion can instead promote isolation. Additionally, gender segregated public transport or social spaces [gyms] were once mocked by many outlets in the West by being restrictive to women [?] but these concepts are now gaining traction due to safety and security.

Then we have the difficulty of rebuilding friendships which require effort. We can’t wait around for somebody else to create the community we want to live in. Not only should we consume less, but we should participate more. The alternative is bleak and we’re already living it. Check on neighbours while respecting people’s time and space. Initiate and make plans, invite people into our homes, cook for them, exchange homemade goods, arrange potlucks and daawats without overburdening ourselves, even if inconvenient [for those who aren't cursed - everytime I've organised something, someone ends up in hospital and it gets cancelled]. Organise post-partum support, providing and replenishing nourishing food for expecting mothers while offering support to look after children so couples can have some much needed alone time. We should recognise the importance of matriarchy [without removing the role of men in families and communities] which helps limit depression and loneliness amongst women collectively. Slow down enough to actually know someone before consuming the parts of them that make us feel good. To court and build trust instead of swipe and pipe. Learn how to sit with another person without constantly asking what they can provide us. And all of this should be done without keeping score. Real intimacy is being known without performing - even the parts we don’t like about ourselves. We don’t need to force friendships, we just need to show up authentically and allow people to decide if they want to stay. Find people through shared values and interests even if they don't dress like us - we accept people as they are. Go to the class you’ve been wanting to visit simply for the experience. Go to the mosque, or community centre and participate beyond the lecture. This is how strangers eventually become acquaintances, acquaintances become friends and some friends become chosen family.

Friendships that offer grace also allow opportunities for growth

We’re like plants and need the right environment to flourish and thrive. If the foundations are intact [health in mind, body, soul, community and inherited deen] then we have a base to reach our full potential. Our hijrah is arguably more inward than outward and the work we do on ourselves prevents the same cycles from continuing generations later. Meaningful relationships are usually built slowly and over time, just as duas are answered. The people who naturally align with our values, interests and way of seeing the world will find us through the things we’re passionate about. Close relationships we have [teachers, our spouse, friends and family] are essentially showing us what we can’t see in ourselves, acting as mirrors. The twists and turns, the people who have come and gone, or made an appearance again years later help shape us into who we are. I can recognise how God has slowly refined and balanced me to prepare me for being around certain people, families and circles, and will continue to do so.

Ultimately, the purpose of community is to worship God as best we can, reach our full potential and turn hearts with our words and states - but we can’t pour from an empty cup.

I applaud you for getting this far, you must be just as insane as I am

Recommendations:

• Spotlight [2015]
• Adolescence [2025] - admittedly I haven't seen this and won't be watching it. It'd fill me with rage for a week.
• Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
• The Handmaids Tale [2017]
• https://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/06/us/sexual-assault-brock-turner-stanford
• https://www.techtimes.co.uk/french-mp-ai-altered-hijab-photo-controversy-1808646
• You [2018]
• The NHS surgeon who had his legs removed because of his amputee fetish - Neil Hopper
• Cannibal Cop interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKggypYWNW4
• They Cloned Tyrone [2023]

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