April 7, 2026 • 22 mins
Your mind was not meant to orbit another human being, yet so many of us live like our peace depends on a man’s approval, attention, or mood. We get stuck in longing, anxiety, resentment, and constant analysis and we call it “closeness,” even when it’s actually psychological dependency. Here, we move from diagnosing male centrism to treating it, with a clear map for rebuilding emotional stability and spiritual clarity without turning this work into rebellion against men.
We walk through a three-stage model: noticing the male-centered identity, stabilizing a healthy sense of self, and then returning to Allah as the true center. I explain why “centering yourself” can sound selfish but is often the missing step for Muslim women who were trained to shrink, accommodate, and erase their needs. A healthy ego means you can name your preferences, hold your limits, and make decisions from values instead of fear. That internal coherence changes everything: less rumination, less overfunctioning, and more calm, grounded boundaries.
We also talk about spirituality and why a fragmented self often relates to Allah through shame and fear, especially when faith has been filtered through male authority. I unpack the Jalali attributes of Allah’s power alongside the Jamali attributes of mercy, love, gentleness, and generosity and show how an imbalance can suffocate a feminine psyche already struggling to take up space. The paradox is real: when men stop being responsible for your emotional regulation, relationships often become lighter, more peaceful, and more loving.
If you’ve ever confused a man’s disappointment with Allah’s disappointment, this will land. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs steadiness, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:04):
Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast.
Apply tools that you learn inthis podcast and your life will
be unrecognizably successful.
Now your host, Dr.
Kamal Akar.
Hello, hello, hello everyone.
Peace and blessings be upon allof you.
So in the previous podcast aboutdecentering men, we diagnosed
(00:25):
male centrism, what that lookslike, what the patterns are,
where your emotional stabilityorbits around a man.
In this episode, we move intotreatment.
The disclaimer being thatdecentering men is not a
rebellion against men, and thisis not about withdrawing from
relationships with men.
This is the process of restoringthe correct psychological and
(00:47):
the spiritual order inside yourlife as a woman so that you can
be stronger in yourrelationships with men and be
more loving.
Many Muslim women don't realizethat men have become this center
because the orbit will appear inmultiple forms like longing,
anxiety, resentment,hypervigilance, constant
(01:07):
analysis of the male behavior.
One of the deepest confusions inrelationships is mistaking
psychological orbit foremotional closeness.
And it doesn't matter if thatemotion is positive or negative,
it is the defining feature ofthis orbiting and this male
centrism.
The mind continually circles thesame reference point and your
emotions seem to be dependent onthe situation, especially the
(01:30):
situation that involves a man.
This orbiting createspsychological dependency because
the mind begins regulatingitself through another person's
reactions, and this disguisesitself as intimate close
relationship when it's theopposite.
Healthy relationship emergeswhen two individuals stand
independently in their own rightand values while relating to one
(01:54):
another through clarity.
When you're centering men inyour life, the foundation is
your own fractured identity.
Decentering men restores yourcoherence by returning to your
attention to yourself andultimately to Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
And this is the topic for today.
The correct treatment plan ifyou carry the diagnosis of male
(02:16):
centrism.
The foundational problem thatwe're trying to correct while
decentering men is related tothe collapse of the woman's
identity.
Male centrism for women does notbegin with a man, it begins with
the absence of a stable sense ofself.
Muslim women from a very youngage are socialized to minimize
(02:37):
their own preference andauthority, and with that
upbringing your value becomestied to being chosen, being
approved of, especially beingprotected by a man.
Over time this conditioningproduces an identity crisis that
primarily only exists inreference to men.
And when your identity isexternally organized in this
(02:58):
way, your nervous system becomesfragile.
So the treatment here really isbuilding a healthy sense of
self.
So think of it as a triad, athree staged model.
Male centered identity, which isthe external orbit, we already
talked about how to diagnose it.
Then there's a self-centeredstabilization, which is a level
(03:19):
of internal coherence, which isabout building a healthy ego.
Then finally there's a lawcentered alignment, which is the
spiritual axis, which is youholding on to the rope of Allah.
We're going to be talking aboutcreating a strong and a healthy
sense of self as a part of thetreatment of male centrism.
Then finally how that elevatesyour relationship with Allah
(03:41):
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
When you start this work ofdecentering men and that orbit
starts to break, when men are nolonger the gravitational center,
something very unfamiliarappears, and that is your
internal space.
Your mind that was using men asthe target of thinking now has
less and less to think about.
That space will feel stabilizingat first because the mind has
(04:05):
been trained to orient itselftowards something that is now
not present.
I always tell you guys that yourmind can't work with the absence
of something, so then you wouldhave to fill the center with
something.
What would that center be?
What would that look like?
Just because the mind isdesigned to orbit, it's designed
to make something the center, itneeds something to focus on.
(04:27):
So if you start to decenterment,you can't live in a void because
that has the potential ofdestabilizing your whole nervous
system.
Meaning if the gravitationalpull all of a sudden disappears
without a healthy replacement,then there's a risk of identity
crisis happening, which is verydifficult to go through.
So what I'm telling you today inthis podcast is that this center
(04:49):
has to be replaced by your ownself.
Self with a capital S, thehealthy sense of self.
If you remove men from thethrone of your subconscious
mind, and if I ask you as aMuslim woman, who do you think
that center should be replacedby?
Who is that one being that weare always working to structure
our life around?
(05:10):
Whose rope is it that we'reworking really hard to hold
tightly to?
The answer would be Allahsubhanahu wa ta'ala.
That's who should replace thecenter.
And that would absolutely becorrect, but not before you have
done some inner work.
And this is where thecontroversy might come in if you
take what I'm teaching out ofcontext.
(05:31):
And this is the whole reason whyI'm dedicating a whole episode
to this concept alone.
So that women who want tounderstand can see why what I'm
suggesting is important.
I'm building this contextbecause what I'm suggesting is
when you decenter men from yourlife and you have to do it, even
if you don't think you do, youstill do.
Because if you are alive on thisplanet this long, especially if
(05:53):
you've lived in a Muslimmajority culture, you would
absolutely need to decenter men.
Okay, so I digress.
When you decenter men, you willhave an empty space, and then
you will fill that space withyourself.
You center yourself.
Ah, I know, what are you saying?
How can you even say that?
This is so selfish, sonarcissistic even.
(06:14):
I know, I know, it sounds thatway.
But please hear me out.
You center yourself until youhave built a healthy sense of
self.
A healthy ego is simply a stablesense of self.
It is the ability to say I existwithout over apologizing for
that existence.
It is knowing your preferences,your limits, your convictions,
(06:36):
your desires, your values, andallowing them to take up space,
allowing your safety, allowingyour rest, all without guilt.
Chances are up until now you'veonly been praised to
accommodate, to be agreeable,how endlessly patient you are,
and you're rewarded for thistype of shrinking.
(06:57):
And the more invisible youbecome, the more virtuous you're
considered.
So then in that case you've lostall sense of self, all sense of
what it feels like to be you inyour body, with your likes and
your dislikes.
The way you want to existdoesn't even exist in your
vocabulary.
So when you don't have a senseof self, little less a healthy
(07:18):
sense of self, a woman withoutthis healthy relationship cannot
relate to Allah in an abundantway.
If you don't know how your mindworks, what your heart desires,
what you prefer, you will onlyrelate to Allah as dictated by a
man.
And usually in the currentworld, a man's sense of self is
(07:39):
very inflated, especially inMuslim cultures.
So then the way you learn torelate to Allah is through fear,
because men sometimes need toshave some of their ego down in
order to humble themselves infront of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
So the same teaching gets passeddown to women as well, because
of course, in a man centeredworld, what else can be correct
(08:01):
other than a way a man tells youwhat a healthy spirituality
looks like?
And from a man's lens, the egoneeds to be deflated.
It needs to be brought down afew notches, if you will.
So when a woman who's alreadydrowning in self erasure tries
to relate to her faith throughmore self erasure, then you
(08:23):
cannot successfully do it,because a lot of times there's
nothing else left to give.
And from that follows endlessshame.
And the internal dialogue thatensues is that you start to
think as a woman, sinceeverybody else seems to be
telling you to do this, it seemslike the right thing to do, but
I can't seem to be able to dothis, so I must not be a good
Muslim.
(08:43):
Which is completely unnecessaryand super unhealthy.
In reality, not everyone needsto relate to Allah through a
smaller sense of self.
Maybe sometimes only men need todo that.
And here again I'm makinggeneral statements.
A feminine way of relating toAllah through softness,
acceptance, mercy, Allah'sattributes that are categorized
(09:07):
into the Jalali qualities andthere are other qualities called
the Jamali qualities, and thisrepresents a balance between an
awe inspiring power of Allah andHis merciful love.
The Jalali qualities areattributes that signify Allah's
supreme power, grandeur, like AlJabbar, the irresistible, the
(09:29):
compeller, the one who forceshis will, Al Kah, the subduer,
the prevailing, the one whodominates all Al Mutakabir, the
majestic supreme, the onesupreme in greatness, Al Jalil,
the majestic, the sublime, theone with the ultimate dignity
(09:49):
and rank.
Then there are the Jamaliqualities.
These attributes highlightAllah's compassion, grace, like
al Rahman, the compassionate,the most gracious, the
beneficent, Al Rahim, themerciful, Al Wadud, the loving,
Al Rafar, the forgiving, AlLatif, the most subtle and
(10:11):
courteous, Al Wahab, thebestower, the supreme giver, Al
Karim, the generous, thebountiful.
When women try to get close toAllah through the male centered
worldview, they see theirrelationship with Allah through
his Jalali qualities, and thatis extremely detrimental to a
(10:32):
feminine psyche alreadystruggling to breathe, already
struggling to take up even asmall amount of space.
If you don't build yourselfcompassion for your existence,
you will only be able to relateto Allah through fear, through
shame, through anxiety, of notbeing enough.
If you don't have a sense ofhealthy ego, your spirituality
(10:53):
will become compromised.
You will engage in worship onlyto soothe your insecurity.
When you practice your faiththrough a fractured identity,
you do not experience Allah'smercy as expansively as you can.
Mostly you connect throughguilt, and you interpret your
hardship as a proof of yourinadequacy.
The world of Allah's abundance,His generosity, His gentleness,
(11:17):
His mercy remains inaccessiblebecause you're filtering
everything through self-doubt.
A spiritual existence that isconstantly in fear is exhausting
and is not sustainable.
What I'm asking here is when youdecenter men and then center
yourself, you're not becomingarrogant.
You are becoming coherent.
(11:39):
And this is the distinction thatcreates the huge difference.
For women, especially thosesocialized to equate goodness
with self sacrifice, the veryidea of centering yourself will
feel dangerous, and it will feelspiritually suspicious.
But what most women have beentaught is not humility, it's
(12:00):
self erasure.
And that makes you really goodat consulting your environment
and calculating your reactionsbefore you consult yourself, so
much so that your selfconfidence completely
disappears.
Decentering men here creates thefirst opening.
When men are no longer this axisof your nervous system, then you
(12:22):
are reclaiming your ownattention.
That is a huge win because thisattention is your currency.
That reclaimed attention iswhere your selfhood can rebuild.
Centering yourself does not meanhyperinflating yourself.
It means stabilizing yourself tostand on a strong foundation.
What that might start to looklike is that you'll stop
(12:45):
ruminating every time you'recriticized, and you will stop
overfunctioning just to proveyour worth.
What that would look like isthat you will begin to make
decisions from your own valuesalignment rather than anxiety of
somebody else's reaction.
You begin asking what Allahsubhanahu wa ta'ala requires of
you, not what the men around youwill tolerate.
(13:07):
The deeper change here is thenthat you're not reducing an
oversized ego, which is mostlikely not the case.
Again, it might be true in somewomen's cases, but rather what
you're doing is allowing yourcoherent self to exist at all.
If you're functioning as therarity with an inflated but
fragile sense of self, or theone that has a fractured, almost
(13:31):
non existent sense of self, youknow which one you are.
Majority of the time women areof the latter kind.
And if that is you, when youlearn to recognize your own
voice, your own limits, then youare not becoming arrogant,
you're becoming visible, visibleenough just to yourself.
And this visibility is whatcreates the internal stability
(13:54):
necessary to relate to others.
And from that you start torelate to Allah from a place of
peace.
When you develop a healthy senseof ego, your spirituality begins
to reorganize, and this willinternally shift how devotion
feels to you.
In that case, your worship willno longer function as a
compensation of your feelinginadequate.
(14:17):
Just so you can get closer toAllah, your worship emerges from
a coherent self.
When you are grounded in thatway, you can love others
endlessly, you can giveendlessly, even to men,
specially to men, if that's whatyou choose to do.
If your goal is to repair yourrelationships with men without
(14:39):
dissolving into them, this ishow you do it.
This way you can extendforgiveness without erasing your
own boundaries.
So what appears on the surfacewhen you're decentering men
through this treatment is thatit looks like you're centering
yourself, but you're notchoosing your ego over God.
You're building the internalstructure that allows divine
(15:02):
recognition to occur withoutexternal distortion.
When you develop your capacityand allow yourself to exist as a
stable, dignified creation, yougain the lens through which the
magnitude of your creator'smercy becomes visible.
Your wholeness then is not evenremotely arrogant, because it is
(15:24):
your healing, through whichAllah subhanahu wa ta'ala's love
and mercy becomes real.
As you begin to center yourhealthy self, your orientation
will naturally turn towardsAllah.
When men no longer are there todetermine your worth or make you
feel insecure or otherwisepronounce your stability, the
(15:48):
direction you return to will beits proper place, the trust in
Allah, and that will replace allof your anxieties.
From this steadiness, your lovethat you have to give to others
becomes very, very genuine.
You can care deeply withoutovercalculating all of your
actions and your worth.
(16:08):
And the type of love thatemerges from this identity is
not desperate, it's not evenstrategic, it's not
transactional, it's simply freeto give.
It's simply available for otherhuman beings to profit off of
because you have so much of itto give.
There is a huge differencebetween a healthy ego and an
(16:30):
inflated ego that is otherwisefragile.
And I will not give thisrecommendation to everyone.
This type of teaching andguidance is not universal in the
same way for everyone.
Many men already live from asocially reinforced center of
the self that can easily slideinto entitlement or inflation.
(16:50):
Their spiritual work ofteninvolves softening that center,
learning humility,accountability, to restrain
themselves from their sense ofauthority over others so that it
does not overshadow their ownrelationship with Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
For them and for women who areotherwise operating from an
inflated ego, the path towardshealthy spirituality includes
(17:13):
bringing the ego down so thatthe faith can emerge without
their distortion of dominanceand superiority.
This, however, is usually notthe path that most Muslim women
need to take in order to getcloser to Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
You cannot know Allah from afragmented self.
(17:33):
You will continue to fall intospiritual shame because your man
is disappointed in you, and youwill start to equate that that
Allah is disappointed in you.
Facing constant shame as a fuelto your faith will burn you out,
and that way you will risklosing your faith altogether.
And in the rare case that youare holding on to it, from your
(17:55):
own self confidence andauthority, faith will become
less transactional, lessfiltered through another human's
authority, and your spiritualityas a woman will become anchored
directly in your relationshipwith Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
This is the paradox ofdecentering.
Having gone through thistriangulation successfully,
(18:17):
diagnosing male centeredness,creating a healthy sense of
self, and then relating to Allahthrough your own authority.
From there the relationshipswith men in your life will
become stronger and peaceful.
The paradox of this process isthat relationship with men will
improve, because in that spacemen around you no longer need to
(18:38):
behave a certain way in orderfor you to feel loved.
You are already loved endlesslyby Allah, and you get to see all
of that mercy through a sense ofa healthy self.
If your identity and stabilityare anchored internally, then
men no longer need to be taskedwith regulating your emotional
state.
(18:58):
This in itself removes anenormous weight and pressure
from your relationships.
Then inevitably your lovebecomes less anxious because it
no longer carries the burden ofdivining you.
In this restoration of thecorrect order of decentering
men, it restores the hierarchythat was previously inverted.
(19:20):
Male centered cultures havenarrowed this pathway by
teaching women that your accessto Allah must pass through a
man.
Authority, interpretation,validation, what your worship
should look like are all framedas male mediated.
This leaves women feeling thattheir relationship with Allah is
(19:41):
dependent on a male's approval.
So while decentering men appearsrebellious at first glance, it
is completely the opposite ofthat.
It is realignment.
You are restoring the properorder within your inner world.
The irony here is once yourworth is not outsourced to men
(20:02):
and not even entirely containedwithin yourself, this is where
you begin to recognize thesource, the source that is
Allah.
You see that your dignity didnot come from a male selecting
you, and it did not disappearbecause a male rejected you.
Your dignity came from beingcreated intentionally by Allah.
(20:24):
When that happens alongside aclear separation between Allah
and men, the one profound thingthat happens is that your faith
stabilizes, and then you nolonger confuse disappointment in
a man with disappointment inGod.
You no longer interpret a maleweakness with divine injustice.
(20:44):
You stand on firm ground.
Faith becomes vertical betweenyou and Allah instead of
horizontal that is dependent onhow men behave around you and
what they approve of you.
So the controversy that I amtrying to erase here is that
women must temporarily centerthemselves after decentering
(21:04):
men, but that is done only toshow you when the self becomes
structurally stable, Allahsubhanahu wa ta'ala becomes the
ultimate axis, the ultimatecenter.
With that I pray to Allah, YaAllah, remove from my heart any
attachment that distorts mycenter.
Teach me to act from my values,not from the reaction of others.
(21:27):
Strengthen my sense of self, soI may stand in clarity and
dignity that you have offeredme.
Anchor my heart only in you, sothat my peace and my direction
come from you alone.
Amin Yarabul Amin.
Please keep me in your du'as.
I'll talk to you guys next time.
Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast.
Apply tools that you learn inthis podcast and your life will
be unrecognizably successful.
Now your host, Dr.
Kamal Akar.
Hello, hello, hello everyone.
Peace and blessings be upon allof you.
So in the previous podcast aboutdecentering men, we diagnosed
(00:25):
male centrism, what that lookslike, what the patterns are,
where your emotional stabilityorbits around a man.
In this episode, we move intotreatment.
The disclaimer being thatdecentering men is not a
rebellion against men, and thisis not about withdrawing from
relationships with men.
This is the process of restoringthe correct psychological and
(00:47):
the spiritual order inside yourlife as a woman so that you can
be stronger in yourrelationships with men and be
more loving.
Many Muslim women don't realizethat men have become this center
because the orbit will appear inmultiple forms like longing,
anxiety, resentment,hypervigilance, constant
(01:07):
analysis of the male behavior.
One of the deepest confusions inrelationships is mistaking
psychological orbit foremotional closeness.
And it doesn't matter if thatemotion is positive or negative,
it is the defining feature ofthis orbiting and this male
centrism.
The mind continually circles thesame reference point and your
emotions seem to be dependent onthe situation, especially the
(01:30):
situation that involves a man.
This orbiting createspsychological dependency because
the mind begins regulatingitself through another person's
reactions, and this disguisesitself as intimate close
relationship when it's theopposite.
Healthy relationship emergeswhen two individuals stand
independently in their own rightand values while relating to one
(01:54):
another through clarity.
When you're centering men inyour life, the foundation is
your own fractured identity.
Decentering men restores yourcoherence by returning to your
attention to yourself andultimately to Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
And this is the topic for today.
The correct treatment plan ifyou carry the diagnosis of male
(02:16):
centrism.
The foundational problem thatwe're trying to correct while
decentering men is related tothe collapse of the woman's
identity.
Male centrism for women does notbegin with a man, it begins with
the absence of a stable sense ofself.
Muslim women from a very youngage are socialized to minimize
(02:37):
their own preference andauthority, and with that
upbringing your value becomestied to being chosen, being
approved of, especially beingprotected by a man.
Over time this conditioningproduces an identity crisis that
primarily only exists inreference to men.
And when your identity isexternally organized in this
(02:58):
way, your nervous system becomesfragile.
So the treatment here really isbuilding a healthy sense of
self.
So think of it as a triad, athree staged model.
Male centered identity, which isthe external orbit, we already
talked about how to diagnose it.
Then there's a self-centeredstabilization, which is a level
(03:19):
of internal coherence, which isabout building a healthy ego.
Then finally there's a lawcentered alignment, which is the
spiritual axis, which is youholding on to the rope of Allah.
We're going to be talking aboutcreating a strong and a healthy
sense of self as a part of thetreatment of male centrism.
Then finally how that elevatesyour relationship with Allah
(03:41):
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
When you start this work ofdecentering men and that orbit
starts to break, when men are nolonger the gravitational center,
something very unfamiliarappears, and that is your
internal space.
Your mind that was using men asthe target of thinking now has
less and less to think about.
That space will feel stabilizingat first because the mind has
(04:05):
been trained to orient itselftowards something that is now
not present.
I always tell you guys that yourmind can't work with the absence
of something, so then you wouldhave to fill the center with
something.
What would that center be?
What would that look like?
Just because the mind isdesigned to orbit, it's designed
to make something the center, itneeds something to focus on.
(04:27):
So if you start to decenterment,you can't live in a void because
that has the potential ofdestabilizing your whole nervous
system.
Meaning if the gravitationalpull all of a sudden disappears
without a healthy replacement,then there's a risk of identity
crisis happening, which is verydifficult to go through.
So what I'm telling you today inthis podcast is that this center
(04:49):
has to be replaced by your ownself.
Self with a capital S, thehealthy sense of self.
If you remove men from thethrone of your subconscious
mind, and if I ask you as aMuslim woman, who do you think
that center should be replacedby?
Who is that one being that weare always working to structure
our life around?
(05:10):
Whose rope is it that we'reworking really hard to hold
tightly to?
The answer would be Allahsubhanahu wa ta'ala.
That's who should replace thecenter.
And that would absolutely becorrect, but not before you have
done some inner work.
And this is where thecontroversy might come in if you
take what I'm teaching out ofcontext.
(05:31):
And this is the whole reason whyI'm dedicating a whole episode
to this concept alone.
So that women who want tounderstand can see why what I'm
suggesting is important.
I'm building this contextbecause what I'm suggesting is
when you decenter men from yourlife and you have to do it, even
if you don't think you do, youstill do.
Because if you are alive on thisplanet this long, especially if
(05:53):
you've lived in a Muslimmajority culture, you would
absolutely need to decenter men.
Okay, so I digress.
When you decenter men, you willhave an empty space, and then
you will fill that space withyourself.
You center yourself.
Ah, I know, what are you saying?
How can you even say that?
This is so selfish, sonarcissistic even.
(06:14):
I know, I know, it sounds thatway.
But please hear me out.
You center yourself until youhave built a healthy sense of
self.
A healthy ego is simply a stablesense of self.
It is the ability to say I existwithout over apologizing for
that existence.
It is knowing your preferences,your limits, your convictions,
(06:36):
your desires, your values, andallowing them to take up space,
allowing your safety, allowingyour rest, all without guilt.
Chances are up until now you'veonly been praised to
accommodate, to be agreeable,how endlessly patient you are,
and you're rewarded for thistype of shrinking.
(06:57):
And the more invisible youbecome, the more virtuous you're
considered.
So then in that case you've lostall sense of self, all sense of
what it feels like to be you inyour body, with your likes and
your dislikes.
The way you want to existdoesn't even exist in your
vocabulary.
So when you don't have a senseof self, little less a healthy
(07:18):
sense of self, a woman withoutthis healthy relationship cannot
relate to Allah in an abundantway.
If you don't know how your mindworks, what your heart desires,
what you prefer, you will onlyrelate to Allah as dictated by a
man.
And usually in the currentworld, a man's sense of self is
(07:39):
very inflated, especially inMuslim cultures.
So then the way you learn torelate to Allah is through fear,
because men sometimes need toshave some of their ego down in
order to humble themselves infront of Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
So the same teaching gets passeddown to women as well, because
of course, in a man centeredworld, what else can be correct
(08:01):
other than a way a man tells youwhat a healthy spirituality
looks like?
And from a man's lens, the egoneeds to be deflated.
It needs to be brought down afew notches, if you will.
So when a woman who's alreadydrowning in self erasure tries
to relate to her faith throughmore self erasure, then you
(08:23):
cannot successfully do it,because a lot of times there's
nothing else left to give.
And from that follows endlessshame.
And the internal dialogue thatensues is that you start to
think as a woman, sinceeverybody else seems to be
telling you to do this, it seemslike the right thing to do, but
I can't seem to be able to dothis, so I must not be a good
Muslim.
(08:43):
Which is completely unnecessaryand super unhealthy.
In reality, not everyone needsto relate to Allah through a
smaller sense of self.
Maybe sometimes only men need todo that.
And here again I'm makinggeneral statements.
A feminine way of relating toAllah through softness,
acceptance, mercy, Allah'sattributes that are categorized
(09:07):
into the Jalali qualities andthere are other qualities called
the Jamali qualities, and thisrepresents a balance between an
awe inspiring power of Allah andHis merciful love.
The Jalali qualities areattributes that signify Allah's
supreme power, grandeur, like AlJabbar, the irresistible, the
(09:29):
compeller, the one who forceshis will, Al Kah, the subduer,
the prevailing, the one whodominates all Al Mutakabir, the
majestic supreme, the onesupreme in greatness, Al Jalil,
the majestic, the sublime, theone with the ultimate dignity
(09:49):
and rank.
Then there are the Jamaliqualities.
These attributes highlightAllah's compassion, grace, like
al Rahman, the compassionate,the most gracious, the
beneficent, Al Rahim, themerciful, Al Wadud, the loving,
Al Rafar, the forgiving, AlLatif, the most subtle and
(10:11):
courteous, Al Wahab, thebestower, the supreme giver, Al
Karim, the generous, thebountiful.
When women try to get close toAllah through the male centered
worldview, they see theirrelationship with Allah through
his Jalali qualities, and thatis extremely detrimental to a
(10:32):
feminine psyche alreadystruggling to breathe, already
struggling to take up even asmall amount of space.
If you don't build yourselfcompassion for your existence,
you will only be able to relateto Allah through fear, through
shame, through anxiety, of notbeing enough.
If you don't have a sense ofhealthy ego, your spirituality
(10:53):
will become compromised.
You will engage in worship onlyto soothe your insecurity.
When you practice your faiththrough a fractured identity,
you do not experience Allah'smercy as expansively as you can.
Mostly you connect throughguilt, and you interpret your
hardship as a proof of yourinadequacy.
The world of Allah's abundance,His generosity, His gentleness,
(11:17):
His mercy remains inaccessiblebecause you're filtering
everything through self-doubt.
A spiritual existence that isconstantly in fear is exhausting
and is not sustainable.
What I'm asking here is when youdecenter men and then center
yourself, you're not becomingarrogant.
You are becoming coherent.
(11:39):
And this is the distinction thatcreates the huge difference.
For women, especially thosesocialized to equate goodness
with self sacrifice, the veryidea of centering yourself will
feel dangerous, and it will feelspiritually suspicious.
But what most women have beentaught is not humility, it's
(12:00):
self erasure.
And that makes you really goodat consulting your environment
and calculating your reactionsbefore you consult yourself, so
much so that your selfconfidence completely
disappears.
Decentering men here creates thefirst opening.
When men are no longer this axisof your nervous system, then you
(12:22):
are reclaiming your ownattention.
That is a huge win because thisattention is your currency.
That reclaimed attention iswhere your selfhood can rebuild.
Centering yourself does not meanhyperinflating yourself.
It means stabilizing yourself tostand on a strong foundation.
What that might start to looklike is that you'll stop
(12:45):
ruminating every time you'recriticized, and you will stop
overfunctioning just to proveyour worth.
What that would look like isthat you will begin to make
decisions from your own valuesalignment rather than anxiety of
somebody else's reaction.
You begin asking what Allahsubhanahu wa ta'ala requires of
you, not what the men around youwill tolerate.
(13:07):
The deeper change here is thenthat you're not reducing an
oversized ego, which is mostlikely not the case.
Again, it might be true in somewomen's cases, but rather what
you're doing is allowing yourcoherent self to exist at all.
If you're functioning as therarity with an inflated but
fragile sense of self, or theone that has a fractured, almost
(13:31):
non existent sense of self, youknow which one you are.
Majority of the time women areof the latter kind.
And if that is you, when youlearn to recognize your own
voice, your own limits, then youare not becoming arrogant,
you're becoming visible, visibleenough just to yourself.
And this visibility is whatcreates the internal stability
(13:54):
necessary to relate to others.
And from that you start torelate to Allah from a place of
peace.
When you develop a healthy senseof ego, your spirituality begins
to reorganize, and this willinternally shift how devotion
feels to you.
In that case, your worship willno longer function as a
compensation of your feelinginadequate.
(14:17):
Just so you can get closer toAllah, your worship emerges from
a coherent self.
When you are grounded in thatway, you can love others
endlessly, you can giveendlessly, even to men,
specially to men, if that's whatyou choose to do.
If your goal is to repair yourrelationships with men without
(14:39):
dissolving into them, this ishow you do it.
This way you can extendforgiveness without erasing your
own boundaries.
So what appears on the surfacewhen you're decentering men
through this treatment is thatit looks like you're centering
yourself, but you're notchoosing your ego over God.
You're building the internalstructure that allows divine
(15:02):
recognition to occur withoutexternal distortion.
When you develop your capacityand allow yourself to exist as a
stable, dignified creation, yougain the lens through which the
magnitude of your creator'smercy becomes visible.
Your wholeness then is not evenremotely arrogant, because it is
(15:24):
your healing, through whichAllah subhanahu wa ta'ala's love
and mercy becomes real.
As you begin to center yourhealthy self, your orientation
will naturally turn towardsAllah.
When men no longer are there todetermine your worth or make you
feel insecure or otherwisepronounce your stability, the
(15:48):
direction you return to will beits proper place, the trust in
Allah, and that will replace allof your anxieties.
From this steadiness, your lovethat you have to give to others
becomes very, very genuine.
You can care deeply withoutovercalculating all of your
actions and your worth.
(16:08):
And the type of love thatemerges from this identity is
not desperate, it's not evenstrategic, it's not
transactional, it's simply freeto give.
It's simply available for otherhuman beings to profit off of
because you have so much of itto give.
There is a huge differencebetween a healthy ego and an
(16:30):
inflated ego that is otherwisefragile.
And I will not give thisrecommendation to everyone.
This type of teaching andguidance is not universal in the
same way for everyone.
Many men already live from asocially reinforced center of
the self that can easily slideinto entitlement or inflation.
(16:50):
Their spiritual work ofteninvolves softening that center,
learning humility,accountability, to restrain
themselves from their sense ofauthority over others so that it
does not overshadow their ownrelationship with Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
For them and for women who areotherwise operating from an
inflated ego, the path towardshealthy spirituality includes
(17:13):
bringing the ego down so thatthe faith can emerge without
their distortion of dominanceand superiority.
This, however, is usually notthe path that most Muslim women
need to take in order to getcloser to Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala.
You cannot know Allah from afragmented self.
(17:33):
You will continue to fall intospiritual shame because your man
is disappointed in you, and youwill start to equate that that
Allah is disappointed in you.
Facing constant shame as a fuelto your faith will burn you out,
and that way you will risklosing your faith altogether.
And in the rare case that youare holding on to it, from your
(17:55):
own self confidence andauthority, faith will become
less transactional, lessfiltered through another human's
authority, and your spiritualityas a woman will become anchored
directly in your relationshipwith Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala.
This is the paradox ofdecentering.
Having gone through thistriangulation successfully,
(18:17):
diagnosing male centeredness,creating a healthy sense of
self, and then relating to Allahthrough your own authority.
From there the relationshipswith men in your life will
become stronger and peaceful.
The paradox of this process isthat relationship with men will
improve, because in that spacemen around you no longer need to
(18:38):
behave a certain way in orderfor you to feel loved.
You are already loved endlesslyby Allah, and you get to see all
of that mercy through a sense ofa healthy self.
If your identity and stabilityare anchored internally, then
men no longer need to be taskedwith regulating your emotional
state.
(18:58):
This in itself removes anenormous weight and pressure
from your relationships.
Then inevitably your lovebecomes less anxious because it
no longer carries the burden ofdivining you.
In this restoration of thecorrect order of decentering
men, it restores the hierarchythat was previously inverted.
(19:20):
Male centered cultures havenarrowed this pathway by
teaching women that your accessto Allah must pass through a
man.
Authority, interpretation,validation, what your worship
should look like are all framedas male mediated.
This leaves women feeling thattheir relationship with Allah is
(19:41):
dependent on a male's approval.
So while decentering men appearsrebellious at first glance, it
is completely the opposite ofthat.
It is realignment.
You are restoring the properorder within your inner world.
The irony here is once yourworth is not outsourced to men
(20:02):
and not even entirely containedwithin yourself, this is where
you begin to recognize thesource, the source that is
Allah.
You see that your dignity didnot come from a male selecting
you, and it did not disappearbecause a male rejected you.
Your dignity came from beingcreated intentionally by Allah.
(20:24):
When that happens alongside aclear separation between Allah
and men, the one profound thingthat happens is that your faith
stabilizes, and then you nolonger confuse disappointment in
a man with disappointment inGod.
You no longer interpret a maleweakness with divine injustice.
(20:44):
You stand on firm ground.
Faith becomes vertical betweenyou and Allah instead of
horizontal that is dependent onhow men behave around you and
what they approve of you.
So the controversy that I amtrying to erase here is that
women must temporarily centerthemselves after decentering
(21:04):
men, but that is done only toshow you when the self becomes
structurally stable, Allahsubhanahu wa ta'ala becomes the
ultimate axis, the ultimatecenter.
With that I pray to Allah, YaAllah, remove from my heart any
attachment that distorts mycenter.
Teach me to act from my values,not from the reaction of others.
(21:27):
Strengthen my sense of self, soI may stand in clarity and
dignity that you have offeredme.
Anchor my heart only in you, sothat my peace and my direction
come from you alone.
Amin Yarabul Amin.
Please keep me in your du'as.
I'll talk to you guys next time.
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