Bilal Assad – Porn Addiction – From Taboo to Transformation
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Both men and women in Surat An Nur
in verse 30,
commanding them to lower their gaze and to
guard their private area.
In this podcast I have a very special
interview and a very special topic and I
have to warn you that it is a
very sensitive topic.
The topic is about * addiction among other
addictions.
This is a very prevalent
issue
nowadays, and experts have described it as a
global epidemic.
I myself,
as an educator
and a community leader, am approached almost on
a daily basis by not only youth, but
even older people and couples in marriages,
complaining about this issue. Just the other day
I had a young man tell me that
it's Ramadan
and I intend to stay away from this
foul act. However, I can't guarantee how I'm
going to do after Ramadan. Do you have
any advice?
Based on this, brothers and sisters,
I have a very special guest speaker, a
friend of mine, Shaykh Houstad,
Wa'il Ibrahim, who is situated in Perth. He's
an international guest speaker and has authored several
books on this particular topic. Among them are
Aware,
Find Out Who You Are Without *.
Another book entitled * is Mental. Mental Health
Crisis Caused by *.
Number 3, Best It. 50 plus Shades of
Hope. And also, Better Me 365
Ways to Transform
Your Everyday Life.
Ustazwa'il Ibrahim, Shekwa Ibrahim, has also been through
a calamity himself,
where he had a tragic
accident,
and he wrote a book about it for
those who go through calamities entitled, My Wheelchair,
My Journey of Getting Back Up on My
Feet'.
So I am pleased to
welcome our dear guest,
Aloha
We've just come back from a long,
trip together,
interstate and also,
I missed the journey in the UK.
Being together with Mufti Menck, Shakhomar Saleiman, Shakhu
Bakrzad
and Achi Eiman. Masha'Allah, we miss the company,
we're looking forward to reunite insha'Allah. I enjoyed
your very busy tremendously.
Let's begin insha'Allah.
Being an educator myself,
this topic has always been a taboo topic
especially
in our Muslim community where
they feel it's a shameful topic or disrespectful
to open up a topic like that. In
your experience, Sheikh,
why do you think this topic is so
important now?
Bismillah Rahman Rahim Alhamdulillah Wassa Salaam, Ala Rasulillahi
Sallallahu Alaihi Salaam. It is very important, Shaykhna,
because it is super prevalent
in our community. It's super prevalent in every
community, in every segment of the society.
You'll find people are impacted by this plague.
I have seen people who divorce their wives
in my counseling office because of this issue.
I have seen children failing their exams because
of this issue. I I have actually seen
someone, in fact, the one who got me
started the research
wanted to kill himself
because of the same addictive behavior called *.
So if we don't as people of knowledge
address it publicly,
then who else will talk about it? Parents
having have no clue. They gift their children
cell phones, iPads, laptops
and they allow them to use all these
devices, internet devices in the bedrooms
and this is where the problem
takes place. And the parents are mostly oblivious
to the fact that
this has been destroying their
children. I have seen even people in the
past 3 years in particular or 4 years
who have
left Islam completely because of the same thing.
Left Islam? Yes. They
have confessed to me that they are no
longer
believers in Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala because they've
been relapsing every week, every 2 weeks, every
3 weeks and every time they will repent
and we go and relapse, repent. So they
thought
that Allah is not listening to the prayers.
They failed to realize of course that addiction
is something
more powerful than just quitting
on the on your own, you know, by
yourself in your bedroom.
But but it led them to this,
to leaving Islam completely. So when are we
going to talk about it then?
And, with these people who leave Islam,
what do you think is the
emotional, psychological reason for them? What goes through
their head for leaving Islam? What is the
issue?
Because they don't like going to those behaviors.
They don't want it to be addicted to
these
issues. They know that it's haram. They know
that it's wrong.
And they can't control their behavior. So every
time they relapse, they repent.
We ask Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to forgive
them. Mhmm. Some of them they would take
a bath and pray Turakah and ask Allah,
you Allah take me out of this. Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala will open doors for us
to repent,
but he will not send his angels
to make you quit the action. You have
to create the right environments and to,
reach out to to experts who can help
you, assist you
together with your dua, together with your salah
and so on and so forth. So because
they are missing all these links, they end
up thinking that Allah is not there. He's
not listening to them. He's not responding to
their dua.
What
made
you come into this topic? What made you
take up this area of expertise and be
so passionate about it?
Several things, Sheikh. I was in Hong Kong
when I started when I came back from
my past music and
this industry into Islam, Alhamdulillah. We started an
organization in Hong Kong City called Serving Islam
Team.
And, it was purely for dawah. There was
no any intention for me to speak about
this topic whatsoever.
Until an 18 year old boy at that
time
who came to my office and he confessed
his addiction
to *
to me and he said that he is
reflecting suicide.
And after a little bit of conversation I
found out that he's been addicted for 7
years already, like 7 years. He's 18 years
of age and he's been addicted to this
thing for 7 years. And that took me
years back in the nineties
when we used to exchange tapes and magazines
of that nature. And I remembered that every
night we will access or we will view
those content,
protect us and forgive us You Rabb.
We will be disturbed in a manner that
I cannot even fathom or describe. We will
not even sleep that night. We will keep
on thinking of those images. And of course,
those images will lead to
physical
activities that are haram and prohibited. Not only
that, but it would lead us to stay
up all night
doing nothing but fantasizing about those images. Not
only that, but it will lead us to
going to school
very sleepy and,
that would lead to lack of focus, lack
of you know, retention of the knowledge and
so on and so forth. So I remember
that that was in the nineties where these
materials were barely accessible.
And when it is accessible on on these
materials like VHS tapes and whatnot, it's very
difficult to watch them because you'll have to
use your parents',
you know, lounge to and the TV. It
was very difficult,
yet we were disturbed. Yet we were in
that at that verge of addiction.
Let alone those guys of 2024
who have access to
Internet devices on just a, a mobile phone.
There are some people who told me that
I would be we would be on the
dining table
watching
these content while with our parents. Our parents
are eating with us on the dining table
and they're watching inappropriate imagery on their phones.
Mhmm. So the accessibility
to these content made it absolutely devastating. But
what got me started is that boy who
wanted to kill himself because I want when
I was 18, I thought that I owned
the world. I loved the dunya, I loved
being alive.
And this guy wanted to end up his
life because of some imagery.
-And we're talking about a time when you
were about his same age? Yeah, I think
a little bit older because in 1990s
Yeah, who's like a peer young, if someone
who is about your age? Yes, 16, 17
onwards, we were all drowned into these,
or Ayahu Bila lifestyles, and and it it
got into us, yet it was less accessible
than today.
This boy wanted to kill himself, so I
had that drive in my heart to help
him. So we worked together for 1 year,
Alhamdulillah.
This one one thing that we want to
bring maybe towards the end of the of
the discussion is that there is hope. So
Alhamdulillah, this boy I worked with him for
a year and now he's part of my
team as one of my coaches Alhamdulillah
who's helping others now. You give life coaching
and obviously
you're giving lots of workshops about this, different
schools internationally.
How have you seen this success
and what did
tell us about your journey in giving workshops
to youngsters. What what stories do you have?
What is the success story? I want you
first to remember that I started about 20
plus years ago talking about this. I
will.
So back in the days, it was very
difficult to even reach out to a masjid
or an Islamic center or an organization to
even allow me to speak about the topic.
Mhmm. In fact, in one of the countries
without mentioning any names, I was told on
the stage to come down because
somebody's gonna shoot me if I
kept on talking about this topic. Wow. 5
years later, that's this same organization invited me
for a whole
week comprehensive workshop on the topic.
The same organization? The same organization who warned
me. Why
Yes, maybe the production on the production level,
yes, the West are producing this filth mostly.
Yeah? But the Muslims are not immune from
falling into these traps. In fact, there are
a lot of stats that shows that Muslim
countries are among the highest in
trying to access the content. Not the highest
in accessing
the content, but due to VPN in many,
many Muslim countries, they block these sites, but
they have the
intention to access. And
now with the,
technology of VPNs that is as cheap as
free today,
people can access in those countries as well.
So we cannot bury our heads in the
sand and pretend that, this is not happening.
In fact,
1 in 10
* users in on the Internet is under
the age of 10, Jabal.
Under the age of 10? 1 in 10.
And how many people are there on the
Internet according to statistics done by one filthy
website of that nature?
42,000,000,000
visits had occurred
on one single website of that nature in
the year 2019
alone.
42,000,000,000,
1 year,
1 * website.
Let alone Allah alone knows how many people
that's one single website. They are boasting about
42,000,000,000, like, you know,
breaking record for them. Mahmoud Sheikh, what happens
is,
as we you know, we're both teachers for
a long time. I've been doing it for
about 20 years, and also in counselling myself.
So
we're working now on a
new
curriculum called child safe curriculum.
And I worked at a Muslim school.
And you are right, till today I see
parents,
some of them still very hesitant, don't want
to talk about it thinking that it's haram
or something like that. Even though the books
of fuqah that we've read, the ones I've
read have more than 3,000
questions
revolving around this particular topic.
But the youngsters continue to come up to
us, even older people now, destroying their relationships,
their marriages, their career, their jobs, their self
esteem, themselves, and as you said Chayr, even
in very extreme circumstances as, even self harm.
Do you feel that parents today still,
what advice can you give to parents at
the moment?
Wellahi brother, I remember my father, may Allah
have mercy on him, that old generation.
We we used to also reach out to
them to speak about something, like, related to
anything, like, we call it in the Middle
East Ayb, you know, like Ayb. It's shame
to speak about it.
So we grew up in those cultures that
we can't even talk to our parents about
such sensitive topic, but it seems that this
is even creeping into the western society as
well. Not only our community, even non Muslim
community also, they are
ashamed to speak about it and they are
they consider it taboo as well, not not
just among the Muslims. So the advice is
that what worked with us as
generations
back in the days will not work with
our children today. Mhmm.
Life has changed, time has changed,
Technology has changed. And as a result, parenting
must change as well. So you have to
open that gap. You have to break that
gap. You have to cross that gap and
talk to your children. Open a conversation.
Allow any topic to be discussed in your
home.
Otherwise, you will not be able to know
what they're doing behind your back because you
are not allowing that
room for conversation. Mhmm. There is a lady
by the name of Kristin Jensen who auth
authored a book,
2 books actually under the same title, and
it's called Good Pictures,
Bad Pictures. Mhmm. That's why I was so
happy that you quoted that in the beginning
about lowering the gaze. This lady is a
Christian, she is non Muslim, and she was
talking about the importance of lowering the gaze.
The importance of actually looking at imagery
that are pleasing
to Allah or to the creator because any,
anytime you will open, you will stare at
that which is wrong, you will stare at
that know, this * and whatnot,
it will impact your brain in a manner
that you can't even fathom. And that's why
it is called super
normal stimulus.
This imagery on the Internet of that sort,
it's called super normal stimulus, meaning that it
makes the person live in that fantasy world
thinking
that this is, gonna happen when I get
married. So in the future, this is what
I'm gonna do with my wife. This is
the real thing. Failing to realize that those
films are scripted, well planned, to hook you
on them, to to get into your pocket
later on so you can pay for the
premium account. During COVID, when we were locked
behind doors,
this filthy website, they opened a premium account
for free for 1 month.
They knew everyone is locked behind doors. Here's
the premium account.
Watch longer films and whatnot.
And after that, I received tons of emails,
Sheikh Bilal, tons of emails. They said that
now we are paying for the first time
paying using our credit cards to to pay,
these websites. Credit cards. Wives will complain that
they have seen
the, you know, the,
the the credit card reports
and how much
her husband been spending on these websites.
So
this is the damage and
this is just the tip of the iceberg.
We didn't speak yet, bro. It's quite concerning
when you said that,
now studies have shown that they're starting as
early as what, 8, 9 years old? Yes.
Can you run us through the neurological
process? What happens to the brain? What happens
to the mind and the person?
That child who from 8, 9 years old
is looking at these images.
You explained that you and I, we're from
the back end, we were born in, you
know, we're back in the eighties and,
it was almost like a big struggle, a
a huge giard in a wrong way to
get to these images. I do remember Yes.
It was very hard to get to them.
Brown bag. The brown bag. We used call
it the the era of the brown bag.
The era of the brown bag. You put
the stuff to hide it. Now you don't
need to hide anything. It's all it's all
on your protected cell phones. There's this little,
characteristic or this abbreviation experts are using triple
a, which means accessibility,
affordability, autonomy,
and affordability. So no one knows who you
are. You can access it very easily. It's
very affordable. And that's we didn't have that
in our time. And I'm curious to know
from your experience,
a child growing up in this way, their
brain is developing and
they're growing up on this, seeing images on
average, what, a day?
For example,
by the time they're teenagers,
1,000?
Fully addicted. Weekly. Fully addicted. Yeah. Tell us
about what happens to the brain, Sheikh. Describe
this addiction, Soroush. Is it behavioral? Is it
physical? Okay. Please go ahead. So we we
need to define really addiction because we need
the viewers to understand the the the weight
of the topic that we're talking about. There
is a man by the name of Patrick
Carnes. He's known to be among the elite
who spoke about these these types of addictions,
including sexual addictions in the past in the
in the 19 eighties. His name is Patrick
Carnes. Mhmm. When he was asked about what
is addiction, he said addiction is a brain
disease.
Addiction. Any addiction, whether you're addicted to substance
or to behavior.
Any any addiction which you feel compelled doing
it despite
any negative consequences, this is already by definition
is addictive is addiction. There was a study
in Cambridge University, and and the viewers, please,
Yani, go and verify all this information. There
was a study that was done in Cambridge
University. They scanned the brains of * addicts.
No. They scanned it. And they found that
the prefrontal cortex of the brain have actually
on the long run after,
consumption for for several years had shrunk
to
over 4 plus inches of its actual size
physically. So we're talking about physical changes in
the brain as a result of addictions.
Leading to what? Lack of motivation,
lack of memory retention,
decision making ability. Mhmm. All this.
You know, lack of excitement about your own
interest, you know, and of course lack of
spirituality because I receive a lot of emails
where
brothers and sisters who say that as soon
as we say Allahu Akbar,
we see
*. Mhmm. The flashbacks.
This is why now we understand the value
of
Look at the connection that Allah made 1400
years ago. Tell to the believing men and
women to lower their gaze, as a result
their private parts would be protected.
Once you stare that's why the prophet said,
the stare, lustful stare is an arrow from
the arrows of Shaytan. Sheikh, can you
talk a bit more about that part? So
lowering your gaze
to guard your private part. What does it
mean to guard the private part? Because people
often say, 'So long as I don't commit
zina'
which is adultery or fornication,
I'm okay. The ayah is not talking to
me. Can you give us a brilliant question,
Sheikh Bilal, Barak Alafi. Because addiction escalates,
it does not remain at one level. So
what you're looking at now on screens
and you you feel like so excited and
so pleasurable and so on and so forth,
in a year time, it's never gonna be
the same. So you will escalate the doses
by searching for more, searching for more until
you reach to a point that you're no
longer satisfied with *. You wanted the real
thing now. Where are you going to go
if you're unmarried?
Where are you gonna go? You start visiting,
you know, * workers,
prostitution houses.
Oh, really?
Yes. Yes. That's, there are many clients, Sheikna,
who,
you know, couples in particular, the sister will
will start the conversation that we haven't had
any intimacy for the past 2, 3 years
because he's been, you know, going to these
places and he developed sexually transmitted diseases.
Because
it's very, very, you know, logical
thing to to
or or logical conclusion to the behavior
is that if you stray away from the
halal
and you desire the haram, Allah will take
the halal away from you.
And that's why lowering the gaze is one
of the most important tips
for recovery.
So Yani,
meaning if a person lowers their gaze, you
said that
it if they don't lower their gaze, it
eventually leads them to wanting the real thing,
whether married or non married. Because we always
think that marriage is the solution but apparently
it's not the solution. If you are addicted,
if you're addicted already, marriage is not the
solution. But marriage is a very, very helping
a helpful aid,
if the the partner knows about your your
your issue and can be like your your
accountability
partner. Meaning, she
she can monitor your devices, monitor your behavior,
always be there to support you whenever you
need her and so on and so forth.
It can be a very very good aid.
So we encourage marriage really, but it's not
the solution to addiction.
However, if you don't stare at that which
is haram,
growing
up, you don't have anything
to to to act out, you know, you
don't have any fantasy in your brain to
act out in a haram manner. So it's
pretentive mess. Let me play let me play
the devil's advocate here. I wanna I wanna
be that teenager
at the moment. Just the viewers know that
I'm not this is not about me. I
just want to talk like the way the
students and the young people
talk to me
in their twenties or before that above.
So if I said to you, Sheikh, you
know, I've been looking at this stuff for
a very long time, I've never chatted a
girl, I've never
gone with another person. Even
we all know that even now women are
starting to
get this behavioral addiction too. Starting. They've been
they've been into the same the same life.
They've been into the same life. But the
percentage is different. Okay. So we we talk
about 65%,
70% men are more likely to be on
on these images Okay. As opposed to maybe
25 to 30%. Okay. So what happens if
a person does not fall into zina adultery,
doesn't talk
to the opposite gender in a haram way,
what are the consequences of that? I mean,
I I call I call it an insidious,
pathway. Insidious means slowly, gradually becoming something bad
and then what are the what are the
consequences, Thomas? The consequence, one of them. Yeah?
So these these people, I assume that they're
gonna get married later in the future, inshallah.
Right? So there is something now
in neuroscience know about it called * induced
erectile dysfunction.
Yeah. * induced erectile dysfunction. Mhmm. You have
already grown up
conditioning your brain that sexual pleasure is attainable
only through screens, pixels, and imagery of that
nature, and of course self pleasuring,
always associated with the actions. Right? So when
you condition your brain to attain that pleasure
through these these, you know, channels,
when you get the real life partner later
on when you get married, your body, your
physical body will not react to sexual stimulus,
and you will have the halal, you'll have
your wife, but you won't be able to
function sexually. In so many young
men, this has been a con. Go and
find,
Reboot Nation, you know, one one of the
websites that are available to help people.
Is that the website? Yeah. It's by non
Muslim, but they they actually developed
a whole forum within their platform for Muslims.
Uh-huh. Yes. Just for Muslims? It's Yeah. It's
belonged to a friend of mine from America
named Gabe Deem. He started this way because
he himself was also suffering from this same
issue, * induced erectile dysfunction.
Go and find it. Millions of people are
discussing the same problem. Young as young as
18, 20 24, 25, they are discussing the
problem of inability
of
having sexual intimacy with their partners, but when
they are on *, they are okay to
function. They are fine with it. Why? Because
the brain has been conditioned.
And that leads to what, Sheikhna, frustration between
the partners because the wife also have needs.
Right? And that leads to what domestic violence
and that leads to what divorce.
56%
of divorce cases
happened in the United States alone. We're talking
about just the United States. 56%
of divorce cases because one or both partners
were addicted to this behavior.
So, what else? What other consequences people
I asked this in one of my workshops.
Would you rather, and may Allah protect us
and safeguard
everyone, inshaAllah, but would you rather
be diagnosed with cancer
or diagnosed with * induced erectile dysfunction? And
believe me You did this survey? Yes. Believe
me, the majority say I'd rather
have cancer
than being embarrassed in front of my wife.
And you know what? That also,
to back you up,
because we're both involved in, counseling and relationship
counseling.
And we found that this is the last
topic
that they will talk about even though what
we call,
as we call it, the elephant in the
room. They both want to talk about it,
but they're too ashamed. And it's normally the
underlying factor. Or at least
some statistics I read were about 60% of
the of the reasons.
But
that's why I think again, it's so important
to address it.
SubhanAllah.
You know, Shaitna, before before the you move
to the next question,
we mentioned about the sisters who maybe are
affected by the same addiction.
There is also,
as we talked about the,
PID,
the point induced erectile dysfunction. Yes. Women also
suffer from similar disease called anorgasmia.
Mhmm. The inability of reaching that pleasurable moment
with her husband
after marriage. Also as a result Yes. So
it's similar,
but, you know, it's it's it's like no
climax whatsoever
during during,
marital, you know, intimacy as a result of
the brain conditioning Yeah. Due to this imaging.
Mhmm. So you see, so the damage is,
will not just affect the individual now. It's
not affecting you as a person now. It's
affecting also your partner. It's affecting your family,
your children.
Many people I get children as,
as, you know, they they will come at
the age of 30, for example. They say
when we were young, we saw our PNs
doing this.
We became addicted like them, and today they
are living a lifetime of addiction to this
imagery because they have seen their parents doing
the same thing. So we cannot really lie
to ourselves anymore. We have to just be
vulnerable,
honest,
and let's find a solution instead of just
burying our heads in the sand, pretending that
our community is,
angelic.
What are the warning signs from your experience,
both personal
as an individual?
How does a person know that they're getting
into
really dangerous areas now?
And for the parents as well, how can
they recognize warning signs about their children?
The individual, we're always talking about the 2
c's.
The 2 c's. 1 is the compulsion,
and 1 is,
continuing the activity despite negative consequences.
Mhmm. So if you find yourself that you're
compelled going to these websites,
compelled meaning like you have something essential to
do, studies, work,
meetings, whatever else,
but you find yourself putting off all these
things aside for the sake of your pleasure,
for the sake of watching these content and
pleasuring yourself. So if you find yourself compelled
doing that, this is number one indication that
you are already addicted, already addicted, and probably
your brain is hardwired into that addiction to
leave something very essential for the sake of
something haram like that.
And to continue the activity despite negative consequences,
knowing that
you're not gonna achieve what you wanted to
achieve in life,
You might,
maybe you've been called before by your wife
and you promised her and a few months
later she was outside, she went to the
market, she went to her parents and you
find yourself alone. And you started getting back
again into your behavior knowing that she might
open the door and catch you again in
the act and that could lead to divorce.
Despite all these negative consequences,
you're still into the addictive behavior. I have
a person who
actually attempted * on a school campus,
and he ended up in jail for one
and a half years. He disappeared from the
community. We tried to reach out to his
family members, we couldn't for one and a
half years and then he contacted me.
Where have you been? I asked him. Where
in the world have you been? He said,
I was in jail. Why for?
And he narrated the story.
What happened? I squeezed him hard. He said
he has been addicted to these types of
* on the Internet, the * type. And
that's why there are countries who banned *
because they attributed to the, the contributing to
the,
* culture. Nepal,
New Zealand has been doing excellent job in
raising awareness on a governmental level because they
have recognized the damage
that this, can bring to the society. Mhmm.
So when you find yourself compelled and you
when you find yourself continuing the activities
despite those negative consequences then that's absolutely something
you need you need to pose, you need
to be honest with yourself, and you need
to reach out to someone who is expert,
who knows how to get you out of
it because there is no way an addicted
person
can get rid of his behavior on his
own. Period. So if a person
finds themselves, for example, every night needing to,
take their own or is it does it
become addictive when it starts to work? So
I'm gonna ask you a question, sir. Okay,
Tommy. If I'm smoking 1 cigarette every day
for 5 years Yeah.
Am I addicted to nicotine
cigarettes or not?
For 5 years? Yeah. So 5 years straight,
every day, 1 cigarette.
Okay. Will I be considered addicted to cigarettes?
I don't know. Okay. If I am addicted
for the same period of time, but I'm
smoking 1 pack a day, am I addicted
to cigarettes or not for 5 years straight?
Same so. Both are addicted? Both are addictive.
Yeah. Because because you've already been doing the
same behavior again and again despite knowing that
cigarette kills, that cigarettes are harmful,
yet you go and visit the same behavior
for that so long. It means that your
brain already has developed those pathways
that are producing those dopamines and other chemicals
asking you to repeat the activities. They have
already registered those those neurotransmitters,
have already registered the activities in your brain
as something essential to be done again and
again repeatedly.
We go to the bathroom every morning. What
do we do? We brush our teeth. Mhmm.
It's not addictive to brush your teeth, but
it's it's a habit. More of a habit.
It's a habit that was built over the
years. So you you already unconsciously are brushing
your teeth. You don't need to plan for
it. But a smoker, they plan. Talk to
me. You know, I used to. You used
to plan. We plan. Yeah. We have a
meal, the plan, the next after the meal,
you know what you're gonna do.
You end the meal by a cigarette. But
you drink tea. Yes. The other
smoking, vaping,
drugs, this is more of a physical addiction,
isn't it? It's a substance addiction. Substance addiction.
We're talking about There's no difference. Dave Sheykh,
I I can say to you, oh, I
can stop anytime.
You know? I'm not really addicted. Alhamdulillah. If
you stop if you stop, I will congratulate
you.
So the point is the point is
you you wanted to measure by the
the the the time,
you know, between each relapse. So, what I'm
saying is and what the expert says is,
that if you've been visiting those harmful behaviors
in a period of time of over 5
years, you're already addicted. Mhmm. Whether the addiction
is deep
or a little bit. So, if I'm smoking
1 cigarette a day for 5 years, I'm
still addicted, but my level of addiction is
a little bit mild. I understand. But if
you're doing one one pack for both are
addictive, just the levels vary. Mhmm. So you
need that's why you need to speak to
experts. Addiction the addiction field is very complicated.
You have to deal with every individual
independently
without looking at the general
spectrum of the matter. You have to see
the underlying problem. Why he actually visited? Why
he, stumbled across these websites in the first
place? Sometimes it's a result of sexual assault
when when that person was young, and as
a result, he became very curious to know
more.
Sometimes,
you know,
depression,
anxiety leads to people who wanted to numb
that pain by visiting
things that are super excited to take them
away from that pain. So we need to
dig deeper to know why in the first
place a person visited these sites so that
we can do the necessary
remedy. From your experience,
what are the common reasons
that people end up
in *? Bad company. So number 1 is
bad company. Yeah. Introducing these things to each
other. So they hear So it starts at
a very, very young age. Mostly most most
people who come to me at the age
of 40, 45, even sometimes 50
addicted to this, they will tell me that
we've been addicted when we were 12. We
we start watching when we were 12. So
that's the And that's because of their friends
introducing it to them all over the world.
They take it all to their lives and
they have this misconception that when I get
married I will quit. When I get married
I will
failing to understand that addiction is in the
brain has nothing to do with your wife.
Right. So you would enjoy your wife for
a bit, but after that, the addiction will
kick in again. And this is where the
problems happen. They think that marriage will solve
it, but it's not going to solve it
because becoming more of an issue. So one
is, bad company and that's why Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala and Surat Al Kahf mentioned about
talking about good friends, good company, that you
don't let your eyes stray away from them.
Because a good friend by definition
is a person whom when you meet, he
reminds you of Allah subhanahu. Yeah. You are.
When you when you meet, he reminds you
of your your obligation. So when you stick
with those good righteous company,
you most likely will be like them. That's
why the prophet said,
A person will be inclined to follow the
religion or the way of life of his
friend.
He gave like a warning. Let every one
of you watch out who are their friends
because show me your friends,
who your friends
are, it's just you. It's just a replica.
Mhmm.
I had a case once where,
someone had, become an addict.
And as you said they went into dangerous
behaviors.
It didn't just stop at a certain angle.
And what I discovered was that they had
some,
abuse when they were a child by That
that was the second thing I'm pronouncing. I
will take it. So the first is best
company. Is best company. Is, yeah, abuse of
all nature. And by the way, in Australia
alone, the, child abuse case mostly come from
family members
or someone that they know very, very well
in the family. Yeah. That is true. And
and this is just in Australia,
Australia wide. It has nothing to do with
Muslims, non Muslims in Australia.
What do you advise parents to do,
Sheikh? What general advice do you have so
that they Number 1 number 1,
don't ever allow your children to use their
internet devices in isolation.
You know, but like in bedrooms. Never in
bedrooms. Never. Never. This is a policy that
should even parents should should live by. Mhmm.
Like, hamdulillah, I developed with my family this
called devices parking lot. So before we sleep,
we just
park our devices near the kitchen, plug it
in, and see you tomorrow. No more. Number
2,
minimize the usage of Internet devices per day.
Mhmm. Don't let the kids
be be controlled by the devices, but rather
let them learn. This is this is teaching
them resilience to to be in control of
the material world, not not the other way
around. So 2, 3 hours a day, that's
sufficient for a child. And then the rest
do something beneficial. When are we gonna worship
a lion?
And if we kept on using the phone,
if the phone, it becomes like a third
hand for us like Mhmm. When are we
gonna pray? When are we gonna read the
Quran, memorize the Quran? People are complaining about
memories now. Like, I can't memorize the Quran.
My father is beating me up. My teacher
in the masjid is beating me up because
I Why? Because the eyes are staring at
something more interesting.
TikTok is ruling the world today. Yeah. Yeah.
So this is number 3.
There are plenty of softwares and blockers in,
you know,
other platforms on the Internet that can actually
do the job for you.
And if you don't mind me mentioning a
few things like in Australia, there's something called
Family Zone. Mhmm. A platform that can give
you a a modem that you can attach
to the existing modem in your home, and
it can block all these nonsense on its
own.
Not only that, but it has an app
associated with it that you as parents can
monitor your children behaviors and knowing what are
they actually doing on on the internet. It's
not a spying app, but it gives you
a report if they stumble across that which
is undesirable.
And you can, from the back end you
can block all these *, gambling, anything that
you don't want you can just block. And
anything that they
tried even to access, you will receive a
report. And this is where
the opportunity will arise for you as a
parent to sit with your children and educate
them. There you are. So there are many,
many aspects parents can actually do.
And number 4, conversations.
Mhmm.
Start this on a daily basis. Sit with
them and talk.
Don't give them the phone because you wanted
to do something else so they become busy
on their in their own work. You have
to sit and talk what happened in the
school today. Did anyone touch you inappropriately? And,
open this and make it common because *
is common.
Let let the conversation about it be common
too. That's that's my stress. I agree with
that. Unless we unless we normalize the conversations,
we will never
be able to find solutions. Although they'll hide
from their parents all the time unless they're
able to and I think parents, do you
agree that if they share more of the
comment of of the interests of their children,
whatever they're interested in, take part in it.
Absolutely. Conversations beyond just instructions, rules, school,
more on an emotional level together. Soccer
go to soccer field, go go for a
walk, whatever they like. Yeah. Sharing interest So
that there's this conversation. There
is the sunnah.
Sheikh, we've spoken about the importance and the
why it's happening and the warning signs and
the statistics. We all understand
the consequences now that there are
psychological, emotional and physical consequences
and, SubhanAllah,
it's a problem that leads on even into
marriage. So marriage is not the
main solution if a person's already
addicted. So let's move on now
to solutions,
remedies,
advices,
healing.
Okay. Is there hope Yeshaikh for somebody who
works?
Allah told us already that there is hope.
Tell my servants who have transgressed,
you know, have crossed all limits against themselves,
despair
not from the mercy of Allah for Allah
forgive all sins. Indeed, Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
is the most forgiving, most merciful. So the
hope will always be there. Yes. No matter
how hard your addiction is, there is a
solution.
Scientists, neuroscientists,
and the experts in the field who told
us that addiction is very hard to deal
with, they are the same people who said
that our brain is made of something called,
or or something similar to plastic that you
can mold. That's why the science behind it
called neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity.
Because you can actually mold your brain. You
can rewire it back to its original state.
It takes time.
It's not an easy overnight process.
It takes time, and it it's different from
one person to another, but it is dual.
You can bring your brain back to its
original shape. You can restrengthen
the free, the prefrontal cortex once more,
but that require a lot of strategies. So
we can mention in this for the sake
of the time we have
4 most important elements in recovery, the the
most essential for everyone. Mhmm. And you can't
live without them when you wanted to break
free from any addiction. They apply to everyone?
Bismarck. Old or young? Yes. Man or woman?
Anyone. Those are the essentials. Beyond that, there
are other tips and tricks that can be
added depends on your own context and where
you live and do you live alone? Are
you single? Are you married? Are you And
also for how long you live now. So
that's why I said it's important to reach
out to experts because you can deal with
this issue on your own. It's about and
and the people who are listening who are
into this, they know what I'm talking about.
They know that they have been trying
their best to quit on their own and
they failed miserably again and again.
So they know this. So you have to
now go beyond you and find someone who
can support you in trauma. But number 1
is called environmental invasion. Mhmm. You have to
design your environment in a manner that is
conducive
to
demand driven activities,
productivity,
things that will keep you busy. Like when
you design
your bedroom, you design your bedroom for one
reason. What is that reason, Sheikh? Help me
out. Why do we have bedrooms?
To sleep. To sleep. But the bedrooms now
became the places for TikTok and YouTube and
Entertainment. And entertainment. So so that's why the
dining table time that I grew up with,
we used to
eat on a pallet to the family, like
a round table called tabli and
a pallet that would sit on the ground.
And no one eats before parents arrived. Like
if your father is working, no one would
eat lunch.
Today, the father is there, the mother is
there, everyone is there. We'll take a plate
and take take the food and there are
people who are addicted to gaming, Sheikhna. Gaming
is listed on the World Health Organization, by
the way, as mental disorder already.
Although * didn't make its way to the
DSM, the diagnostic and statistical manual used by
psychologists and
psychiatrists in the state. We're talking extreme gaming,
isn't it, Sheikh? I mean, I like to
play games in my children sometimes. Gaming for
certain hours per day Okay. Alright. For a
certain
period over a couple of years will qualify
a person to suffer from mental disease as
a result of gaming. Yeah. I don't know.
This is how intense it is. Because it
it takes you away from reality, Sheikh. Mhmm.
Like, you you you you become disconnected from
the real life situation and it develops that
hate in your heart when you lose a
game.
So even on a topic we're talking about,
it seems like there's a connection. Oh, yeah.
Absolutely.
Escaping the reality. So we we're talking about
addiction. So addiction
addiction any addiction follows the same pattern. Same
pattern. There is no any difference. The intensity
is what makes it different. So people are
more interested in drug addiction because drug can
physically kill you.
Neuroscientists say that * addiction is more dangerous
than drug addictions because you cannot read the
symptoms in people who are addicted. You can't
say, oh, you're addicted. But an a drug
addict, you can identify him. You can sense
that there are something happening, shivering,
you know, sweating,
stealing,
you know, getting sicker, black eyes, all these
you can you can see that there's something
going, going on. But with * addicts, what
are the symptoms? It can be in hijabi,
in a kabi,
a bearded,
religious, non religious, anyone.
So the first one is change your environment.
You have to change your environment in a
manner that they only you know, I always
ask this question to my clients. If you
happen to be in the Kaaba by yourself
alone, forget about the 3,000,000, 4,000,000 people. You're
alone in front of the Kaaba. Will you
dare
opening these filthy websites and pleasure yourself?
And, Wallahi Sheikhna,
100% of the time,
not even a split of a second thinking
about the answer. Say no, impossible.
Why is that so?
Why is it when you are in front
of the Kaaba alone?
Nobody's watching you. Same like you're in the
bedroom alone.
What's the difference?
The holiness,
the environment. Of course, you'll not bring the
Kaaba in your home,
but do something similar. Let the bedroom be
only 4
sleeping. For sleeping. So no devices should be
in the bedroom. Keep your device further away
from your bed. Never. Put the alarm on
for this distance. People, like, even if you
don't wanna confess to your parents in the
beginning about your addiction, so you're still ashamed,
I understand the struggle.
At least tell them, look, it's affecting my
studies, affecting my sleep. I don't want you
to give me that phone in my bedroom.
You be a man. You be a woman.
There's really discipline and Yes. For this, you
can't. So get out of that denial stage
that I can do it on my own.
Be be be honest. You can't.
It's it's finished. It's it's done deal, Allah.
So this is number 1. Number 2, structure
system. The prophet Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam, when
he went to Madinah,
first thing he did, he built a masjid.
That's the environment.
And this masjid was for not just salah.
Right, Sheikhullah? I think you can highlight that
even better. Yeah. The masjid is for all
community activities. To a point that he met
people complained about the distance between their homes
and the masjid. They said, like, you know,
we're very far. We're living very far and
the masjid is, you know, can we pray
somebody? He say for every step you take
to the masjid Allah Subhanahu Ta'ala is giving
you the reward and reward is multiplied by
10. Allahu Akbar. And salah in the masjid
is 27
degree higher than salah individually. You see,
system,
why we pray 5 times a day?
Why we have Ramadan, Allahu Akbar, the month
of training so that we can get out
of these addictive behaviors and all these bad
habits to restart our heart. SubhanAllah. So have
a system in life and stick to it.
Wallahi, my brother, when my wife embraced Islam,
we went to the Philippines.
And the first time her family members and
the friends and the neighbors saw her with
hijab, they start mocking her because they knew
who she was before Islam. They know how
she used to wear and so on. So
they start they start making those fun like,
oh, where is your camel now? You know,
why are you wearing a tent and so
on. My wife was so quiet, so quiet,
so quiet. When the environment when when the
people around her realized that she's dead serious
about her faith, guess what? They started helping
us practicing Islam.
Pork was made prohibited to enter that home.
All the statues of Mary and Jesus because
they were from a Catholic background
were actually taken away because of our feeling,
because
we wanted when we pray, we always go
out. They wanted also to provide an environment
that's helpful for us to pray. They used
to knock our doors and say, oh, we
find halal food for you. Mhmm. So the
bottom line is, when you have a system
that is known to everyone that this is
who I am.
I don't care about the norm. I don't
care about the majority because Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala said, the Quran,
very few among my servants are grateful. Will
you be among the majority or the minority
now? Mhmm. You will have to jump with
the minority because Allah praise them. So doesn't
matter what people are doing,
you be who you are. You are a
Muslim, and you are trying to please Allah
Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala to the best of your
ability. So
we said what, Sheikhna? We said environment. We
said structure and system, very strict system. And,
number 3 Sorry, Sheikh. With structuring the system,
you mean,
so what make a plan for yourself, a
timetable,
create From minute from minute 1 when you
wake up Yeah. Until you sleep.
No idle moment. In Islam, we don't have
vacations. This dunya is meant for Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala said
Even if you want to entertain yourself, you
have to entertain yourself in a manner that's
pleasing for Allah
Not to jump on movies and songs and
Yeah. You see? So even if you wanna
chill, chill but in a halal manner. You
don't just chill anyway. Yeah. So a system
that can restrict you and close all avenues
that may lead to relapses. Take up a
hobby. Learn a new,
for example,
let's say,
a new software, for example.
Learn when I say software, like, why don't
you go on the Internet and learn how
to make videos, for example? I have I
have friends who actually developed my app, the
Aware app, which is still under development, but
we are now working on,
an application to also send notification
to people
to remind them of their goals and so
on and so forth. Still working on it.
So whatever you wanted to learn, whatever you
wanted to do that is beneficial,
go for it, but fill your schedule. You
see that That's fine. There's something very important
I maybe forgot to say. Isolation is number
one enemies to your sobriety.
Being alone is number 1. That's
why narrated. That shaitan will always be with
the individual
and he's farther away from the 2. Mhmm.
So if you have 5 in your circle,
if you have 1. So there's another step
coming. So environment, structure your day, your life.
Yeah. Number 3 is ignoring the pain associated
with good actions.
Ignoring the pain associated with good actions. And
I always bring the, the example of athletes
here.
Those people who go to the training,
you know, in the
gym,
you know, I like football, soccer.
So I I follow the those players and
sometimes I read the biographies to learn how
they maintain that mental fitness.
Like, you know, they are prevented from ice
cream, from their favorite food and all that.
Why? Because they have a goal. They want
it to be on the pitch. They don't
wanna be on the bench. So they they
go for 5, 6 days training for the
sake of 90 minutes match. So the training
is so intense and not enjoyable.
It's not enjoyable. It's painful.
It's hurtful. Mhmm. But that's that's what it
takes to get you on the pitch and
to perform in Mhmm. You see,
So you need to ignore. Whenever you feel
like,
I'm bored now. I wanna do something. No.
No. No. Keep pushing your limits. This is
a psychological
tip, which is the hardest in all the
tips you need to work. That's why we
said we need to work
with a a counselor or a coach to
help you develop that mental,
strong willpower to help you push your limits
in child. So you're talking about, let's say,
the 5 daily salat. Yeah. There's
pain involved in it in the sense that
you have to wake up. Yes. Fajar.
Fajar Masalem. Yeah. Are you saying
so when you create a schedule for yourself
and you start to busy yourself with things
that are important and benefit you,
you're going to think about
you know, the pain that's involved such as,
you're not going to
sit entertaining yourself too much or maybe you
have to move around and do things. Or
even Shaykhna, you're about to wake up. You
heard the adhan for fajr, but you didn't
sleep early. For example, you slept at 2
or 3 AM,
and you heard the adhan 2 hours later.
And you found yourself exhausted, tired, almost blind.
Yeah? You're on the bed. The bed is
so sweet. Mhmm. Yeah?
You ask yourself the question,
is what I'm about to do is important
or is it not? If the answer is
absolutely, it is essential,
do it anyway. As they say, yeah, the
brand, do it anyway. Doesn't matter.
Tired, not tired. Headaches, not headaches.
Do it anyway if it is essential. This
is what it means by ignoring the pain
associated with studies. Studies, Sharna.
You and I until now, alhamdulillah, we sit
with books and we study and we try
to memorize concepts. Is it fun? No. Of
course not. Do do we feel like dancing
while we're No. No. I don't wait for
motivation. No. If you're gonna wait until you're
motivated, you're not gonna win. So you have
a vision. You have something that I'm doing
this because
this is my plan in in 2 days'
time, in 3 days' time, in a year
time. It doesn't matter. We push our limits
because of the goal behind us. The goal
is. So ignoring any pain associated with good
action. The final point, Shishna, which we touched
on is people.
Involve people. Now, you can't as we said,
you can't quit on your own, so you
have to tell someone that you trust.
Do not tell someone on Facebook, on Twitter,
on those platforms. Tell someone in your midst
that you trust.
Someone who will
show empathy and sympathy to you and will
try to find a solution. Someone who will
become your partner. If you're married, if you're
a male married, tell your wife immediately. Don't
don't hesitate.
Most of the the the couples that came
to me, the sister is willing more than
willing to support the husband who is addicted
to this. If you are a sister addicted,
don't tell your husband immediately.
Oh, you don't? Yeah. So you know him
better than me. So if you know your
husband who will not react in an aggressive
manner, go and tell him. You know him.
But most of the time, husbands don't react
well
when they hear that their wife is addicted
to those things. So you have to reach
out to a sister in the community,
a teacher in the community from the female
side to help you and then a counselor
later on. But, don't immediately but you have
to tell someone. The bottom line is you
have to have someone in your
surrounding who knows about your problem to monitor
your behavior. You know, Shehna, I visited a
drug addiction,
rehabilitation center in Hong Kong City, and they
took me to one of the toughest
ward
floor, the
those who are addicted to hard drugs and
stuff. And I saw 1, I will never
forget this. I saw someone handcuffed in the
bed from his feet and from
in the bed. Yeah. And I inquired. He
said he said because he he he's about
to take a dose
of the substance that he was addicted to.
Mhmm. Because in drug addictions, you can't just
quit cold turkey. Mhmm. Or he can die.
The the withdrawal symptoms can kill a person
sometimes if you're addicted to cocaine, heroin, these
hard drugs. So they actually inject you with
little bit of these same doses
to create just the same,
little bit of the same feeling until they
get you out of it I see. Gradually.
So he was actually handcuffed. And then I
read the book later on that says that
the only way
that will help people break free from addiction
is restrictions.
You can't be free anymore
for a period of time, for at least
a year. I say for a year,
be restricted.
Don't don't run after your desires and Insha'Allah
Ta'ala, you will be you will taste that
blissful time of your life. You will never
let go of that time when you feel
that you have the mental clarity back. Let
me ask you about that. Achievement back. Let
me ask you that point, Dusse. So before
we move on, just let's highlight the 4
areas. Number 1, just to summarize, you said
the environment.
Yeah. And when I said environmental invasion, means
you you scan your environments and eliminate anything
that may lead you to
the same trap again. Each person knows themself.
It could be maybe the night when they
take their phone with them,
change that environment, keep your phone somewhere else
for example. Secondly was Structure in life. Structure
your life. And that structure must be known
to people so that they can also support
you in the process. Verocrolophic. And number 3?
Ignoring the pain associated with good actions. Any
good beneficial action, do it anyway. Even if
it is painful, even if it's annoying, it
doesn't matter. Do it. And number 4? People
who knows about your issues so that they
can People who know about your issues. So
that that I always advise people to create
religious circle. Mhmm. A sports circle. Yes. Intellectual
circle. Uh-huh. Like,
outing circles. Like, you have to fill up
your days with
good company all the time so that you
never have space for nonsense.
Interesting,
scenario. I'll just share it with you. So
one time we were in the class with
a colleague of mine teaching about science and
religion,
and the students asked about
what we call in Arabic,
the private habit or addiction. And we all
know what Self pleasuring, yes. Self pleasuring. Let's
just call it self pleasuring. I think men
and women Everyone knows. Yeah. They know exactly
what we are talking about. Self pleasuring.
And,
my colleague who has studied Fikqa
jurisprudence in in Nadine,
you'll find that there's a difference of opinion
on its ruling. Some say that it is
haram, others they say it is disliked, and
there is even another group, minority, who say
Mubao has just absolutely nothing wrong with it,
no need to even
worry about it. And these are documented, these
are documented among the great jurists. So it
is true.
However,
what happened after that was,
the students, when they took that word from
the teacher, that
it is disliked,
instead of thinking about self pleasuring as a
disliked habit,
they went to a further
understanding by saying,
mister so and so said that we are
allowed to watch *.
Yeah. Look at this. And we came back
and said this is not what was said.
He did not say that.
And I said no, you said it's it's
it's macro
to look at *. No, no, no. Talking
about self pleasure.
So that interested me to sort of think
about this question now.
What are your thoughts, Sheikh, about that? So,
first of all, I have 3 videos that
were created as a result of 2 other
videos who were posted by respectful,
talking about this issue. So I responded in
a very
in the most polite manner that I could
because I look up to them, of course.
So I wanted the the viewers to actually
refer to these videos because I discussed the
damage of this self pleasuring
in in a greater length and I attached
even research about that from non Muslims. So
forget about that.
Now I I would never disagree or discuss
or debate anyone who is expert in the
fiqh,
area of knowledge. That's not my area. Okay.
Yes? So I would respect that. I will
not even comment on it.
My question to those fuqaha
is that all the names that were
mentioned in those
debates or in those are from the first
three generations, like, you know, from the Tabi'in,
basically. Mhmm. So the Tabi'in said this about
the self pleasure act. Mhmm. So all the
quotes that
made the scholars today say that it's Makru.
All the quotes are from this generation. When
when they didn't have technology in Who never
had access to it. Forget about technology, Sheikhna,
who had no access to our time. Yeah.
And in the entire time period, they have
not witnessed it. And I am asking those
if
these same
that you quoted were living with us today,
will they have the same ruling
as Macquarie?
If they were to say what we Okay.
2nd,
if there is already a research says that
excessive
self pleasuring could lead to erectile dysfunction,
will we still take that opinion as Maku?
And if if it is that damaging that
could actually end up
a the the the life of a person
not to get married, not to have children,
will that ruling still stand?
Think about it.
Do do you think that excessive self pleasure
leads to Yes. It damaged certain nerves physically.
No. We're not talking about difference of opinion
among the No. No. Medical scientists about this.
Yes. I agree. We we we are not
talking about the the mental aspect of the
* induced. We're not talking about we're talking
about physically injure your certain nerves as a
result of excessive muscle and that can lead
to erectile dysfunction. I would not argue with
scientists who say that it's, sometimes it's, some
people even say that it prevent *.
Yes. So, what I wanna say to make
it clear that if you find yourself at
the verge of,
at the verge means, like, there's someone there
and you're about to commit that
then, yeah, go for it because Avoid to
avoid it. It's the, you know, the they
call the the lesser evil. I know. But
but if you are in the bedroom, in
your bedroom, you can go to the masjid.
You will not do it. You can go
to a coffee shop. You will not do
it. You know, he is. You can go
to the public, you can go walk in
the park. Why are you saying like someone
say it's Makroso, you Allah Bismillah. Let's do
it. Like, come on. We have to just
the 3rd
is that, there is another research that says
that
when you give yourself self pleasuring for a
period of time, you become addicted to it
also. Like, that becomes addiction on its own
without the visuals.
And the last point is
99.999
99%
goes to these visuals to Yeah. To attain
self pleasure. So so you can just say
only this self pleasure is okay or but
visuals is haram
because both are very, very, very, very closely
related. Because we know the majority
of people who solve pleasure, they go through
this distance without the monographic images and and
and so on. And that's probably what would
answer the question to the students saying, oh,
so and so said we can watch because
that's that's what they associate it with. You
know this is similar to what Sheikhna? Back
in the days they used to say that,
music,
there are difference of opinions. Right? Some people
used to so music is different. So long
and they have 20 points, like, what make
music
halal or acceptable. Okay. 20 points, like, the
the lyrics associated with the music should be
this, should be that. So I by the
way, I take that music completely.
I take that opinion full Are you referring
to the book by Shekel Karadovir? Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I
mean, that study is there. Many scholars talked
about it because But even if they say
there's 10 points, go ahead, Chen. But but
I I researched the topic because I came
from that background. So I was trying to
halalize actually my my music. And one person
told me it's there is nothing mentioned, you
know, the
it's okay. It's it's it's just, you know,
so long as the words are okay,
then you can use music. And I took
that immediately, and I start saying that music
is halal, and I generalize it. Mhmm. Anything
and everything because I wanted it. That's my
desire. Okay. Similarly, if you said it's okay
there's this,
yeah, yeah, well known personality say, you don't
even feel guilty about it.
And that's the worst part because if I
don't feel guilty about doing it, it means
that I will not even repent after doing
it. It means that I can do it
and go sleep and not even take a
bath to We're talking about what now? Feeling
guilty about what shift? We're talking about music.
It's pleasuring. Okay, we went back to Sohraber
now. I'll just give the music as an
example
That if you don't give a comprehensive answer
to the problem,
you will end up misleading people like that.
So you you you don't just say, like,
it's okay. Do it and don't feel even
guilty about it. Then,
* becomes also okay. It comes. Then, after
after *,
you will also go and sleep and you're
not even bothered to shower and go for
prayer because it's okay. Don't feel guilty about
it. Yes. You see? Yes. May Allah protect
us. Mhmm. SubhanAllah.
We in science, in neurology,
they say that what happens is that the
person,
experiences
that release of dopamine and other
neurotransmitting
neurohormones.
And, they they
2 things happen.
The brain remembers
that pleasure
and then the brain also remembers
that in the future
you can come back to that pleasure. Yes.
And those two memories stay in that person
and intensify to the point that they can't.
And by the way, dopamine is something that
is produced for our own benefits. Like, when
when we're intimate with our spouses, also dopamine
is released.
But the difference is, SubhanAllah, when you have
a partner,
the impact is different on the brain. Even
some people say that, okay, self pleasuring is
haram. You say, okay, how about if the
wife sometimes
self pleasure her husband, will that be okay?
Yeah. That's okay because the hormones produced are
different, They're different hormones. When you have someone
to touch, someone to talk to, someone to
communicate with, someone to
love, then the hormones are positive
unlike when you are doing it solo. Among
the scholars, the advocates of
of saying that it's completely haram,
allowed
it in intimacy, in hadal, between husband and
wife. The advocates of it, yeah. Very, very
interesting that, you know, we live in times
where you don't have a black and white
answer for things. You truly do have to
look at things from all angles. Let us
know in the law. Jack, do you have
cases and stories where there was success? I
am. Anyone? Without mentioning names, of course. No.
No. The one who got me started is
one of my coaches today who's helping people
in in the west to quit *.
So, alhamdulillah, we started,
he started,
wanted to kill himself. He ended up saving
lives now, alhamdulillah. Masha'Allah. I have a brother
who, was,
afraid to get married.
And this brother, I had an interview with
him and it's posted on the internet under
a different name, but he's now known by
his name and he allowed me to mention
his name, his brother Hisham from the UK.
Uh-huh. And
he was addicted for a period of time
and we worked for too long and he
was
not he was dead Yani,
against marriage because he wanted to clean up
himself from addiction first. And after he got
married, after I convinced him to get married,
Alhamdulillah, his wife joined the Aware Academy. She
became a coach, certified coach as well. And,
Alhamdulillah, they have 3 kids now and he's
free from the shackle of addiction. And he's,
again, helping people in the UK. Sheikh, something
occurred to me when you mentioned marriage. And
because in the beginning, we mentioned I I
think some young people might
get afraid of getting married if they're already
addicted or they have that behavior.
So what's your advice?
So let's say, for example, if they're self
pleasuring and it's become an addiction,
how can they stop?
And how long do you think it will
take for them
to start to wean off that behaviour?
Number 2,
if they do have that addiction,
erectile dysfunction. So I will tell them,
go and first check with a physician,
with a doctor Okay. Whether you have some
physical problem.
If there is no physical issues and you
are worried about erectile dysfunction, it means it's
a mental mental blockage.
So can I marry in that state? Yes.
You can. Provided that you inform your future,
your fiancee, about your addictive behavior and that
you want her to be in his life,
in your life as a an accountability partner,
someone to aid you, to help you, to
get out of this so that you both,
inshallah, end up in Jannah together with that
with that Tianyi intention.
So this is what I tell, the youngsters.
Yeah. Seek marriage. And I tell parents too
to help their children to get married as
early as possible
after understanding, of course, the roles, the responsibilities,
the rights of husbands and wives and whatnot.
Not just made them young and what and
that's it. No.
Teach them. That's your your your role, but
get them married because marriage became so difficult,
so expensive, and where else will they actually
release those desires?
That's why zen has become prevalent among our
society as well because there is no any
other avenue to release their desires.
So, so I tell those young people, yes.
Check yourself physically first. See if there is
anything that has damage as a result of
self pleasuring and and those imagery and so
on. If everything is fine,
you seek a righteous spouse.
And, the the best part to start is
to tell your future wife that you have
an addiction so that you can see if
she's willing to continue or not because she
has a right to know. In my opinion,
if you lied to her, if you didn't
actually convey to her the fact that this
can impact
your marriage life later on, then I think
by Sharia you can be questioned.
Why you didn't tell her that she has
a right to continue with you as as
you are or to say no, I can't.
So give her that that option.
And in most cases that I interacted with
Shaykhna, all the sisters were ready to fight
that case. Where it is,
the majority. Some say no.
Also in the after after the after marriage,
if the wife discovered or find out
that her husband is addicted, 90% of the
time, the sisters will
forgive and let go and fight that plague
with her husband. More majority. I found the
same responses,
also in trying to, help others.
Is there a time limit? Let's say somebody
is addicted to this,
6 months, 1 year, should they abstain? I
mean, there are websites is called NoFab,
I think. Is that what it's called? NoFab.
NoFab. NoFab. NoFab. Means no *, no self
pleasuring. Okay. Cold turkey. So you advise them
to go cold turkey, not to wean themselves
off slowly? Yes. I mean, we can take
a little bit of haram every now and
then. We can't. You can't? Islam is like
this.
Islam, can I go and take a little
bit of sip of wine or alcohol or
But a young person or any person's dictum
may say to you, I can't just completely
go cold turkey? I'm not able to do
that. You're just losing yourself.
We said it's addictions varies.
So it's not cocaine. If you go to
a rehabilitation center asking them, you say, I'm
a * addict and I need to be
handcuffed and the medicine,
go play in the streets. Yeah. No. Don't
bother us. So you can go cold turkey.
It will bother you. There are withdrawal
symptoms. You will feel even sometimes pain in
your stomach. So there'll be relapses. Yeah. There
would be relapses. Relapses are expected, But don't
intentionally relapse. If you find it like it's
hard and you you you violate your own
rules, then blame no one but yourself. But
the the bottom line, yes. Take the intention
of cold
turkey quitting and
once you put the environment in place, the
structure, the people around you, the tighten all
the avenues that may lead you to relapses.
Wallahi. I have seen many people coming within
4 months
free from addiction.
For within 4 months. That doesn't mean that
they are free from the addiction in the
brain. Meaning, for 4 months, after 4 months,
they were good good to go on their
own. They could control themselves. Yes. They were
able to. But I say I say,
I I tell my clients congratulations after 1
year of no
* and loss. You think about 1 year
of her contract. I think minimum. Minimum. And
and I always tell them whatever works for
you, like, always identify
the tips
that you have applied,
which worked well for you.
And take take these tips to the grave.
Mhmm.
Don't don't relax them. I have in my
book Beat It. You you actually said bested.
Maybe I missed it. Oh, Beat best it.
I missed. It's called Beat It 50 plus
Shades of Hope. Maybe I misspell it. Well,
they are the best 50. So beat it.
Right? So I mentioned,
I warned people from the little bit trap.
Yeah. The little bit means, Khalaqsa, I'm now
3 months sober.
I can watch a little bit of, this
and that, and
and this can take you back to square
1. Mister Asuel, you've mentioned 2 success stories.
I feel I don't want to the young
people or anybody who's watching this to feel
overwhelmed. So let's talk about success stories to
give them greater hope.
There is a success story about productivity and
how productivity can actually fill your day, fill
your life
with good actions, good outcome that will
slowly,
slowly make this this addiction fade away from
your life. So there was a client who
are who is interested in business.
And because of his addiction, actually, he became
occupied with consumption to * and so on,
and that affected his business so bad to
a point that, he lost actually his job
and he was fired. But later on, to
make it right, he started
an entrepreneurship,
you know, project online,
to teach people how to do business. So
he recorded a course. He stood up in
front of a camera like this. He recorded
the course, he uploaded
it, and, and the course was sold 2,002,000
people enrolled in that course Mhmm. In about
2 or 3 weeks season. So he saw
the money coming in,
he liked the idea,
He start using his time from the morning
till the evening, recorded courses, applaud uploading them
because he have that business mentality. And then
he contacted me
because he he failed when he failed with
me as a coach during this process. Khallasi
disappeared. I don't know where he go. He
he relapsed many many times and he couldn't
cope.
But after a while he contacted me and
said, Sheikh, I wanna give you a tip
that you can tell the people. Okay. I
said, what is this? He said, I quit.
I quit pronged completely. He said what? You
say through productivity, pure productivity.
What do you mean? He said I wake
up in the morning,
I design a course about the areas that
I like, about entrepreneurship,
business, and all that. I record the video,
I upload the video, I sell the video,
that's all what I do and I earn
to a point that he has a company
now and he's I visited that company, by
the way. Should I mention the country or
no? No need? No need. Okay. Up to
you, Shafar. No need. I visit his company.
He designed his office
in the middle of all employees' office,
and it's all surrounded with glass. So everyone
from all direction
can actually see the boss, the manager of
this company.
And I I said this this very unique
office. He said because I don't want to
be alone anymore.
I don't want to be alone anymore. I
don't want to give any slight chance for
any for Shaitan or for myself
to be alone by myself. And that reminded
me of the dua of the prophet sallallahu
alaihi wa sallam, a'udu becoming sharri
and fasi.
I seek protection, you Allah, from the evil
consequences of my own actions.
So this is another success story that this
and this tip is told to me by
my clients. Like, this guy came to me
teaching me.
Tell them to be productive. Tell them to
be away from isolation. I have been sober.
He said that when he called, he said
that I've been sober for 3 years now.
Not a single time I accessed, alhamdulillah. It's
interesting to show that a person is stronger
than what they think. Very determined. It does
require determination and commitment as Rasool
seek Allah's help and do not become incapacitated.
Don't paralyze yourselves.
It says? A big frame on What does
it say? Alone no more. Alone.
And he have policies that all of us
himself. Yes. All of us,
all his family members sleep at the same
time,
go to bed at the same time, eat
at the same time. No one be alone
at any at any given moment. That's his
policy in life now. That's a task nowadays.
Children don't really
obey as much
and Law. Quite with you all the time,
especially as they get older. They'll try our
best. That's parents probably. You need you need
to sort it out. You need to get
them, you know, to sit down. You know,
I wrote a contract with my children regarding
devices usage. Can you imagine that? And I
actually advise
if people can reach out to me, I
can give them that contract. It's one site
for children, one site for the parents.
We agree on phone usage.
We agree that if my father is using
the phone and a child coming my child
come and say, Baba, I wanna talk to
you. I'll say, wait, wait, I have something
urgent. No. We have to learn to put
the phone down. We have to write that
down. Yeah. That when when I come to
the Well, I'd like a copy of that
myself. Well, why? I will I will share
to those whoever, inshallah, get in touch, I
will share the contract. And wallahi, this contract
was my saviour in terms of parenting
about technology because we agreed before doing anything.
What do you think? And I discovered the
talents of my kids, Shaykhna. Anyway The thing
about is that you also put it on
yourself too. So it's not the suit, both
of us. Yes. We don't we don't take
the phones to bed. No. Wallahi shaykhna, the,
the,
the talents that I discovered, I discovered that
my child was a good soccer player,
my son. I discovered that my daughter is
a painter.
She started even,
selling selling her painting on shoes. She would
buy plain shoes. She will paint. She will
post on the Internet and earn money. You
discovered this after the agreement you made with
them. Why? Because we minimized the usage of
this shaitan. Yeah. And all the skills and
came out. Yes. When we minimize it, you
have 1 hour or 30 minutes
during weekend. 30 minute, during week weekends about
1 hour or 2 hours. Weekdays only 30
minutes. So they have plenty of time to
occupy. What what else we're gonna do? So
we start discovering their talent. So
may Allah may Allah give us the right
understanding. And we say that children don't always
obey us, but they may but they never
fail to imitate us. So that's why it
also applies to us as well. What's another
success story, Sheikh? This is nice that you
can remember. The couples went through,
difficulties
and,
they were at the verge of divorce and
then they came to me as a last
resort.
And, this brother was,
involved not only in in online
activities of that sort. It went beyond that
for so many, many years. And the sister
will forgive
many, many times.
And they came to me and I I
put them into a system of 12 week
sessions.
And,
part of this session was that,
the brother must surrender all his passwords, all
his
freedom to the sister if he wanted to
continue in marriage.
And within 3 weeks, I received a call
from the sister
thanking me. She said that I've never
ever seen my husband treating me this way.
So gentle,
so sweet,
opening conversations,
initiating
intimacy.
Before, he would never initiate because he's drowned
into this addiction. Despite the difficulties of him
even performing it sometime because of this induced
Iqtaal dysfunction.
He would attempt to try, and I would
never look at him and tell him what's
wrong with you anymore. We became very, very,
cooperating.
2 years later, alhamdulillah, they have twins. Allah
bless them with twins. And this is what
I wanted to mention that when you leave
the haram
and fight hard to leave that lifestyle, Allah
bless you even more.
And the cases of those who have, alhamdulillah,
got out of their addictions plenty. Like we
have a survey we send to people that
we work with. I have a program called
the critical alignment model
where these four tips are,
tailor made.
So, what I mentioned
in the program is just the brief aspect
of it. But when we talk to people,
we try to know their context so that
we can tailor made the environment and the
structure for them insha Allah.
What advice do do you give to the
imams and community leaders for example in this
area? What's their role?
Look,
my brother I I developed a whole workshop
for imams.
A whole workshop for imams because I know
that people always look up to the imams
and they go and ask them, you know,
I have a problem. I have this. What
to do? What to do? They look up
to the imam as knowledgeable source
to help them with their struggles and so
on. So I know that many imams have
heard this before. I've heard that someone is
addicted or someone is struggling with this. So
unless you know more about the topic, you
will not be able to offer the help.
These people don't want to hear it's haram.
They already know it's haram. Right?
Of course, that doesn't mean that you shouldn't
say it's haram anymore. What I mean is
that's not the solution. Everyone knows it's haram.
The prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam, a man
came to him and he told me, Rassoulullah,
allow me to commit zina. The prophet didn't
say, don't you know it's haram? Yeah. Astaghfirullah,
how dare you? Yep. He said, do you
want this to happen to your mom, to
your daughter, and so on? And then when
the man say, no no no no no,
he said other people too don't like this
to happen to their family members. And then
the prophet placed his hand
over the man's heart, and he said, yeah,
Allah, take away the love of harm from
his heart, purify his heart and purify his
private part and so on and so forth.
So we need to be acquainted with the
with the subject, not just to touch on
it sometimes on the Khutba, and that's about
it. Because sometimes
with good intentions,
sometimes we mislead people.
Sometimes if you don't have the depth
of knowledge about this, you will end up
misleading people. So I really advise the imams
to look into this and address it on
the pulpit. There's nothing haram about addressing a
prevalent topic
as this on on on the pulpit. We
can't afford any more talking. Yeah. And if
the prophet can't afford talking. Yeah. Nishekhna, who
narrated the story that I just mentioned about
the man asking the prophet to commit zina?
Sahih. Who who narrated it? The companions who
witnessed actually witnessed it. So the prophet
actually
was genius in this, in in creating a
very, very helpful
environment that allows everyone to be themselves. He
welcomed him he welcomed him to talk about
it as you said, and the people who
were around him thought this is disrespectful, and
Rasool al Adhan welcomed it. Just address it.
Get out of you. And final thing, Shaykhna,
if you don't mind.
To those brothers and sisters who are addicted
to this evil,
It's
it's better for you to die fighting
your addiction
than giving up giving up on Allah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala. Die fighting.
You know, they said, Alaibra lai said bimanth
sabak. Alaibra bimanthhabit.
Bimanthhabit.
So
the matter will be determined by Allah Subhana
Wa Ta'la with Ajahn now, not because we
have started practicing Islam first before others, but
rather by our level of steadfastness and
consistency in fighting those evils. It's better to
die
going to Jannah
than taking
tell my brothers and sisters who are watching
that, yes, I know the content sometimes seems
heavy on some people's heart, but we have
to face the reality and say it as
it is. Otherwise, we will never find solution
to it. So may Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala
protect us. May Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala cleanse
our hearts from any vices of that nature.
May Allah Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala save our brothers
and sisters who are addicted so that we
insha Allah Ta'ala succeed as an umrah because
we can't become,
we can't
revive, we can't revive this nation
with bunch of addicts. We need we need
to be better, do better. We need to
free Palestine. May Allah
protect our brothers and sisters in Palestine and
Gaza. Yeah. May Allah grant them victory. Have
mercy upon their shuhada. May Allah bring back
Al Masjid Al Aqsa to the hands of
those who deserve it, Ameen, and that will
happen by Muslims who are committed to the
deen and fighting these vices to the best
of their ability in general.
Thank
you for having
us, for joining us in this
crucially,
important topic which definitely
is overdue to talk about and I think
this discussion has benefited or will benefit a
lot of people out there. I am very
certain of it. May Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala
strengthen you and continue
to support you in this amazing work.