Ismail Kamdar – Is there a masculinity crisis?

			Salam aleikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh Al hamdu Lillahi Rabbil Alameen wa salatu salam ala Nabil
Corinne wala already he was heavy at Mount Sinai. So today I want to address a question that's been
popping up all over social media. Is there a masculinity crisis? Right? The topic of masculinity has
been a hot topic of 2022. Everyone's discussing it. Those who are hating on it, those who are
promoting it, people have different ideas of what masculinity is, what does it mean to be a man? And
I found myself this year researching the topic a lot. The reason why I did a lot of research into
the topic is that I came across this year, many young men who asked the question, what does it mean
		

			to be a Muslim man? And what does Islam say on masculinity? So to answer the question, I started
reading up on the topic, and it was quite a journey. I actually found it is the Academy because of
the research I did. But today's video just focus on answering this one question. Is there even a
masculinity crisis? Is this something people made up for marketing purposes? Or is this an actual
problem on the ground across the globe? And my response after a lot of research and speaking to a
lot of people around the world, is that the answer to the question, is there a masculinity crisis?
The answer is, it depends on who you are. It depends on where you live, right, because there are
		

			some parts of the world where men are still manly. And there are some parts of the world where men
have no idea what it even means to be a man. And this really depends on the culture that you live
in, the kind of upbringing that you had, and
		

			what level of hardship you had to go through in life, all of these things affect whether a boy
becomes a man or not. So from my personal experience, I have found that the current generation
growing up of young boys in countries like South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States,
Canada, basically the English speaking Muslim world, because slums are minorities, specifically in
these lands, I have found with the younger generation, that there is a masculinity crisis. What do
we mean by masculinity Christ? Well, I'll give you a few examples of the type of people I encounter
on the daily that make me worry about this generation. So the first type of person that we are
		

			running into the man child's that they are people who are 30, or 40 years old, they still talk like
children, they still act like children, they are unable to take care of themselves, and they will
take care of a family day our
		

			children in adult bodies, and this problem of demand child is becoming more and more common, that I
am dealing with this very often when a parent will come to me and say my child has, you know, he
needs help, and then meet the child, the child my age. And I have four kids, my kids are young men,
now they're 15 years, 14 years old, Islamically, it makes them young men. And so I refer to them as
young men, and to meet for a parent to refer to that 30 or 35 year old as a child or small boy.
That's part of the problem, isn't it? So definitely, there's a problem there. And another way in
which I've noticed that it's definitely a masculinity problem is when I look at siblings, they're
		

			growing up together. So for example, I saw a brother and sister growing up with just one year apart
from each other. But the sister grew up she she went to university, you know, graduated, got
married, has children, she has hunted a good life. Her brother who's around the same age as her,
still lives with his mom into these video games all day. He has no aspirations. He has no goals. He
still behaves like a child, he still acts like a child. And really, he has no motivation in life at
all. And this is the second issue of notice with these young men. That is there's no motivation to
grow up.
		

			A third area we have noticed a crisis in masculinity is in the area of courage versus cowardice. Now
we know in Islam, a core part of Islamic masculinity, is to be brave, to be courageous.
		

			But we know dissing now, with this generation, people are very cowardly. We see that people don't
want to even say things that others will find offensive. So they will adapt on Islamic beliefs,
because they're too cowardly to state what Islam says.
		

			And I saw this firsthand last year.
		

			I got in my community last year, there was a,
		

			there was a crisis, where people's homes were being attacked. And I noticed two different trends.
The older generation of men were outside their homes with their guns, defending the neighborhoods, a
lot of the younger men were scared, staying at home and playing video games, refusing to get
involved in protecting their families. And that's when I noticed the difference between the two
generations that we genuinely have a group of young men who are too cowardly to defend and protect
their families. And that's a problem. Because in Islam, a primary role of a man is to be the
protector of his family and his community. So we see this with the manchild problem, or we see it
		

			with men who don't have any aspirations in life. We see this with men who are cowardly. The fourth
problem, we're now seeing a rise of young men who are effeminate, have very female personalities,
they have the soft tone voices, or the dress very good. Usually, they have very good dish pastimes,
they use very feminine filters are on social media. And we just, I mean, if you didn't know it was a
guy behind the account, you think it was a woman and this is this is disturbing. It is really
disturbing to see it's it's a feminine behavior from young men in our community. And the fourth sign
that there's a masculinity crisis is the fact that the red pill movement has found an audience
		

			amongst Muslim boys. Now,
		

			if Muslim boys were being taught Islamic masculinity from a young age, I don't think they would go
to that moment at all. But because we've been quiet on this topic for too long, thinking that this
is no problem rarely, we thought it is no problem.
		

			It didn't cross our mind that there was a problem until these things are happening. But these young
boys drifted off to very extreme ideas of what it means to be a man. So we have these various signs
that indeed, in the English speaking Muslim world, there is a crisis of young men who don't know
what masculinity is. And they are two opposite extremes. They are those who are going for this harsh
and vulgar, rough, hedonistic man who's just chasing after your own desires. And on the other side,
we have these men who are cowardly and effeminate and, and childlike. And what we find, again, also
is that a lot of young ladies are complaining that they can't find real men to get married to.
		

			Right. This is, again, where the complaint comes in. If you feel this topic doesn't concern you as a
woman, well think about the fact that many young woman cannot find good men to marry. Because men
are on one of these two extremes. They either too childish, or they too harsh and extreme. And that
Muslim gentleman that has been the core, you know, backbone of the Muslim community for over 1000
years, that seems to be getting less and less to the current generation. So what's the cause of
this? What's the reasons for the masculinity crisis, because we never really had masculinity crisis
for the bulk of our history for the bulk of Muslim history. Men learned masculinity from their
		

			fathers. They learned from the teachers, they learned from the photo guilds, they learned from a
variety of sources, it was, you know, natural for a boy to grow into a man by the age of 14 or 15,
I'd really look at the bulk of Muslim history, by the age of 14 or 15. People were young men, and
they were able to get married, they were able to provide for their families were able to defend
their communities. They were manly men by the age of 14 or 15. Today, we have people by the age of
30, or 35, who are children who are still children. And what is the cause of this problem? Now, I'm
going to go through a few of the causes. I'm not going to address the one that everybody's talking
		

			about, because I want to do a separate video on that one. And because I feel it really that's the
only one people talk about, and it goes out and all these other causes. And that is feminism, right?
Everyone says because of feminism, we have a masculinity crisis. And there is truth to that there is
some truth to that. But I want to do a separate video on how feminism has affected masculinity.
Because it's not the only cause what I find to be problematic is by only focusing on one cause. We
are ignoring all the other causes, and we need to focus on all because each of these things I'm
about to mention, play just as big a role in destroying masculinity as this one. Yeah. So number
		

			two,
		

			this is one that we don't talk about because it's taboo. But it really has played a major role in
destroying masculinity in this era. And that is * addiction. Right? For the bulk of human
history. Young boys did not have free access to this vote. This is the first generation actually
growing up with free access to this
		

			fork and, you know, it is going to take an entire generation for people to realize
		

			just how harmful it is. But we starting to see the harmful effects on this generation of boys, we
starting to see how * has killed their testosterone levels, we suddenly see how
* has made people homosexual, how it has made people effeminate, how it has made men lose
motivation to work, how it has turned people into addicts, we are starting to see it, destroy
families, destroy individuals, destroy souls destroy society. And this is a major cause of killing
masculinity in men. And I find this to be across the board. And whenever we're dealing with a young
man, who is not growing manly, fast enough, very often, he's addicted to *. And it's one
		

			of the things that is that is stopping him from becoming a real man. Because a real man has control
over his nerves. And real man lowers his gaze, a real man is only six out that pleasure in a halal
way. And therefore someone who will be * addict is destroying his own soul. So this is the second
cause, right of this crisis, the third cause, and the fourth cause go together. And this might make
some people angry, but
		

			it is what it is. From the father's side, we have a problem of fathers being absent, whether by
purpose or because of, you know, the mothers, whatever the case may be, that a lot of young men in
this generation have grown up without father figures. But the father is either, you know, left them
and went and started a separate life, or the father, you know, was cut off from them in a custody
battle by the mother, or whatever the case may be like, I myself, my father passed away when I was
very young, but Hamdulillah I had my grandfather's and my uncles and my mentor. So I always had
father figures in my life, a lot of young men now because of individualism, which has become so
		

			common, people aren't taking care of their grandchildren, or the orphan nephews. So these kids who
nowadays who lose their father at a young age are growing up fatherless. And this, of course, means
they don't have that direct role model of masculinity in their lives. linked to this, number four,
is the issue of over mothering. Now, what do we mean by over modeling? You see, the mother and
father provide balance in the upbringing of a child. So what happens is the mother provides that
love and nurturing and the father pushes the guy, his child to go beyond their comfort zone, to
challenge himself to man up. So these things balancing each other out. Now, what happens when a
		

			child has mothering but no fathering is that he never, he never gets a challenge, in some cases,
unless the mother knows this, and she is working on this in some other way. So for example, you see
a child who is 12 or 13 years old, wants to try some extreme sport, right? What we find happening in
my community specifically, is that the mom will say, Don't do it is too dangerous. Now, if there's
no dad around, the child won't do it, and you won't grow and you won't overcome his fears, and you
won't step out of his comfort zone. And he doesn't become a man, because he never has these
experiences in life. But when there's a dad around, the dad would say, Let him try it. I know he can
		

			do it. And he will push his son to try things that are dangerous, try things that also is
comfortable, if he knows his son can do it. And this helps his son to grow braver to grow stronger,
to grow more manly. And the solutions to this are multiple number one, obviously, dads need to step
up and play a role if they are not playing a role in their son's lives. And number two, if you are a
single mother raising boys, then you need to get them some kind of father figure who's going to play
this role in their life unless you are going to do it yourself. Right. So whether it's the
grandfather or the uncles or the local community leaders, but someone needs to play this role in
		

			your son's life with they push them out of their comfort zone and make them do things that they are
scared to do and that you are scared to see them do. Because boys need that in order to become men.
So over mothering and under fathering are also reasons for the masculinity crisis. Another reason
that nobody talks about is the school system. And anyone who knows my work knows I'm a critic of the
school system, I feel the entire system needs to be thrown away and replaced with a new system that
is more conducive to the modern world.
		

			The school system is designed for females. That's what I believe the school system we have today is
designed for females, it does not take into account the personality of boys. How boys learn what
they need to learn. It doesn't take into account the needs of the masculine. Right, and most of the
schools or teachers are female. So if a child only has a mother and female teachers, they don't have
any male
		

			because in their life, and if they're going through a very feminine school system, they are going to
come out as a feminine voice. And although people may not agree with this, but honestly just take a
step back and look at it and look at it very carefully, boys in schools are encouraged to have very
female like behavior, boys need to be a bit rough, they need to be to have some outlet for the
aggression, you know, like wrestling classes, or martial arts classes or your they need to be on the
run on the go. They learn more from doing it sitting quietly in a classroom, and the schools, most
of them, they just silence all of this, and make them sit quietly, and listen. And honestly, in
		

			general, for the most part, girls are better at that than boys. Right. So this is contributing to
the masculinity crisis, that we have generations of boys growing up in a school system that is
designed for girls. And that's when we find out that many of the daughters are excelling at school
and excelling at university. While boys are doing terribly, and they feel like they are down, then
it's not that they are dumb, it's that the system wasn't designed for them, that we really need new
systems. And this is why I'm also highly in favor of a gendered school system, a completely separate
system of education for boys and girls that works around their personality types and their learning
		

			styles. So I believe the school system has played a major role in killing masculinity. And another
way in which it has done that is, and this takes us to a point number six, this propaganda that's
been going around for the past five years, maybe 10 years,
		

			where anything that's masculine, has been portrayed as toxic, right, this new term has come up
called toxic masculinity, which is utter nonsense. There's no such thing as toxic masculinity, only
toxic people, a man or a woman can be toxic. It's nothing to do with their gender. But what we find
is things that are natural parts of masculinity have been called toxic, so boys going to school, or
being shamed by the teachers, by their classmates, or by the media for being masculine. Right. So
they feel that they need to be more feminine, they need to feel the need to be myself there, we see
this, for example, I would like to bring up non Muslim media because I don't promote it. I don't
		

			want people to watch it. But sometimes we have to bring it up as examples of what's going on and
what our youth are being exposed to. So don't take this as a
		

			as an endorsement of watching this media just take it as a warning, but what they're putting out
what you will find, with for example, Netflix, Netflix in the past
		

			past five years, if you take a look at the romantic comedies that they have been producing, with
each year, the male leads are getting more and more effeminate. They are softer, they are quieter,
they listen to the woman, they don't have any masculine qualities. And if you compare it to a movie
from 20 years ago, it's like the men are completely different, completely different individuals,
like almost nothing in common with a male lead 20 years ago, and the male lead today. And this shows
you the subtle propaganda of changing the man and making him effeminate. Right, so the media is
shaming boys coming masculine. So they're becoming more of them, they don't know what masculinity
		

			is, or they push back and they go full red book, right? We have the school system doing the same.
And then the final two points are things that are causing the masculinity crisis is the rise of the
alphabet people and their fault, which of course, has played a major role in causing young boys to
		

			lose that sense of masculinity and to become more effeminate. Of course, if people don't believe in
genders, then what even is masculine. And that's the final point that now we have gender confusion,
where biologically and Islamically they are two genders, the male and the female. And now we have
this new ideas of, of multiple genders and changing agendas. And so boys growing up in this
environment are going to grow up very, very confused. So what do we do about it? Well, this is where
is the academy comes in. Initially, when I did this research, I thought that I would write a book on
the topic, but as I was writing, I realized the book is not enough. So what I plan to do Inshallah,
		

			in 2023 is to produce a series of videos right starting with a explanation of this book. This is a
book called alpha towards a recent publication by Imam Tao it will lead to a very beautiful
introduction to the core qualities of a Muslim man, and inshallah I will be starting soon a series
of videos explaining that book. So I think this would be a good first step to helping young boys to
rediscover what is Islamic masculinity so they can find balance again, and become the kind of men
that our community needs.
		

			So I want to propose five
		

			As solutions for solving this masculinity crisis, number one, we need to have honest discussions
about the topic. What we find today is that people are very outraged about this topic, you bring up
the topic of gender roles or masculinity or femininity, and people are hangry, and people are
fighting, and people are trying to shut you down, and nobody wants to talk about it. I'm saying we
have to talk about it, we have to be open, we have to be honest, we need to have discussions on this
topic. If we don't talk about it, then the young boys want to learn about it may go to the wrong
sources. So let's have open discussions about it. Whether we agree with each other or not. And let's
		

			try and, you know, find solutions through these honest and open discussions. Number two, we need to
revive the traditional family structure. And that is something that we are striving to do with the
academy to teach men how to be husbands again, to teach women how to be wives to get to teach men
how to be fathers and women how to be mothers, because this seems to be lost in Age of
individualism, where everyone has just become about me, me, me, my rights, my wants, my desires, and
everyone's forgotten about the spouse and their children and their parents, we want to revive this
family structure because this goes a long way towards reviving true masculinity and to femininity
		

			and, and raising children who are happy and content and you know, who are Islamic.
		

			A third thing that we can do to fix this problem is to reform our education system, we need to find
ways to make the education system more suitable to boys. The current system is very effeminate. And
we need to find ways to make sure that our boys are getting the type of education that they need.
Right. So for my family, personally, I chose to homeschool my kids, and I'm so glad that I did.
Because now they are teenagers, my daughter is very feminine. My boys are very masculine, this has
been preserved, it has been nurtured, it has been grown humble, I'm very proud of who they are
growing into, and really want to see the spread to other people as well. So I'm trying to educate
		

			people on this education system, so that they can also reform the way they teach the children so
that they can do damage control and the children are not. They didn't Phaedra is not damaged by the
global education system. So a fourth thing that we can do is for the mothers and fathers to balance
out their roles, right? You said over mothering keeps the boy a child and undervaluing prevents him
from becoming a man. So moms need to let that play their role. And they are going to step up and
play their role and I believe in the mom is playing a role in the dad is playing his role, then a
boy is more likely to grow into a real man. And if there is no father in the picture, if he's you
		

			know, absent or passed away, or whatever the case may be, find other male role models for young
young boy in the community because every young boy needs role models to look up to, so that he can
become a real man. And finally, finally, my call towards the Alama. Towards the people of knowledge,
we have to talk about this topic. We have to be open and honest about it. Even if it's politically
incorrect. Even if we make certain segments of the community angry, we have to say what needs to be
said. Otherwise, this problem will get worse and worse. Right? If we want to see the family the
stomach clammy revived if we want to see divorce rates drop, if you want to see happiness in
		

			marriage increase, if you want to see men who are content to their masculinity and women who are
content with their femininity. We want to see this this alphabet nonsense wiped out from our
community. Right? If you want to see children growing up with both parents in a holistic loving home
cooked, learning what they need to learn to become righteous contributors to society, then we the
Alama the people of knowledge, the to art, the students of knowledge, the teachers, the Islamic
influences, we have to talk about these topics, we have to be open, we have to be honest, we have to
do it in a way that benefits the ummah.
		

			So with that, we come to the conclusion of this short video, I hope you found this beneficial. So in
short, to answer the question, is there a masculinity crisis? I say it depends where you live in the
world. If you are living in a community where you know things are still traditional and Islamic, and
where there may be a lot of hardships, then yes, your boys are most likely going to be met or
Hamdulillah.
		

			But if you if your son is going to a non Muslim school, if the father is absent if there's there's
no one there pushing him out of his comfort zone. You know if if he has no aspirations in life, if
he's exposed to *
		

			So the alphabet movements propaganda
		

			it is watching these Netflix romantic movies we all the men are effeminate then yeah, it's likely
there's going to be a masculinity crisis for that boy. So just be aware of the causes that's that
helps to minimize things and to push things in the right direction and inshallah as we start
producing more videos and articles and books online courses together inshallah we will find
solutions to this problem to help bring our boys back to the balance and middle part of Islam is a
holiday for your time and attention. Don't forget to like and subscribe and to share this video with
others so they give me number two was salam aleikum wa rahmatullah wa barakato.