Minute with a Muslim #282 – Develop Urge Into Virtue

Ramadasa honey, in his book, he talks about urge as one of the, if not the strongest force, and the most important one to tame, urge impulse and a couple different types of urge get tucked in there. And but, of course, one of the most powerful one is this one is the sexual urge, right? This is something that Allah has created in us. And regretfully, as Muslims with something that we've become very, very prudish about talking about, in an extreme sort of way, we don't want to be lewd, and we don't want to be indecent. But there's two extremes, right, then we can also completely sweep it under the rug and ignore it and not talk about it. And that actually makes us more vulnerable when

it comes to managing it correctly, and developing it for its proper use. Because everything that Allah has found to Allah gave us has a proper outlet has a proper use, right? A lot gave us the urge, the sexual urge, or the urge for romance or whatever you want to call it. And it's not just so that we can completely abandon it entirely and shut it up and bottle it up. And then that's not what we're supposed to do with it. We're supposed to take that urge. And we're supposed to develop it into a virtue, right? Because if we don't develop it into a virtue, it's going to end up hurting us in one of two ways. Either, we're going to let it out of the bag without any rains at all completely

uncontrolled. And this is lost, right? This is promiscuity. This is an all the evils that are associated with that all the heartbreak, all the waste of time and energy and damage to families and children. And you name it, broken marriages, broken homes, like all the sorts of evils come along with promiscuity. But then there's another extreme, which is imagining that we can just deny our nature and deny the urges and gifts that are lost, found all that has put in our nature, and then you end up like the Catholic Church, right? You okay, you're going to be a celibate, let's see how long that lasts, what happens is that your sexual desire is just going to get rerouted and put onto

something that's unnatural. And this happens, right? People, we have this interesting conception, and I don't think it's accurate at all, we think that sexual urges is just as simple as

given an outlet and it's released, that doesn't describe it, how you give it an outlet, it can actually continue to grow, it can shift, it's much more fluid and plastic than we realize. And you know, as an Imam, you hear everything. And you talk to people who are sexually attracted to all sorts of different crazy stuff. But then there's lots of people who find that with time, it shifts, it's not fixed. It's not immutable, this thing actually is, okay, it might have some inertia, right? It's not like you can just pry it away, and it's just going to change overnight. But it does shift, it has a certain degree of flexibility and plasticity to it. Right. So all that to say it can't be

left alone, it has to be developed in the proper, the proper channels, and the channel that allows pounds Allah gave us in Assam, his marriage, the channel for us to develop and to give our sexuality a healthy outlet is marriage. Why Marriage because it's checks and balances its accountability, you get to have a sexual outlet, but it is with somebody who you have to be attentive to, right, you don't just get the goods without having to compensate when it comes to the person's feelings, right? Care for that person service for that in that person's, you know, needs and all these sorts of areas of their lives, you have intimacy in the full sense of the word, not just bodily intimacy, right, or

what you're touching, or what you're doing but intimate intimacy, in the sense of knowing what makes that person happy, knowing what makes that person satisfied, trying to do the little things trying to, you know, make that person's life nice, right? And so, look at this beautiful outlet Allah gave us yes, we can have and we can act on that urge. And we can enjoy it. And it's great, awesome. But it has to also be within this relationship. That is, it's transformative. Right? Allah gave us that urge to pull us into this transformative relationship, where now your spouse knows everything, right? You having a relationship with a spouse forces you to better yourself, or at least it should

if you're a good Muslim that cares about doing the right thing. It should force you to better yourself. Oh, well, I yell when I get angry. Okay, stop. Stop yelling when you get angry, right? I do this or Oh, yeah, I just okay, work on yourself. Change yourself. If you have bad habits, try to make them at least less bad, if not get rid of them entirely altogether. So it's there for a reason. And everything Allah gives us is there for a reason. It's kind of like a raw material that allows POUND DOLLAR expects us to develop into something much more virtuous.