Is everything a male fantasy in Islam?

Disclaimer: This essay is finally up! It took longer than expected (I’m currently working three jobs + family responsibilities + side projects) and I feel as though it’s still incomplete. This is going to be long, but worthwhile for the right reader. Think of this as multiple sub-essays.

I’ve spent weeks writing and this is as condensed as I could make it. I’d like to note that this is not an anti-men or anti-marriage essay, I think both are necessary and important. I was worried that this would be misinterpreted if I didn’t articulate myself correctly in this essay, but I trust that the core theme is still intact.

Also please remember, my opinions are always prone to change, and as I evolve I will likely have new thoughts to share about this topic. For now, enjoy this messy essay :)

(consider subscribing to keep up with my reflections as I attempt to create more than I consume. For now, this essay is proof that I know how to write well when I actually have time lol.)

It starts slow.

You’re five, and an uncle jokes that he feels bad for your future husband because you were too assertive in your tone.

Then, you are twelve, and your father tells you not to purse your lips in photos with your friends because “I know how men think”.

Then sixteen, your mother beaming with pride when other women praise your modesty and imply that you would make a good wife.

It’s there at eighteen when a male acquaintance takes a seat next to you at an event, and the aunties go around calling you an attention-seeking slut.

It’s there in your twenties, when you believe that the key to a man’s heart is showing him you’re desirable to other men, because isn’t that the ultimate stamp of approval that you’re finally worthy of commitment and initiative?

It’s there every time you get shushed for laughing too loudly in public. It’s there when you’re told not to make eye contact with male relatives when speaking to them. It’s there when you reveal too much skin, and there when you cover it all up.

It’s there, it’s there, it’s there.

What starts as innocent social conditioning slowly calcifies into identity. It’s not just about men anymore, it becomes about who you’re expected to be.

You become intimately familiar with your purpose — not one of your choosing, but one etched onto you by years of silent submission: to be seen, judged, and shaped by the male gaze. It becomes a sinful, precious commodity you must strive for without admitting to craving.

Every woman has been conditioned to observe herself through the male lens. But I’d like to argue that this is amplified in Muslim communities, where men are taught to be avoided and simultaneously revered.

First, let’s get one thing straight.

Islam (when practiced correctly) is arguably the most empowering religion for women.

Islam has granted women rights that women in the west fight for to this day: the right to financial freedom and a career, to be provided for, to education, political involvement, divorce, and even abortion in certain cases. The list goes on.

But somewhere along the way, the lines between culture and Islam began to blur.

Slowly, the most interesting thing about a woman became how she could prove her worth through the male lens, rather than the lens of Allah, her creator. Culture replaced the value that has been inherently given to a woman by God with a value that must be built upon her complacency and forgetfulness of her initial, divinely decreed rarity.

For example, cultural stigma has reduced the biological need for physical intimacy to a male-centered desire, one men are comfortable voicing and women are condemned for admitting to. To men, it’s a naturally intrinsic right. To women, it’s a degrading symbol of impurity. Yet the sexual desires of women are clearly stated, prioritized, and honored in Islam.

Islam does not restrict women, it empowers them. Every ruling has been perfectly established to protect a woman, not by hiding her away, but by amplifying her voice in the ways that matter.

This tension between internal intent and external perception is most visible in the way we understand hijab.

Some may make the argument “If hijab is not about men, then why are women only required to wear it around non-mahram (non-relative) men?”

But can’t the same argument be made about beautifying ourselves?

Why do women feel compelled to put on makeup right before they leave the comfort of their homes but wipe it off the minute they’re back? At the end of the day, it all comes down to performance. We have a tendency to desire social praise and self expression. Not just for men, but to satiate our own craving for acknowledgement even by other women.

Hijab is not about a man’s desire to look (because that’s on him), it’s about a woman’s desire to be seen, and in many ways, to perform.

The hijab is a reminder first and foremost to women that their worth isn’t contingent upon how they are seen by other people, or how much they beautify themselves. It’s a testament that she has nothing to prove, and so much to explore beyond the physical.

It doesn’t mean we can’t indulge in feeling beautiful, it just places limitations on how far the beauty standards can get to us.

Whenever I feel less beautiful in hijab, I remind myself that I still have the potential for that beauty, and that I am just more selective of who gets to experience it. My beauty didn’t disappear when I wore the hijab, it still exists, but in a capacity that doesn’t control my life and makes me more conscious of who gets access to that part of me.

It sets boundaries to how much my natural urge to be desired and validated gets access to my everyday life and interactions. And it saves that validation and dependency for one good man who knows how to honor it.

In Islam, your value is inherent. It doesn’t need to be earned by catering to the creation rather than the creator. The hijab combats the woman’s desire to perform, but culture has somehow warped its meaning and turned hijab itself into a performance. That is the true tragedy.

So, if culture has reframed the way we see women, what drives that perception? Let’s explore the economics of male attention in our communities.

Culture often centers men. And because culture and Islam are often equated with one another, men begin to hold a perceived religious authority.

There are three principles that can be observed when it comes to the economic power the male gaze has come to hold in the strange dimension between religion and culture: scarcity, social proof, and signaling theory.

These key mechanisms make the male gaze not just emotionally charged, but economically powerful.

i. scarcity

When a good is in scarce supply, it becomes more valuable and expensive, especially if demand is high.

Low Supply + High Demand = High Value

For girls raised in communities where male interaction is scarce, men begin to occupy a larger-than-life image.

Not only is communication with men scarce, but our freedom is too. I remember asking to travel, to stay out late with friends, or to move out for my education or career and constantly getting the response “when you’re married”. This creates a lack and scarcity mindset, because we associate men with our capacity to explore the world, and in many ways, ourselves.

A good man, though in economic shortage, becomes a symbol of our lives finally beginning. Marriage becomes the most feasible method of leaving home and gaining independence without disrupting the peace. We constantly condemn Muslim women for falling victim to the marriage brainrot but don’t discuss the underlying cultural issues that cause it.

It’s a reflection of a systematic failure, not an individual one. Marriage is beautiful. Young marriage is encouraged in Islam. But the way it consumes some women is telling. Being married trumps marrying the right person.

But even outside of marriage, the lack of male interaction makes navigating male attention more complex, because the scarcity breeds obsession and hyper-fixation. Not just with men themselves, but with how you are perceived by them.

But scarcity alone doesn’t explain everything. Value isn’t just about lack — it’s also about what others seem to want. That’s where social proof comes in.

ii. social proof

Humans are simple, we see other people give value to something, so we believe in its value as well.

In other words, men are somewhat of a trend.

Growing up in a community that constantly centers men, making them larger-than-life entities that control an entire religious narrative, your brain latches to the idea that their opinions are formative for your internal and spiritual development.

And ironically, the men are often entitled to that idea as well. When our communities constantly place reverence upon male opinion, it raises a generation of men who believes it is their birthright to impose their judgement, condemnation, or approval upon any Muslim woman in their vicinity.

It becomes easier to conform to male expectations rather than face the condemnation of an entire community. As social validation rises, so does the pressure to perform for it. That brings us to the final mechanism: signaling theory.

iii. signaling theory

With these concepts escalating the demand for male attention, women often learn to engage in signaling. We petition ourselves for imaginary men while barely knowing enough about them to recognize the difference between a good or bad one.

We adjust to partaking in performative speech and behavior to imply that we’re ideal candidates for marriage, even when there is no man in sight. Because essentially, being an ideal wife means being an ideal community member, an ideal daughter, an ideal Muslimah. It becomes second nature, built up over years of conditioning. Chasing a currency that doesn’t just guarantee you love or freedom, but holds the key to earning respect from your community.

The demand skyrockets, and so does the value.

Male attention becomes a rare — and therefore increasingly valuable — commodity in Muslim communities.

And because culture deeply ingrains men as the filter of purity, male approval becomes not only valuable, but indicative of your religious purity. Naturally, our actions shift to accommodate it.

I can trace the impact of all of this in my own life, in how I’ve navigated even the simplest male interactions.

I never knew how to talk to men. I’ll be the first to say it. I always felt too uptight, no one taught me how to not think in extremes when it came to them. My interactions, though scarce, were always polarized.

It has only been recently, as I progress through college, that I learn neutrality and the necessity of male interaction within boundaries. While I don’t have male friends, I do have male colleagues and acquaintances within similar career paths and fields, and I work directly with them on various projects or contact them for their expertise. But for many years that was never the case, as I was raised to feel shame for even holding eye contact with male relatives in my household.

We are raised to see men as “other”. Not people, but mysterious entities.

Growing up, I couldn’t detach their behavior from myself, I always had to find a way to attribute their own autonomy onto my character. I would read into every minor interaction as though it held the key to my purity. I would misinterpret kindness or polite responses as interest, and would worry that maybe I had come off too flirtatious and led them on.

But I would also interpret every disinterested glance as a personal failure.

Even the simplest male interaction becomes a sinfully adrenaline-inducing moment, something worth pondering over and assigning empty meaning to. A marker of identity. A torturous guilt. Social proof. It confused me because it was paradoxical in its nature.

There was no in-between, in my head, men could only ever see me as a whore or a wife.

And somehow, it was always my fault. I could never trust my own intentions, and was raised to always read too much into my intonation, my expression, how long I made eye contact. Even when I behaved with good intentions, everything I did had to be positioned as though my purpose was to cater to men.

What I’ve come to realize is a man’s perception of me is a confession of his character more than it is of my own.

For example, ever since I wore hijab, I’ve received lots of unsolicited commentary from Muslim men. Many of them send me vile, explicit DMs of their interpretation of my content, one even accusing me of making promiscuous facial expressions to tempt men (the majority of my demographic is women).

I see now that this is a projection of their internalized shame, because while my digital presence is not sexual, the fact that their mind instantly perceived it as such implies that they constantly consume content that is. But even a year ago, I would have blamed myself. Because that’s how I was raised, taught to carry the burden of a man’s frutstrations, insecurities, or religious shortcomings as though they were consequences of my existence.

This upbringing is not sustainable for personal identity. It offers contradictory advice that leads to the deterioration of self-trust and confidence.

You must be effortlessly beautiful, but never looked at. You must be kind, but understand it will always come off provocative. You must be a woman who interprets loyalty as enduring not just when things are difficult, but when they are disrespectful. You must be ambitious but within scope.

Successful or supportive, feminine or strong, sexual or loyal. Never both.

The problem with these filters is it doesn’t allow for nuance; it simplifies women, makes us two-dimensional rather than the dynamic, complex, layered people that we are. We are either good or bad. No in-between. This lens presents us as an asset made solely for the consumption of men. Sadly, it’s often our own homes that first introduce us to this mindset.

There is always an underlying assumption that we are operating for male approval, and over time, it becomes a part of a Muslim woman’s subconscious programming. It becomes a way of survival, proof that you are worth something to a man and therefore to Islam.

The most frustrating part is that sometimes, it really is about men.

There is a weird paradox I’ve noticed and contributed to in Muslim cultures; women will often cater to the male gaze by attempting to prove that they don’t cater to it. When your worth becomes contingent upon how desirable you can be to men, part of that religious desirability is being unattainable or not entertaining men.

No matter how you look at it, male attention is still the center of the conversation. By being raised in cultures that teach us to internalize the male gaze, even our efforts to reject it can become entangled with it.

Sometimes, complaining about the male gaze actually brings women together. For girls who grew up with little male interaction or attention, being able to finally join in conversation relating to how annoying the attention is feels like a right of passage into womanhood, where you are finally capable of having problems that prove your femininity.

But I’ve found that truly decentering men involves not really focusing on them at all— because pointing out how much you dislike or avoid them or spending all your time fantasizing about a husband are two sides of the same coin: you are still thinking about them.

Women who have truly learned to center themselves and Allah rarely bring up men in either context, they have other things to do with their time. In my most fulfilling friendships, we sit at cafes for hours talking, and a man’s name is never even mentioned once.

Conversations about gender roles (such as this essay!) are still crucial, stimulating, and needed. They are not necessarily conversations about men, but rather how these systems have shaped us as women.

That doesn’t mean it’s wrong to see marriage as a goal or an important factor in your life. Biologically, we are all here to survive and reproduce. Islamically, we are here to raise the next generation. This essay is not a critique of something as beautiful, essential, and natural as our instinct to find a partner and build a life with them. The desire to attract a partner is a very natural biological response in both men and women.

But Islam teaches us to approach everything in moderation, and some desires must be curbed appropriately. While marriage and validation is a natural goal, it should be approached with selectivity and without the capacity for controlling an entire religious narrative.

If we want to understand how culture has warped our religious worth, we must first understand how we directly contribute to it.

On one hand, we’re told to decenter men. But on the other, when we speak or exist publicly, especially online, men often accuse us of doing it for them or against them, never for ourselves. It no longer becomes about us centering men, but about men refusing to stop centering themselves in our lives.

So then it becomes a matter of being able to stand firm in the face of the expectation that we are built to perform.

You should strive to be the partner you want. There is nothing wrong with desiring a good man and striving to be a good wife. But it should not define why you are doing what you do.

Your modesty is not about your relationship with a man, it’s about your relationship with Allah. Your haya isn’t about impressing a man, it’s about your relationsip with Allah. Concealing your beauty isn’t done for men, it’s to learn to fight your nafs. Your decision not to entertain men isn’t for a man, it’s for Allah.

Putting down other women in the hopes of being recognized as “one of the good ones” will never get you anywhere.

Religion has never been about men or women. It’s been about you and Allah.

Let men as a whole be the last thing on your mind. Become so absorbed in your own life and grounded in yourself and your faith that you disregard the weight of male opinion and learn to filter through the noise.

Yes, men will impose their judgement as though it’s a religious right, and they may still attempt to center themselves. But being cognizant of this will help you be better equipped to deal with it. If you operate constantly under cultural scrutiny without questioning it, you risk falling into the same trap of internalizing it and passing it on to the future generations.

Perhaps the most painful part is this: sometimes, the people reinforcing the gaze aren’t men at all — they’re women.

Many women from my culture see marriage as more important than compatibility. In some cultures, the standards of a successful marriage are constituted by how many years you manage to endure, not whether it’s healthy.

Yet the foundations of a healthy marriage — communication, unconditional acceptance, etc — were never properly taught to them because they grew up being taught how to be someone worth marrying rather than building a marriage that’s worth it, or how to navigate the depth that comes afterward. Healthy gender roles aren’t always modeled in older relationships.

Many women in our cultures fall into the trap of having no identity outside of marriage and motherhood.

They believe that their ability to cater to the male gaze, even through their reluctance to catering to it, makes them more pure and therefore deserving of love. They even look down upon other women, seeing themselves as more obedient or loving through sacrifice and endurance, erasing themselves in the process of putting men on a pedestal of religious righteousness.

Even the women who claim that their purpose is Islam sometimes fall for a version of it that is contingent upon the male gaze.

Because the end goal is not to lead an internally fulfilling life, it’s to be able to say you’re married, and therefore worthy to a society that constantly demands your perception be based on men. Again, marriage is a beautiful concept, but only when we see it as a partnership and not as validation.

Not exactly. This is not an anti-men or anti-marriage essay. We NEED men. This essay is an exploration of a prevalent structural instability within our cultures.

In Islam, men are crucial. Maculinity, real masculinity was cherished. Chivalry and akhlaq/morals are valued, without ego disguised as honor. Men were providers and leaders of their household. But they were never judges.

Culture gave them too much power and too little accountability.

To truly understand how we got here, we need to question something even more sacred than reputation — our reverence for culture itself.

When we hear the word “culture” we think of something beautiful that should be passed down and preserved. But not every cultural practice or ideology holds merit. We need to challenge the assumption that culture should be followed blindly.

Women continue to partake in it generation after generation because we see culture as an unbreakable lineage, one that must be carried out dutifully without being assessed. Despite the fact that they are raising the future generations.

We associate culture so deeply with Islam that we begin perceiving tradition as synonymous with Islam. Therefore, dismantling certain aspects of culture becomes not just an erasure of a country’s history, but an erasure and questioning of Islam.

When we raise a generation that views Islam through the male lens — where a woman’s faith is only determined by how good they can be for a man — they forget their inherent religious rights and raise the next generation to reinforce this idea, embedding it deeper into the cultural ideology.

In turn, this predatory focus on women allows men to be exempt of the same level of judgement, making immoral behavior excusable. Men are not held as accountable, and the social issues that lead to the deterioration of masculine ideals are not addressed. Good men become a rare find.

My theory is this is also why many Muslim mothers coddle their full-grown sons or idealize them in a way that they might not do with their daughters, offering leniency and excuses for his shortcomings. To the mother, the son is an extension of her worth.

Her daughter, on the other hand, has value only in appealing to the “good”, “religious” male gaze. The son represents the male gaze, the daughter represents the appeal to it.

One has inherent value, and the other has dependent value.

The answer to most things is to turn back to the core concept of Islam, filtering out the cultural baggage it’s accumulated over the centuries.

Whether you are a woman relating to this, or a man reading with an open mind, you are the future. Your children determine how much of your culture and belief systems will be carried forward.

The next step is to not glorify men who are exemplary, but rather produce more of them. Good men exist, but there can always be more.

And for my women who relate to this, learn Islam. Without the culture, without the male gaze. Recognize the pattern within yourself without blame, this is not a personal failure, this is an institutional one. Talk about it with other women, start these conversations.

Become so grounded in your worth in Allah’s eyes that a man’s approval or disapproval is the last thing on your mind.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to praise or desire good men, I’m simply pointing out that it should be more normalized to come across them. There are fundamental issues with the way many cultures raise their men that allow them to be exempt from the criticism that is necessary to shape them and teach them proper akhlaq and morals.

And in turn, women should be raised without being reduced to their identity as an extension of a man, and without a scarcity mindset when it comes to finding a good man or interacting with the opposite gender within boundaries. More importantly, we must recognize when our desire to cater to men influences our lives without shame, and slowly reclaim our relationship with Islam.

My essay explores how the male gaze is deeply internalized by women, often shaping our self-expression in ways we don't always notice. Sometimes, not because we care about the man’s opinion, but because we know it holds the power to shape our reputation within a community.

But that doesn’t mean every action a woman takes is secretly for male approval. Just as not all men feel entitled to judge or berate a woman. But as an overarching theme, the social structures I explored are often prevalent within Muslim families that equate culture with religion.

Your job isn’t to declare yourself fully outside the system — no one is. Your job is about learning to see it clearly, and choosing differently when you can.

May we raise daughters who pray for good husbands, but never confuse that goodness with their own. Ameen.

Thank you for reading, I will likely revisit and tweak this writing when I have more time. A lot of these ideas are still underdeveloped and may come off contradictory if not fleshed out further. In the meantime, I’d love to hear your opinions!

edit: I just realized my likes/comments/restacks have been off for the past year, turned them on just in time for this essay to reach people lol.

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