Full Lecture Transcript (Cleaned)
Desire, sin, and striving — 0:00
so this person considers them self as a practicing muslim woman who is very religious and they stated that the only inner battle they are having with themselves is having feelings towards other women and they stated that they know that this is haram so they're asking how should they address these feelings without feeling less religious and how should we as muslims deal with homosexual feelings and what should i do if the friend or relative is struggling with the same sex desires one so we firmly believe that a desire in and of itself is not sinful it can lead to sin but a desire of feeling is not sinful and you are no less of a muslim for having a desire and therefore the sister says that she feels you know less of a muslim or she feels her islam is not you know strong simply because she has a certain persuasion and we say no that is not correct what your persuasion is or what you are attracted to or your feelings or desires do not at all make you any less of a muslim now allah azzawajal has clearly told us that not every desire is healthy okay i might desire to consume substances that are going to alter my mind i might desire to be with a person that is not a female that is not my wife that desire is not in and of itself sinful but it is something that is harmful if acted upon and therefore we are told in our religion that the desires that lead to sin should be curbed now listen this is a very key point the existence of the desire is not sinful but to act upon it is indeed sinful and therefore to make sure that we keep those desires in check is the essence of our faith and it is in that that our ranks are raised up therefore it is very possible that a person who is struggling with these desires whether they're same-sex whether there's a young man or woman who's trying to keep chased and dignified and not fallen to zina whether it is somebody in love but they're not married and so they don't want to you know commit any type of zina these are all desires and in battling those desires one is raised in the ranks in front of allah and this is where imam is tested and this is where the ranks of jannah are assigned therefore we can say to the sister that the mere fact that you feel this way means nothing about the level of iman that you have you are still alhamdulillah a good muslim or muslim just because of that desire it means nothing to us a label this is put by society we're interested in your iman and taqwa that's what we're interested in and iman taqwa is manifested in your relationship in allah in your rituals and in controlling your desires not in the existence of the desires therefore if this sister is able to overcome those desires and control them and curb them it is very likely that she occupies a higher place than somebody who is not struggling with those desires as for how uh somebody should go about you know curbing and controlling obviously the number one mechanism is indeed to turn to allah subhanahu wa'ta'ala that is the most important mechanism number two we always believe that an increasement of quran and rituals will help us uh number three our prophet sallallahu alaihi sallam told us that fasting helps especially in that department number four now this is something that is not universal some people not everybody some people who struggle with same sex can also conceivably be attracted to the opposite gender i.e what is called bisexual if that is the case then definitely uh this desire should be satisfied in a halal manner via marriage by finding a suitable partner however not everybody feels that way there are people that feel that they cannot find happiness if they were to get married to the opposite gender in which case we say that indeed uh there is no other alternative other than celibacy and celibacy is indeed possible there are many people in human history uh who are celibate there are people right now who are those young men who are not married they choose to be celibate sometimes for years sometimes for longer on end and there is no alternative because we firmly believe that there are certain desires that are simply unhealthy to be acted upon and to act upon same-sex desires we believe is something that is not uh beneficial for the soul so uh turn to allah make lots of dua and if the desire can be satisfied in a permissible manner via marriage uh with the opposite gender somebody that is munas of inappropriate alhamdulillah if other than this then we ask allah azzawajal for sabbath knows best yes foreign