Question
Assalamualaikum, I am 21 years old male from India.I am addicted to Masturbation and Pornography from 6 years and unable to leave this addiction. I have tried so many times to leave this bad habit but failed. Please help me How to get rid of this problem and Islamic solution.I have become very weak also,Please recommend the food items to be eaten to regain the strength and energy lost due to Masturbation.Jazakallah.
Answer
The first step to solving any issue is acknowledging it. You have been able to recognise the issue and are willing to put in the effort to free yourself from it. This is praiseworthy and you must never give up while constantly placing your trust in Allah and supplicating to Him. He Most High can make even the most difficult of matters easy.
Firstly, know that you are not alone in struggling with this issue. There are many others who have come to recognise the worldly and otherworldly harms that are a result of this sin, and with effort and perseverance, they were able to overcome their base self and the whispers of the Satan. You must have conviction that you can also overcome this sin, no matter how many times you may have tried and failed before. As long as you keep turning back to Allah Most High in sincere repentance, He will forgive you. Do not become despondent and keep trying until you succeed.
Masturbation and watching pornography are destructive habits that can quickly spiral into addiction. First and foremost they are, no doubt, sinful and repulsive actions which lead to the displeasure of Allah Most High. They destroy a person’s spirituality such that it becomes difficult to engage in worship while other sins become easy. Modesty is lost and guilt and shamelessness set in. The heart becomes hard due to the darkness of the sin, and one becomes increasingly distant from the mercy of Allah. The religious harms of these sins are too many to encompass, and it is regarded as a form of fornication.
Along with the undeniable spiritual harms, there are also physical and psychological harms experienced by those who indulge in these acts. Some of these include weakness of mind and body, objectification of women, inability to focus, sexual deviancies and inability, etc. While the current scientific research on the harms is inconclusive, the personal experience of many of those who have engaged in masturbation and pornography over a number of years is clear. To read further on the devastating impact of pornography on the human brain, we recommend reading ‘Your Brain on Porn’ by Gary Wilson.
Allah Most High has inspired you to want to give up this action. The first step then is to write down all the reasons that will motivate you to give up this sinful activity permanently. Write the evils and harms that you will be saved from as well as the good that you will achieve if you were to give it up. For example, you could write about all the time that you will save which you could put toward doing good, and the chaste relationship you will be able to enjoy with your future spouse should you free yourself from this habit. You could also write the harms that may come your way should you continue on the wrong path. Everything you write will serve as motivation for you on your journey to overcome this sin. Whenever you feel temptation set in, read this to remind yourself why it is so important to overcome this.
Now that you are acutely aware of the benefits of overcoming this sin and know that it is possible to do so just as others have done before, and that Allah does not burden a soul more than it can bear, you need to put a strategy in place. We will, Allah willing, provide you a strategy that combines the practical and spiritual and has been used successfully by others also in this predicament.
Strategy Summarised:
- Have a firm and unshakeable resolve to overcome this sin and never even consider it again
- Place your trust in Allah and adopt the means
- In the early stages of quitting, daily remind yourself of your reasons for quitting and the benefit of doing so to serve as motivation
- Create an environment conducive to quitting:
- Identify your triggers and avoid them
- Keep good company
- Take on good hobbies, such as seeking Islamic knowledge
- Engage in acts of worship which spiritually nourish and strengthen you, such as daily zikr, salat, recitation of Qur’an, etc
- If you ever slip-up, don’t see it as a failure, but rather an obstacle in your path, seek forgiveness immediately and keep going on
Strategy Detailed:
Resolve
When a person truly resolves upon a good action and takes steps towards achieving it, Allah Most High helps him. This is just as the warriors in the Battle of Badr would raise their swords to strike the enemies, and the angels, through the will of Allaāh, would complete their task. By firmly resolving to never commit the sin again, it becomes much easier to repel the whispers of Satan and the temptations of our base self. When the resolve is shaky, one has to exercise a lot of willpower to overcome temptations, and since willpower is a finite resource, eventually one will be overcome.
Alternative to this is to not even keep the option in your mind to commit this sin. This takes the decision out of your hands and makes it much easier. The example of this is a person who wants to reduce their food intake. It is much easier for such a person to fast than to diet. This is because when fasting, eating is not even an option. When dieting, one has to exert a lot of willpower to make sure they restrict their consumption. It is also for this reason that the hardest part of the fast is when it is time to break the fast, since the option to eat is there, but the struggle is to control the intake. In the same manner, when masturbation and/or viewing pornography is seen as a non-option, it is much easier to quit. Hence, the firm resolve should be that one will never commit this sin again.
Trust and Adopt Means
It may seem fantastical to say that one will never commit the sin again, after having tried and failed innumerable times. However, upon us is to try wholeheartedly and then trust in Allah Most High. Just as those people who left sins previously, there was a time when they were wallowing in despair, but Allah Most High took them out from the darkness of sin to the light of his obedience. We never give up seeking forgiveness and trying again because we never know which sincere repentance of ours will be accepted in the sight of Allah Most High such that he will save us from that sin permanently.
Just as we are told to tie the camel, and then trust Allah, our trust in Allah Most High must be combined with concrete actions. If we claim that we want to overcome this sin, but we aren’t adopting the means and making the effort, we are not being truthful in our claim.
Stay Motivated
The action of masturbation and pornography is associated with pleasure pathways in the brain. Thus, the brain wants one to indulge in it and hence temptations at the initial junction of quitting will be frequent and intense. The longer one stays away from these acts, the weaker the pathways become and the more infrequent they become. To be able to overcome these temptations, one must understand their reasons for wanting to leave, and they must be stronger than the desire to commit the sin just one more time. To achieve this, every day try and read your reasons for quitting. Visualise the life you will have in five years should you give up this action permanently, and the life you would have if you continued to indulge in it. This will become your ammunition against desires. Make your ultimate reason the pleasure of Allah Most High. By doing this, every effort of yours will be rewarded immensely.
Prepare your Environment
Allah Most High advises the believers to fear Him, but along with that, He advises them to adopt righteous company. This is because it is easier to fear Allah amongst others who are also fearful of Him. From this we learn that the environment must be made conducive to giving up masturbation and pornography.
You must reflect and identify all those things which incite an urge to masturbate or watch pornography. These triggers could be physical, such as seeing something inappropriate, or even emotional, such as feeling frustrated and resorting to these sins to mask the negative emotion. Realise that resorting to masturbation or pornography is not the solution to your desire or emotion, rather it is the cause.
The Prophet (may Allah bless him and give him peace) prevented the Companions (may Allah be pleased with them) from even using the utensils in which they used to drink alcohol, lest they were triggered by it. Thus, make a list of all those things that trigger you, and then write down how you can mitigate those triggers. For example, if going to sleep at night with your phone creates a desire within you, do not keep your phone in your room and buy an alarm clock so you have no excuses. If being alone creates desire within you, avoid all situations where you will be alone. Never use any devices while you are alone and keep your screen facing others so that they can see what you are doing. Create as many barriers as you can between yourself and the sin. The greater your desire to quit, the more drastic the measures you will be willing to adopt to overcome this sin. Thus, for someone who is an avid user of social media but knows that scrolling through Instagram will create desire, they will only be able to give up Instagram if their desire to overcome this sin exceeds their desire to use social media. People who have successfully overcome this sin in the past have gone to the extent of removing their internet connection from their home and exchanging their smart phone for a basic phone. However, any measure is only as good as a person’s commitment to stick to it.
Along with identifying and minimising your triggers, you need to act quickly should you ever feel triggered by something. For example, mistakenly, while walking down the street, you glance at a billboard and you feel desire, immediately seek refuge in Allah and avert your gaze. This is because it is much easier to control yourself when desire is low than to let it grow and later to try control yourself. It is in this vein that Allah Most High tells us not to follow the footsteps of the Satan as he leads us towards sin gradually. Moreover, you need to replace old bad habits with new good habits, replace bad company with good company, replace futile hobbies with beneficial hobbies such as exercise or seeking knowledge. This will keep you occupied as the idle mind is more susceptible to temptation.
Additionally, keep your spirit nourished through a daily regimen of remembrance of Allah Most High, recitation of Qur’an, optional salat and other good deeds. Consciously reciting ‘astaghfirullah’, sending salutations upon the Prophet (may Allah bless him and give him peace) and reading the kalimah ‘la ilaaha illal laah’ are very effective in this regard. Regularly attend the gatherings of the pious and frequent the masjid. Stay in a state of wudu. All these measures will keep you spiritually strong to fight off urges for the sake of Allah. Simultaneously, weaken the physical self and break its desire by lowering the gaze, fasting regularly, and limiting consumption of aphrodisiac foods such as red meat while eating healthy. For more on this, read ‘Breaking the Two Desires’ by Imam Ghazali. Finally, if you are capable of getting married, then consider doing so as this is better for your chastity.
Keep Going
While your resolve should be that you will never indulge in this sin again with the help of Allah Most High, you should also be ready to seek forgiveness if you fall prey to a moment of weakness. The most important thing is not to be tricked into destroying all your hard work by becoming despondent and repeating the action again. Rather, see it as an obstacle in your journey. You are moving in the right direction, if the obstacle is in your way, get over it, identify the cause, adopt the solution, and continue on your path. If you do this, regardless of if you succeed or not, the least is that you will be able to tell Allah Most High that you were weak, but you kept on trying genuinely and seeking forgiveness when you slipped up. In such a state, you are much more likely to be forgiven by Allah Most High in comparison to the individual who became despondent and let himself be overcome by the sin after slipping up.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, and if you stay on this path and abstain from these sins, within a few months you will feel the urges get weaker. It will then become easier as your base-self becomes feeble while your heart grows in closeness to Allah. Your struggle in this aspect will motivate you to improve other aspects of your life as well and you will become, as the Prophet (may Allah bless him and give him peace) tells us, “like the one who had no sin”. However, research does show that while the urge will get stronger, it never entirely vanishes. This means that you must always keep up your guard, lest Satan trick you into doing it just one more time and this lead you spiralling back into addiction.
We pray that Allah Most High support you and make your struggle against your base self a means of salvation and His pleasure. And whoever places their trust in Allah, He is sufficient for him.
You may find the following articles and websites helpful also:
- https://productivemuslim.com/why-to-break-free-from-porn-addiction-part-1/
- https://www.islam21c.com/islamic-thought/we-need-to-tackle-the-increasing-problem-of-pornography-addiction/
Answered by:
Ifta Research Fellow
Checked & Approved by:
Mufti Abdul Rahman Mangera
Mufti Zubair Patel