Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Thank you for participating in the session.

Please find the 8 questions to which our counselor provided audio answers. If you do not find yours here, check out our upcoming session or submit it there again.

Question 1. It Feels Impossible to Find Halal Entertainment

Salam. Something which frustrates me is how almost everything on Youtube is haram. If I click on a video and the person is wearing revealing clothes the whole video becomes haram. If the person says bad words, the whole video becomes haram. The thing is that when I watch these videos, they barely have a bad impact on me but I’m still getting sins for it. It’s frustrating and I hate when people just tell me “find something else to do”, I don’t want to ALWAYS spend time with my family for fun, and most board games are haram since they include dices and gambling and my family is very busy. I sometimes may want to sit in my room and watch some entertaining YouTube videos but I can’t do that if it is all haram. I also haven’t learned cooking, baking and we don’t have a backyard in our house where I can play and my friends aren’t ALWAYS free. This really upsets me.

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Question 2. Having Hard Times with Accepting Myself

I know 3 sisters who grew up in a religious family and went to Islamic school. They seem to have been sheltered from many things in society and also have completed their hifz, and become Huffaz.
I am someone who went to public school and didn’t grow up in a very religious family, nor did I grow up in a sheltered environment. I wanted to become a Hafiz but my hifz journey was interrupted and I wasn’t able to complete. I struggle with my five prayers and am dealing with addictive behavior. I am not used to some rules in Islam because I didn’t grow up with them and also suffer from confusion/bad thoughts about Allah or the deen because of lack of knowledge.

I am jealous of the 3 sisters because of the differences mentioned, I wish I was born in a different family and wish my life was different. I didn’t choose to be born in the family I was born in, nor did I choose my gender (Women have many blessings). How do I cope with my unpleasant reality? I know wishing won’t change anything, but it’s very easy to just sit down and think about how bad I have it and be jealous of those who are more blessed than me in Deen and Dunya. Especially when it comes to things I cannot change, like the family I was born in, my gender, the past etc.

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Question 3. I Hate Life; Any Advice?

I don’t know what to do, I’m just tired, nothing I do seems to work out. I’m stuck in a cycle of dead-end jobs that I can’t escape. I’ve been at the current one for over a year, and every day I go to work I hate life more and more. I view my situation as something between a punishment and prison. Most days when I go to sleep, I hope and pray not to wake up in the morning so I won’t have to deal with this life anymore.
People have told me to work backwards to get a better job, think of an end goal and see what you need to start on the path, but it’s almost impossible to think of the future when you struggle to get by day to day. I’ve been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, and PTSD. I already take medication, and it does help, but I still feel down most days.

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Question 4. Jobless Husband Doesn’t Help with Chores

I am married for 15 years and in this time, he has been quite a few times, or when he had job that the money was not enough to make ends meet and I have worked all these years to support. Now husband is jobless from 1 year and we don’t have any savings to rely on.  I have a stable job and I am supporting alone. My patience is giving up and I am tired. I work 4 jobs and make ends meet while he applies from LinkedIn and waits for miracle to happen. His contribution in the house has been none, just recently of me complaining and pressurizing him he has started to do few chores. I have now started to pressurize him and fights him to leave the house every day to earn money from anywhere. I am always depressed, tired and pressured. When I say things to him out of anger, he dislikes it and abuses and calls my mother and says bad things about me. He doesn’t realize that he is of no help in chores or financially. What should I do? I want to pressurize him very hard now so that he starts doing something… Will it be wrong? If I be more sarcastic to make him realize some shame in him. Pls help

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Question 5. My Husband in the West Isn’t the Same Person

My husband and I are in long distance. We recently got married after dating for 5 years. I always repent to Allah for my past mistakes and may Allah forgive us both for the past. But during these days I feel resentful towards my husband. He has many friends in Canada and I don’t find them to be good company for my husband. Because of the lifestyle of those friends. For example, my husband also has friends here in and he is a very different person here. The friends here are very respectful towards each other. They speak very gently. Most of them are married and they are all good to their wives. They pray 5 times a day and even encourage each other to pray. They don’t have friends of opposition gender. But the friends my husband has there, smokes, drinks alcoholic and even when my husband goes back, he started smoking with them. They share pornographic contents with each other which my husband doesn’t do here but when he goes there, he becomes very defensive about the friends there. Their normal conversations include a lot of cursing, vulgar words. They share and brag about their intimate relationships with everyone. They have friends of opposite gender who they mix very closely. They dance together and celebrate birthdays together. They don’t pray except Friday and Eid prayers.
Now I don’t want my husband to be a loner there and stop talking to his friends. All I want him to do is learn the boundaries around them. And not do anything that can have impact on his deen and our marriage. I have tried to talk to him about my feelings. But he doesn’t want to change or understand my side. What can I do at this point?

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Question 6. How to Re-Connect with Allah and Fix Myself?

Assalamualaikum, I recently turn 14 in June and have been feeling like I need to Re-connect with Allah more, because I don’t know what it is but I have been missing my prayers and not reciting my Quran.

I have come to my own realization of this after I was on a call with my friend and he excused himself to go pray but I just ignored him and say “oh okay go on” but then my lovely grandma had to tell me it’s time to go pray. I suddenly felt ashamed of this and realized how many times that has happened… If I’m being honest, I’m kinda going through a state of sadness in my life right now.

It may sound dumb but a year ago a girl in my class made me develop feelings for her, this has nothing to do with my prayers but around 9-10 months ago she left me for another person, this seemed childish and I’ve been moving on with life since, but that event actually made me sad and been sad for some time. I know God is the answer for everything and yes, people have said to me “if your business with Allah is done, he will grant you everything” I’m not saying I don’t believe that but I’ve just been feeling like a bad person for missing my 5 daily prayers, it feels like the devil has gotten the best of me. I decided this is awfully bad. I’m not wise enough to know how to handle this.

Can you please share your answers on how do I fix myself and become close to Allah once more? Thank you

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Question 7. Don’t Like My Wife from the Day We Got Engaged

I got married 8 months before. I have an arranged marriage my parents decided to marry her when I saw her first time, I felt she is ok. After first meet I realize that she not my type and I start hating her I wanted to end engagement but could not because of my parents. My parents knew that I’m not happy with her but still decided to fix marriage date. I had many things in my mind but I could not speak to anymore even with friends. Finally, we got married but I was not happy and she knew that,

It has been 8 months now my wife is pregnant, I never wanted to have sexual intercourse with her, ……she is very simple and I don’t like her face and she has no exposure and I feel she does not care of her body, I feel ashamed to go outing with her and all that…I did not want my wife to get pregnant but social pressure and parents forced me to do that…..now I’m frustrated, I got very weak but I could not stop thinking that why did I do that, why did not I end that time when we got engaged, all there questions frustrated me every day even while returning from office I do not feel happiness, do not wanna spend time with her, but I can’t divorce her.

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Question 8. I Don’t Love My Mom

I don’t feel emotionally attached to my mom. I don’t think I hate her, but almost everything she does annoys me, even her presence, the way she talks, her manners. I know she has done a lot for me and I should only be grateful to her, but I can’t help myself and be annoyed by her. I know this is very, very problematic, and I feel guilty not loving her the way a parent should be loved. I kept trying and trying during these years to be more loving and respectful but it is really hard. I know this is Islamically unacceptable and I’m really looking for help here. I already have gone to a therapist but in a western country I don’t think they know how important the role of a mother is in Islam and they just suggest to cut ties. I feel numbness thinking about her to be honest. She wasn’t the best of moms but this is not the point, I should love her anyway, right? What should I do?

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