Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Power Differential In Relationships
For generations, women have been systematically taught to forget their inner intelligence. Patriarchal systems have consistently reinforced the notion that the male perspective is inherently correct. This disconnection from our own wisdom has profound consequences: we mistake silence for righteousness, shrink ourselves and call it humility, endure emotional pain and label it patience. When opportunities pass us by because of these learned limitations, it appears to validate the oppressor's claim that women are somehow less capable.
The painful truth is that patriarchy thrives on hierarchy. It's built on the belief that someone must occupy the top position while another remains beneath—a dynamic that contradicts the Islamic vision of marriage as a mutual agreement and source of peace. When we're told repeatedly that our worth is connected to having successful relationships or bearing children, we begin to believe our value exists only in relation to others. But your worth remains 100% whole whether you're married, single, divorced, or childless. You are worthy because Allah created you worthy—no hierarchy can add to that, no relationship can validate it, no absence of a partner can diminish it.
Healing begins with awareness and giving your experiences language. It requires recognizing this isn't about your personality flaws, but about socialized patterns. My work isn't about convincing anyone of their worth, but helping them remember what they've always been. Whether through coaching, reading, journaling, or whatever tools speak to you, don't wait for someone else's growth before reclaiming your power.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If this podcast has benefited you, imagine the value of a one-on-one meeting with me! Click below to schedule your FREE consultation. Discover solutions with no obligation.
https://www.islamiclifecoachschool.com/appointments
Welcome to Islamic Life Coach School Podcast. Apply tools that you learn in this podcast and your life will be unrecognizably successful. Now your host, dr Kamal Aftar. Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you.
Speaker 1:Today's podcast is not a typical step-by-step coaching guide, maybe not a lot of practical advice, but it's more of a soapbox, a soul-led reflection, because this is a deep breath that I needed. Our family recently experienced a tragedy we lost a young mother. May Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala, grant her jannah. She passed away from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, and in all of the moments that followed, I've been sitting with so many questions about womanhood, about sacrifice, about what we currently call strength and what we ignore in the name of weakness. And this episode is born from that place a space of grief, reflection and a lot of hard truths.
Speaker 1:For a long time now, I've been on a journey to reclaim a balanced feminism definition Not the version that's loud for the sake of rebellion, not the one that calls for silence in the name of faith, but something that's rooted in the divine and is a balance, one that recognizes the sacredness of a woman's voice, body and soul, one that recognizes the cultural, religious and generational significance of women, and I've been trying to distill what's real, what's loving, what's just. Between the contemplation of all of these deep questions, what came up for me was hierarchy. If you've been someone who felt the weight of imbalance in your relationship, especially in your marriage, this episode is for you. If you have ever questioned whether your silence was piety or self-abandonment, if you've ever wondered if your pain was normal, if you ever questioned how long it was going to go on, if you ever tried to figure out how many generations before you endured it, if you've ever been gaslit into believing your worth is tied to how well you serve others, your questions lie on the foundation of hierarchy and you're not alone. And I'm not going to be able to give you a clean list of solutions today, but I am going to create space, space to acknowledge name and give language to what's been long unnamed and alhamdulillah. It's not lost on me that just being able to ask these questions is a privilege, and I also don't take it lightly that I have this platform to be able to voice my opinions and be able to ask these questions and answer them.
Speaker 1:Culturally, women have been taught to forget their inner intelligence. It's not that it doesn't exist. It's not that it's less than any other. Not because you weren't capable, but because you were raised inside a system that insisted that male point of view is the correct one. And the explanation of patriarchy that I'm providing right now is not directly linked to the recent tragedy that I described but, like I said, in the deep reflection of the questions that arose from the tragic death, I was called to shed light on hierarchy. So this is why I'm bringing up patriarchy now.
Speaker 1:So patriarchy itself didn't just take your opportunities. It stole your education, and not just the academic kind with degrees, diplomas and exams, but the kind of education that teaches you who you really are through your own lens, the kind that includes spiritual knowledge, emotional literacy and understanding of your rights as a Muslim woman, that centers you, not just the men around you. And when you grow up without that kind of education, you don't even know what you're missing. You become disconnected from your own voice, you confuse silence with righteousness, you shrink yourself and you call it humility. You endure emotional pain and you call it sabr. And when you're unaware of your own power, you can't see your possibilities. You don't apply for the job, you don't leave the unsafe marriage, you don't speak in the masjid meeting, you don't challenge the injustice in your home, not because you're weak, but because you've been trained to believe that you're not allowed to want any of these things. And the painful irony is that when all of that happens, when the opportunities pass you by, you end up proving the oppressor's point that you're behind, that you're undefined, uneducated, that you're not with the times, that you're less intelligent. But this illusion isn't the result of your failure. It's a result of the sustained discrimination. It's a result of having your intelligence measured by a system that's designed to favor only logical intelligence.
Speaker 1:While that kind of intelligence carries a lot of credibility, it is not an all-or-none phenomenon. You have always had wisdom, maybe not the kind that gets you a medical license or a law degree, at least yet, but you've always had the kind of wisdom that's all-encompassing, but the kind that, if you were given access to education and space to grow, your wisdom would grow to meet the challenge. There is a kind of knowing inside you that doesn't need to be proven with research, studies or exams. It's not easy for me to explain it or translate into a bullet point, but it is absolutely real. It's the wisdom that lives in your body, the voice that you've been trained to ignore, and that wisdom is your birthright, the feminine, the intuitive, the right brain, dominant intelligence that's been devalued ever since that written word became the standard of credibility, linear logical thinking, the kind most celebrated in the modern educational system, and this just happens to align with the male dominant cognitive left brain hemisphere strengths. So when society began to prioritize what could be measured, validated, explained, it also began to quietly label everything else, like intuition, empathy, embodiment, emotion, as irrational, weak and even useless. And that's how misogyny became intellectualized. But in the wake of all of this, your inner intelligence never left, it's just been dismissed and diminished. And once you remember it, once you stop outsourcing your worth and start listening to your own voice, you will see that it's been there all along. You may not have had a chance to pass the MCAT or the bar exam, but if you had the education and the safety, you absolutely could. And some of you have passed really difficult certification exams. So you do carry the linear intelligence as well. And this is not arrogance, it's truth. When women are resourced and respected, we rise. So, alhamdulillah. Part of this reasoning is why I created the Empowered Muslim Women program, not to give you something you're missing, but to reconnect you with what you already have. You don't need fixing, you just need witnessing. You need a space that believes in your divine intelligence before you even know that you have it fully yourself. Emw does not prove yourself through someone else's framework. It helps you come back to your own intelligence, because Allah SWT never created a soul without an ability to heal, without its own inner intelligence. That includes you.
Speaker 1:Patriarchy thrives on hierarchy. It's built on a belief that someone must be on top and someone else beneath, and then, very often, woman is the one expected to occupy the beneath position, quietly, respectfully, without questioning, and this shows up in all sorts of subtle and overt ways. Let me supervise your spending to make sure that you're not doing it wrong. While it might sound like protection, but it's really a statement about power. It says you don't get full access to this resource until I approve it, and that mindset extends way beyond money. It shows up in restrictions like you can't be trusted to go out unless you wear hijab or niqab, that women cannot be trusted to carry their own dignity. That is not why hijab was ordained. And none of this is about faith. This is all about control, and control always feeds the power.
Speaker 1:Differential and patriarchy in itself creates a system that pretends to educate women but while quietly limiting them at the same time. Instead of offering women access to real wealth-building knowledge, women are given budgeting tips. Instead of being taught about investments, land ownership, business strategy, retirement planning, women are told to cut coupons and track grocery spending. It's a deliberate downshifting of financial empowerment, and that's just one example. If you look around, you'll see dozens of normalized examples of unequal access to resources, all disguised as tradition, protection and even piety.
Speaker 1:Examples like inheritance laws that are misspelled or distorted to favor male relatives in a way that ignores context or fairness. But what if, in 2025, the daughter is the one who's been caring and providing for the elderly parents? What happens to the inheritance law then? Or other examples like men being favored for religious scholarships, speaking engagements and positions of influence, while women are relegated to children's halaqas, women's halaqas or cooking for fundraisers. Or women discouraged from traveling for education, business or personal growth in the guise of modesty and safety. I will argue that currently, we're living in a society when it's been the safest to travel as a woman, and examples like healthcare decisions made by male family members or a woman being ashamed for prioritizing her own mental, physical and sexual health, or women not being given education about marital contracts, of nikah, that being treated as just one-sided document. Women's conditions are dismissed, overlooked, because man's preference is what counts. How much education does a young Muslim girl get about what she can put in her nikah contract? I will argue that most little girls don't even learn that they have a right to have something put in a nikah contract.
Speaker 1:And these are all collective, not isolated incidents. These are patterns, things that influence the power structure, patterns that ingrain in women a subconscious belief that you exist in relation to someone else's authority, when, if you study Islam, you will know that relationships are not meant to be about hierarchy, not in friendship, not in parenting and especially not in a marriage. Marriage was designed to be a mutual agreement, a place of shared growth, shared decision-making, mutual benefit and a source of peace, above all, and in any relationship that thrives only when one person has the higher power while the other one submits, that's not a partnership, that's pure imbalance. So when you're told over and over again that your worth is connected to having successful relationships, that you're more valuable if you're married, more respected if you're partnered, more complete if you can bear and raise children. More and more you don't call out these types of cultural contexts, the more you start to believe that your worth is only intact when you're with someone.
Speaker 1:But the reality is, your worth is 100% whole, with or without a man in your life. It is untouched whether you're married, divorced, never married. You're not less because you're a single parent. You're not more because you nurture children flawlessly. You're not more because you have a very high net worth. None of this adds or takes away from your worth. If you can't have children, or haven't found the right spouse, or not choose to do any of that, that does not take away from your divinely ordained value, the one that men also have, the one that is measured only on the basis of taqwa, belief in Allah and nothing else. You are worthy because Allah created you worthy. No hierarchy can add to that, no relationship can validate it, no absence of a partner can subtract from it. The system may be unequal, but you are not.
Speaker 1:And these hierarchical power dynamics don't just happen. They settle into your life slowly, subtly, when you forget the balance and you trade it in for the belief that his way must be the right way, that the man's logic, his tone, his order, his decisions are more valid than yours. That's what patriarchy trains all of you to believe. And when you buy into that belief, even if a little bit, you unknowingly participate in your own disempowerment. And the solution while I might have promised you in the beginning of the podcast that I might not be able to give you any. But solution starts with awareness. It starts with education. It starts when you finally give yourself language to describe what you've been feeling for years, language that reminds you it's not your personality, it's a socialized pattern. It's not just you being confused, it's a consequence of being raised in a world that devalues your kind of intelligence.
Speaker 1:So let me be clear about one thing what I'm saying here is not the toxic brand of feminism that demands women to rise by tearing men down. I don't believe women need to burn men at the stake to reclaim their power. This is not what this is about. I believe men and women were created equally. Their difference is not in their worth, and currently, if you look at the world, the truth is men aren't given any emotional intelligence education. The same way, many women aren't given any financial, legal or academic education access If emotional intelligence doesn't come naturally to some men, just like linear logic-based thinking might not come naturally to some women, then that means that we have to elevate men so they can come up to par with the emotional intelligence that women possess.
Speaker 1:It does not mean one is better, it just means both are needed. So in my approach and this is my personal perspective I choose to help men rise in their emotional intelligence, not because it's my job, but because I can, because I have tools that they didn't even know existed and that they needed. And if I love someone, why wouldn't I want them to meet me where I'm growing? Why wouldn't I want them to meet me where I already have strengths? That being said, I also want to be clear that it is not your responsibility to educate someone who doesn't want to learn, especially if they don't see the problem, especially if his blind spots are hurting you. You're not obligated to hand out emotional development like charity work, but you are responsible for knowing this.
Speaker 1:If you ever want to stop giving your power away to a man who thinks he knows better, not just about his life, but also your life, you have to start by knowing your own worth, deeply, viscerally, at a cellular level, so you can stand up against that injustice. Because if you truly don't believe there is no inherent difference in worth between a man and a woman, you will continue to keep handing over your decisions. You will defer to him whether or not you should work, whether or not you should go to school, whether you should marry inside or outside your family, whether to move across the world for a marriage or to stay near your family. You will hand over your power to a man in your life in name of tradition, in the name of peace, in the name of respect. But underneath all of this is an unspoken belief which is maybe he really knows better. That's the trap that patriarchy creates in your mind.
Speaker 1:So, yes, you might feel stubborn, even defiant, about not wanting to educate men on emotional intelligence, and I totally get it. I totally respect that this instinct is valid. It should be his responsibility to learn the skills he was never taught. He should care enough to grow, to stretch, to embody compassion instead of control, to lead by example rather than force. He should do the work to uncover his own blind spots and biases. So while I agree with this point of view wholeheartedly, that it is his responsibility, you have to measure yourself with the same measuring stick. You have to hold yourself accountable for what is your responsibility. While you're holding him accountable for his blind spot, you must also hold yourself accountable for your own.
Speaker 1:Your job and your responsibility here is to actively learn what you were taught, to ignore. You unlearn what's keeping you small. You stop passively absorbing the belief that someone else should lead because they know better. Your job is to wake up to your own mind, your own patterns, your own internalized hierarchy and to create the change from the inside out. And yes, that is exactly why I coach, not because I think you're broken, but because I know the system has trained you to forget how whole you already are. Coaching just happens to be the way I help women remember. But you're free to create your own transformation with whatever tools that speak to you Read, reflect, create, speak, move, do embodiment exercises, journal. Whatever you do, do not wait, because your power is not pending someone else's growth. I do not coach to convince anyone of their worth, but I do work really hard to help them remember it.
Speaker 1:Power imbalance in relationships begins when women unconsciously accept the patriarchal belief that the man's way is the right way. This creates hierarchy where his logic, his decisions, his control over your finances, his life choices are seen as more valid. True healing starts with just this awareness giving your experience more language and reclaiming your worth. Not by blaming men not at all but by recognizing your own blind spots and actively choosing change. While it's not your job to educate men who don't want to learn, it is your responsibility to know deeply and consistently that your worth is equal. It's your responsibility to know what your blind spots are and where you need growth and healing. No one is inherently more capable of decision-making, leadership or logic.
Speaker 1:When you believe that you stop handing your power away, you become a conscious participant in your life, regardless of the system you were raised in. With that I pray to Allah SWT. Ya Allah, help me see my worth through your eyes alone, not through the lens of the culture, power or fear. O Allah, anchor me in the truth that I was created, with wisdom, with strength, with purpose. Protect me from beliefs that shrink me. Guide me to choose what honors my soul. Grant me the courage to hold my voice sacred and the humility to grow where I still cannot see. Ameen, ya Rabbul Ameen, please keep me in your du'as. I will talk to you guys next time.