What Does Haya(Modesty) Mean?

What Does Haya (Modesty) Really Mean?

Islam teaches you modesty, haya, for men and for women. It teaches you not to flaunt it, not to show all your beauty, but to cover it. Because that beauty is not for everybody to see — for men and for women.

So all those brothers who are trying to show their pecs and their six-packs on Instagram, wearing trousers up to their belly button and then flexing for the camera — and they think, ما شاء الله, "We are showing haya, we are Muslim influencers." Please read the Qur'an and influence yourselves to learn about what haya means. Haya — modesty — means not to show, not to flaunt, to cover, to hide.

The Obsession With the Body

Why do people need to know the size of your biceps? This is the obsession of today. When you go into the gym, every gym has one thing in common. There is one piece of equipment every gym has — and it's not the bench press. It's something else, something unrelated to exercise and that has nothing to do with exercise. Every gym has it: the mirror.

Why does every gym have a mirror? For thousands of years people exercised — they never had a mirror. What's the mirror for? To admire yourself, to look at yourself, and to be obsessed with yourself. We are the generation of protein shakes, of perfect bodies, of obsession, of hating ourselves.

The Role of Media in Body Image

And all of this — why? A study was done across five countries asking: what was the number one reason young people have reached the position where they hate how they look? What was the number one factor?

The media. Social media. What they watch — the Netflix they watch, the Amazon Prime subscriptions, the movies they watch. They are constantly exposed to images of so-called "perfect" men and women in a specific shape, a specific form, a specific standard of beauty. And they are exposed to it again and again and again, until they don't know anything else but this.

When they look at themselves in the mirror, they don't recognize it.