Why Have I Relapsed into Pornography and What Do I Do Now?

Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani

Question

I am nineteen. I left pornography and masturbation for three or four months, and my prayers and my life were in order. For the past three weeks, I have relapsed. It feels as though something has taken control of me, and I have no one to talk to about it.

Answer

In the name of Allah, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful.

I hear the fear in your question, and fear like that is not the sound of ruin; it is the sound of a heart still alive. What has taken hold of you these three weeks is a habit and not a possession; it has not taken you out of your religion, and it is undone the way habits are undone, by cutting off the means that feed it rather than by testing your will against them. Repentance is open to you tonight, and open again every time you fall, so the work in front of you is to close the doors that stand between you and Allah.

Imam Zabidi (Allah have mercy on him) carries in his commentary on the Ihya the words of Imam Abu Talib al-Makki (Allah have mercy on him): “then let the repentant not take on from a sin a habit that makes repenting from it hard for him, for habit is one of the armies of Allah Most High; were it not for habit all people would be repentant, and were it not for trial all people would be upright.” [Zabidi, Ithaf al-Sada al-Muttaqin, Kitab al-Tawba] Three or four good months did not make you invulnerable. They quieted the habit while the means were out of reach, and when the means came back, the old road opened in a single evening. That is the ordinary working of the self, and our tradition has a plan for it.

What Repentance Asks of You, and Where Relapse Is Won

Imam Ghazali (Allah have mercy on him) writes that among the meanings of repentance are “leaving acts of disobedience in the present, resolving to leave them in the future, and making up for what was neglected in past states, and there is no doubt as to the obligation of that,” and he adds that “as for remorse over what has passed and grief over it, that is obligatory, and it is the spirit of repentance, and by it the making good is complete.” [Ghazali, Ihya Ulum al-Din 4:5] He is naming meanings rather than counting parts, and notice where that leaves you. The sorrow you already carry is the spirit of the thing, so you are not starting from nothing. What decides the next three weeks is the resolve, and resolve here is not a feeling. It is a set of doors you close.

Block the Means Before You Test Your Strength

This is where most sincere young men lose the ground they gained. Imam Ghazali warns that a person still weak in resolve should not walk into the situation where appetite is stirred and the means are at hand, and then hope to hold himself back at the edge: “Rather, the way is to flee from the very beginnings of the causes that make it easy for him, until he blocks off its roads against himself, striving meanwhile to break his appetite as much as he can. By this, his repentance is kept safe at the outset.” [Ghazali, Ihya Ulum al-Din 4:44] The same passage in Zabidi’s commentary states the rule in a line worth memorizing: “… and every cause that invites to disobedience or calls disobedience to mind is itself disobedience, and every cause that ends in a sin and leads to it is itself a sin; and if it is permitted in itself, cutting it off is an act of obedience. This is among the subtleties of works.” [Zabidi, Ithaf al-Sada al-Muttaqin, Kitab al-Tawba]

Read that as a practical instruction. The phone that carries you there does not sleep in your room, and the hour before bed is not spent alone with a screen. Install a filter you cannot remove by yourself, and give the password to someone older whom you respect. Leave the accounts and feeds that put images in front of you, even ones lawful in themselves, because for you, they are the road. None of this is weakness; cutting the cause is itself worship.

Heedlessness Is the Door: What You Watch and What You Scroll

You wrote that it felt as though something overtook you. Something did, and it has a name in our books: heedlessness (ghafla), the state in which the eye wanders and the heart follows without a decision ever being made. Imam Khadimi (Allah have mercy on him), in his commentary on Imam Birgivi’s al-Tariqa al-Muhammadiyya, presses the discipline of the eye to this point: “… so that leaving a mote of what Allah has forbidden is better than the worship of men and jinn together, especially at the moment of craving and of opportunity.” [Khadimi, al-Bariqa al-Mahmudiyya 4:57] That moment, craving plus opportunity, is the whole battle. Mindless scrolling is how you arrive there without noticing that you were walking.

(وَأَمَّا مَنْ خَافَ مَقَامَ رَبِّهِ وَنَهَى النَّفْسَ عَنِ الْهَوَى﴾ ﴿فَإِنَّ الْجَنَّةَ هِيَ الْمَأْوَى)

“And as for him who feared to stand in judgement before his Lord, and forbade his self its willful folly; Verily the lush grove of paradise shall be the refuge.” [Quran 79:40-41; Keller, The Quran Beheld]

Your fear sits in the same verse as the forbidding of the self. Use it while it is fresh. And do not leave the emptied hour empty: the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “Be mindful of Allah wherever you are, follow a wrong deed with a good one and it will wipe it out, and meet people with beautiful character.” [Tirmidhi] Give that hour to the Quran, to sleep, to the gym, to your studies. An hour with nothing in it will be filled by the habit.

Company Does What Willpower Cannot

You said you have no one to discuss this with, and that is the most dangerous fact in your letter. The Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “The likeness of the righteous companion and the evil companion is but as the carrier of musk and the blower of the bellows: as for the carrier of musk, either he gives you some, or you buy from him, or you catch a pleasant scent from him; and as for the blower of the bellows, either he burns your clothes, or you catch a foul smell from him.” [Bukhari; Muslim] Imam Khadimi relays the saying that “sitting in a gathering of knowledge is better than keeping vigil for a whole night.” [Khadimi, al-Bariqa al-Mahmudiyya 4:163] Company is the setting in which a habit either starves or is fed.

So put company on a schedule: one weekly circle of knowledge at a fixed hour, in the masjid or online, and one older brother or teacher you tell the truth to, before the fall and after it. If the compulsion keeps feeling beyond your control, there is no shame in adding a qualified counselor. Seeking treatment is no retreat from repentance; it is part of blocking the means.

Two Rakas Tonight, and the Shame You Feel Is the Beginning of the Cure

Do not wait for a better version of yourself before you turn back. Sayyiduna Abu Bakr (Allah be pleased with him) related that the Messenger of Allah (Allah bless him and give him peace) said, “There is no man who commits a sin, then rises and purifies himself, then prays, then seeks Allah’s forgiveness, except that Allah forgives him,” and he then recited the verse of Al Imran, “… those who when they commit a heinous deed or wrong themselves, remember Allah and ask forgiveness for their sins …” [Tirmidhi] That is the prayer of repentance: make wudu, pray two rakas, ask. Pray it tonight. Pray it again every time you fall, without argument and without delay, so that no sin is ever left standing between you and Allah.

And take this from Ibn Ata’illah (Allah have mercy on him), who put your case in a single line: “The root of every act of disobedience, of heedlessness, and of appetite is being pleased with oneself; and the root of every act of obedience, of wakefulness, and of chastity is your not being pleased with the self.” [Ibn Ata’illah, al-Hikam al-Ataiyya] You are not pleased with yourself tonight. Keep that, and do not let it curdle into despair, because it is the ground in which obedience, wakefulness, and chastity grow. Close the doors, keep the company, pray your two rakas, and let Allah do with your nineteen years what He does with soil that has been turned over.

And Allah knows best.

Faraz Rabbani

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