Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Islamic Life Coach School Podcast
Life of Ihsan, Taking the High Road
Have you been carrying the weight of "spiritual excellence" that feels more like perfection than peace?
This episode reveals how this beautiful Islamic teaching has been distorted through cultural lenses into perfectionism, people-pleasing, and emotional suppression. This misapplication has created generations of Muslims, especially women, who confuse being spiritually elevated with being emotionally suppressed. When sacred teachings become tools for spiritual bypassing, we lose connection to both ourselves and our Creator.
What would change if you reclaimed Ihsan as a practice that honors both divine wisdom and your personal dignity? Listen to discover how spiritual excellence can become a source of nourishment rather than depletion, aligning with your soul rather than your trauma responses. Join us in building a version of faith that makes you not just a "bigger person," but a truer one.
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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 Atar. Hello, hello, hello everyone. Peace and blessings be upon all of you.
Speaker 1:Today we're going to be talking about the teaching of Ihsan as it relates to Islam and how it's going to be so super powerful and healing for you. The linguistic origin of the word is from the root ha-seen-noon, meaning beauty or goodness. So Ihsan literally implies to do something beautifully or excellently. It's talked about in a lot of prophetic teachings. In a hadith, prophet Muhammad peace be upon him said Ihsan is to worship Allah as if you see him, and if you do not see him, then indeed he sees you. And in the famous hadith of Jibreel, ihsan is the third dimension of religion, after Islam, that is submission and Iman, that is faith. Ihsan goes beyond your obligatory prayers. It's how you speak to your child, how to respond to injustice, how you handle your rage when someone crosses a line. You're doing it because Allah sees you, and that awareness brings out your highest self. Ihsan is meant to elevate your spiritual station. It transforms the transactional nature of religion into deeply personal and heartfelt practice that goes beyond set of rules. Ihsan shapes who you are. A person of Ihsan is called a Muhsin. It reflects faith through excellence of character and action. So there's Islam, which is submission, which is following of religious duties. There's Iman faith, which is believing sincerely in the unseen, and then there's Ihsan, which is excellence, acting beautifully with God consciousness, or in other words, taking the high road. A life of Ihsan is being a better Muslim, a better human. It invites quality in worship, integrity in actions and excellence in your character, and again rooted in the awareness that God is always watching.
Speaker 1:But then there is a cultural understanding of Ihsan that is commonly practiced, which one of the major manifestations of cultural understanding of Ihsan is. It's being misunderstood as perfectionism. The spiritual idea of doing things beautifully for the sake of Allah was flattened into being the perfect daughter, the perfect wife, perfect Muslimah, never showing anger, never breaking down, never saying no, always doing more, giving more, achieving more. Ihsan in case was not only about taking the high road, but it became about taking the harmful road. When you misunderstand Ihsan through the cultural lens, especially in emotionally charged situations, you end up glorifying self-erasure. You think you're being spiritual, when really you're just ignoring your pain and hurt. So that's why, before anything else, we need to reclaim the real definition which I started.
Speaker 1:This podcast with Ihsan is not about being perfect. It's about being aligned with your creator and your emotional truth. It does not ask you to suppress your anger or silence your needs. It asks you to channel your response with integrity and intention. That's real excellence, that's real beauty.
Speaker 1:So, like I said somewhere along the way, in the cultural lens of things, the sacred concept of ihsan was hijacked. Instead of being taught as a form of divine alignment, it got repackaged as perfectionism, people-pleasing and emotional suppression, especially for Muslim women. And at some point in your life you've probably heard be the better person, don't talk back, be quiet, be patient, be graceful, stay in the marriage. Allah will reward your patience and, before you know it, ihsan is no longer about your soul's connection to Allah. It's about making everyone else comfortable, this performative type of ihsan a pressure to be agreeable, forgiving, always emotionally regulated, spiritually graceful, even when you're being dismissed, disrespected and dehumanized. If you've internalized this oppression in the name of ihsan, I pray that this podcast gives you language to heal from it, when you're taught never to be angry, never to ask for more, to tolerate what your nervous system otherwise finds intolerable. That is traumatic to your psyche. That also does not mean that you always retaliate. It just means that you choose your response from presence, honoring what's true for you. I see in my coaching that ihsan is used very commonly by Muslim women to force themselves into politeness. I myself admire politeness. I value taking the high road, but never at the cost of your mental health.
Speaker 1:Ihsan, in these cases, is being used as a tool for spiritual bypassing. That's when religious concepts like sabr, tawakkul or ihsan are used to avoid processing real pain. It's used to avoid expressing real needs and setting real boundaries. In light of all of that, without realizing it, you start to confuse being suppressed with being elevated, which, ironically, is quite the opposite. So if you're being told to live more of a life of Ihsan when what you really need is rest, boundaries or even righteous anger, I want you to pause. You may be mistaking spiritual abuse for religious piety, and this distinction alone can change everything for you. Ihsan is embodying divine attributes like mercy, forgiveness, but only when these attributes don't come at the cost of causing you trauma.
Speaker 1:If your version of Ihsan is making your body shut down, it's not Ihsan. You've left it far behind. You can only engage in excellence when your nervous system is regulated. When you're not in the state of survival, that's the only time Ihsan is realistic for you. If you're repeating things like I should be more patient, I should be more kind, I should not expect this or that. If these words are coming from a place of tightness, fear, collapse. If your body clenches when you say them, that's not healing, that's not your healing intelligence speaking, that's your nervous system trying to protect you from breaking down.
Speaker 1:True, ihsan never asks you to override the signals of your body, but if you're practicing Ihsan taught through the lens of guilt and shame, that's when the nervous system interprets it as an internal tiger, dangerous and worth saving you from it. This traumatic level of ihsan stalks you with shoulds until you're exhausted, resentful and spiritually burnt out. And this is exactly how spiritual abuse works Very subtle, often, in the language of be better, have more sabr or take the high road. But if taking the high road is costing you your regulation, it is no longer spiritual, it is psychological harm. Real ihsan feels aligned, even if it is hard. But when it's hijacked, it feels like you're being punished by your religious beliefs, which, of course, is never the intention. So here's something I want you to anchor your heart in.
Speaker 1:If practicing ihsan is causing you to dissociate, lose sleep, question your worth or blame your faith for your pain, this is not the true practice of Ihsan. This is coming from mis-teachings, mis-applications and unhealed systems, and you deserve to know the difference. Your nervous system always knows this difference, even when your conscious mind tries to deny it and forces you to call it Ihsan, even when your conscious mind tries to deny it and forces you to call it ihsan. Let's say, your husband doesn't lower his gaze. You notice it, you feel it, you bring it up. But all of a sudden, you're the one being asked to practice ihsan.
Speaker 1:You hear things like just be patient, take the high road. Maybe he's looking elsewhere, because something's missing at home. Try dressing up more, be more feminine, be more understanding, and just like that, a sacred teaching becomes a shield to deflect responsibility, a tool to shame you into silence. You're told to be more beautiful, more obedient, more flexible, so that his lack of discipline becomes your problem to fix. But this is not ihsan. Ihsan is not an excuse for someone else's entitlement. It is not a strategy to protect someone's ego at the cost of your emotional safety, and it is definitely not a way to make you feel guilty for someone else's actions and choices.
Speaker 1:In this moment, real ihsan might look like anger for you. It might look like saying no, this is not okay. It might be standing in your truth with strength, because sometimes taking the higher road does not mean quiet obedience. Sometimes that means righteous and regulated resistance. Behavior from ihsan is also not reactivity. It is acknowledgement of your painful emotions and then choosing a response.
Speaker 1:This version of Ihsan, the only one that honors both you and the divine wisdom, may feel fiery, even disruptive, but it will be aligned with your dignity, with the spiritual leadership that Prophet modeled and the life that we're asked to follow. So no, you're not lacking ihsan. If you speak up, you're not failing spiritually because you expect accountability. I want you to reclaim ihsan in your life, the way it heals you, far from being a rigid spiritual performance. So, while many of you might have been taught, ihsan means to keep giving, keep smiling, keep forgiving, even when you're depleted.
Speaker 1:Real ihsan does not ask you to do any of this. It does not ask you to erase yourself, just like it doesn't ask you to be reactive. It asks you to acknowledge what is coming up for you, what is your truth, and asks you to honor it. Not necessarily act on your very first instinct, but honor it. It does not glorify exhaustion, just like it does not glorify the other extreme of seeking conflict. If your experience of Ihsan feels more like pressure than peace, more like fear than faith, more like dissociation than devotion, then what you're practicing is not spiritual excellence and it will totally lead to burnout.
Speaker 1:True Ihsan is nourishing. It aligns with your soul, not your trauma. It does not ask you to fake kindness while silently resenting your reality. It invites you to be beautifully honest. It invites you to speak truth with adab. It teaches you how to say no without guilt and how to say enough without shame. It teaches you to honor your needs, your body, your dignity, without losing your connection to Allah. You can be firm and faithful. You can be direct and dignified. You can protect your peace without violating your principles and still be in the fold of Ihsan.
Speaker 1:This is the version that centers you in your religion, the version that is not rooted in the fear of judgment by others, but rooted in love of Allah. This is the ihsan that your nervous system not only can hold, but heal from it, the ihsan that brings you closer to your own soul. It might make you the bigger person, but it definitely makes you the truer person. The one that is honest to herself, makes you the truer person, the one that is honest to herself, the one who knows that spiritual excellence does not mean pleasing people. If Ihsan, like we defined, is the life of standing in sacred alignment with Allah SWT, the one who created you, and remembering him at all times, then all of that cannot happen when you are in survival mode.
Speaker 1:In survival mode, in the trauma response, the only thing your mind is concerned with is survival. You will not be able to take the high road when you're in that level of survival, because when your nervous system is locked in, fight, flight, freeze or fawn, your body is not concerned with excellence or spiritual elegance. Its only concern is safety. In that state, asking you to be graceful, patient, understanding, even composed, is not only unrealistic, it's totally unkind. Ihsan cannot grow in a body that feels like it's under threat. It cannot bloom when your mind is trying to protect you from emotional harm. So if you find yourself snapping, withdrawing, numbing out or going silent because you're overwhelmed under the cultural definition of Ihsan, just know that you're not failing spiritually. You're just in survival mode, and survival is never shameful. But that is also not where you will live your most beautiful life.
Speaker 1:To truly practice Ihsan the kind that brings light, peace, dignity you have to feel internally safe. You need to be regulated, resourced and rooted. Only then can your soul offer beauty without breaking. Only then can you take the high road without abandoning yourself to get there. With that, I pray to Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala. Ya Allah, allow me to not confuse fear with faith. Allow me to not call something ihsan if it's actually me abandoning myself to keep the peace, truly me abandoning myself to keep the peace. Ya Allah, help me recognize when I'm doing something out of love of you, versus when I'm doing it out of habit, pressure or fear of being judged. Give me clarity to know what's true and helpful and what's from survival. Let me choose the high road when I have the capacity and allow me the permission to pause when I don't. Ya Allah, help me build safety in my body so that all of my actions come from Ihsan. Ameen, ya Rabbul Ameen, keep me in your duas. I will talk to you guys next time.