Counter Narrative | A Culture that Silences Men or Men with a Culture Silenced?

An article, appearing in Kashmir Observer, laments Kashmiri men’s silence as a cultural flaw, failing to realize that this very critique is shaped by Western therapeutic individualism. It sees emotional restraint not as a form of self-discipline (a classical virtue) but as repressive pathology. This betrays its underlying ideological commitments—secular humanism, psychologism, and gender-neutral egalitarianism—which define the human being as a bundle of expressive needs rather than a moral actor bound by higher purpose.

But traditional Kashmiri culture, steeped in religion and spirituality, never denied emotional reality. It simply ordered emotions hierarchically: grief in prayer, pain in sabr, joy in shukr. The Prophet Muhammad (saw) wept, yes—but in balance, in submission, in awe of God—not in narcissistic self-exposure. Kashmiri stoicism, when not warped by colonial trauma or postmodern decay, emerged not from toxicity but from spiritual gravity.

The article praises religious teachings that validate emotional expression while simultaneously using them to support secular arguments. This instrumentalization of religion for therapeutic modernity exposes the inner contradiction: Islam is not a toolbox for mental hygiene but a total worldview. If the article truly upholds prophetic models, why doesn’t it call for spiritual revival and reorientation to divine tawakkul, rather than parroting the UN-friendly language of “mental health awareness”? Moreover, while critiquing gender stereotyping, the article oddly homogenizes male experiences across cultures—from Kashmir to Africa to Latin America—flattening distinct metaphysical conceptions of masculinity into a UN bulletin of suffering.

The citation of suicide statistics and global suicide rates among men is meant to alarm, but it masks more than it reveals. It pathologizes male behavior without investigating its causes in civilizational terms. Where is the mention of the destruction of extended family? The economic emasculation of men due to neoliberalism? The spiritual alienation wrought by secular schooling? Peer-reviewed research in medical anthropology (e.g., Arthur Kleinman) shows that emotional idioms vary across cultures—“depression” as defined by WHO is not universal but culturally constructed. Instead, the article selects those data points that validate its liberal-emotive thesis: men are repressed, women have support, both need therapy. This is ideology masquerading as neutrality.

Why do Kashmiri men suffer? Not because they are emotionally “mute,” but because they have been stripped of their telos—purpose. Their suffering is ontological, not merely psychological. Their roles as providers, protectors, and moral guides have been undermined by media-driven feminism, economic displacement, and moral skepticism—trends imported via the “minuscule injections” of Western modernity. The extended family system—long the haven for men and women alike—is now demonized as patriarchal. Education no longer transmits adab (discipline of body-soul). Popular culture sells escapism, not endurance. What is left is the emotionally stunted, spiritually vacant, atomized male—a Frankenstein’s child of modernity.

The problem is not emotional silence. The problem is disordered silence—an absence not of tears but of taqwa. In our tradition, to be silent is to be in dhikr, not denial. A Kashmiri man who withholds his pain does so because sabr is his currency with Allah. Emotional maturity in Islam is not uninhibited disclosure but calibrated articulation within the bounds of hikmah. Our task is not to unteach silence but to reframe it: not as pathology, but as adab; not as toxic, but as tawakkul. Teach our boys Qur’an, not “emotional intelligence” workshops divorced from culture. Let fathers speak not only of career but of God. Replace school counsellors with elders and awliya’. And let men cry—yes—but in sajda, not on Instagram.

The article ends with the liberal mantra: “Suffering is not gendered.” But in Islam, suffering is not merely endured; it is sanctified. The solution is not to neuter our traditions into emotional egalitarianism but to elevate them with metaphysical clarity. What our young men need is not a psychological toolkit but a return to their primordial purpose—their fitrah. Only then will silence speak again—not in pain, but in praise. Dear Men! Man-up!

Liked it? Take a second to support us on Patreon!