LoveStruck: The Girls The Guys & The Gaze

  I was very impressed by this video, which was suggested to me by some close friends at school a couple weeks ago. Just hearing the title of this lecture, The Girls, The Guys, and The Gaze definitely got me thinking about all the issues we face as youth, especially living in America. It's very difficult to lower your gaze in this society we live in when every where we go we are bombarded with obscene scenes on television and inappropriate photos that pop up at us on the internet. The fact that it's difficult for us to avoid these things makes it that much more important for us to simply lower our gaze and remove ourselves from any situation that could possibly lead us to engaging in any haram acts. 
  For a while, I've heard my Muslim sisters say to each other, lower your gaze! lower your gaze! lower your gaze!, but I never knew the exact meaning of it. I always thought to myself, "umm, I'm pretty sure I don't have a problem with looking at inappropriate things," but I didn't realize that things as "normal" as checking someone out or watching shows like " The Jersey Shore" did not constitute as lowering one's gaze. I always held a double standard with the idea of lower ones gaze. I felt like guys were obligated to lower their gaze more than girls because they were the one's with the problem, but today I realized that girls have the same exact problem, maybe even worse. The difference I've noticed between a Muslim guy checking a girl out and a Muslim girl checking out a guy is that the guy appears to feel more shame, whereas the girl doesn't even realize what she's doing is haram. That's just my opinion though, I may be wrong but from what I've seen, girls have just as big a problem as guys. It was stated in the lecture that, "what you allow into your ears and what you allow into your eyes goes directly into your heart," which begs the question is your heart protected?
  As humans, it's natural for us to be in denial when we are told that what we hear and see affects us because we like to believe that we are invincible to such things. In reality, our imaan subconsciously deteriorates as we allow indecent things into our life through the music we listen to and the content we see on t.v. and the internet. 
  I don't know about you, but my imaan is very important to me and I don't want to risk losing it over something that could easily be controlled. Brothers and Sisters, lower your gaze and strengthen your imaan, don't let the whispers of shaitan get to you. Avoid the haram altogether and you will notice a change in your heart and an uplift in your faith inshAllah.
"When you eat sleep and breath from the haram, than the halal becomes disgusting." - Abdelrahman Murphy