Why Western Culture Cannot Produce Men Like Umar ibn al-Khattab

Something is going wrong with men in Western society, and most explanations miss the point. We are told men are struggling because they have not yet adapted to a more emotionally open age, that they are still shackled to outdated ideas of masculinity, or that what they really need is more vulnerability, more sharing, more psychological insight. Yet increasingly, some men are also convinced that their past—every mistake, every hurt, every hardship—is a reason not to act, not to take responsibility, and not to grow.

Yet despite decades of this advice — and an unprecedented saturation of therapeutic language — men appear less resilient, less certain of their role, and less capable of carrying responsibility than at any point in recent history.

This is not a coincidence. It is the result of a culture that has taken psychology out of its proper place and turned it into a way of seeing the world.

Psychology was developed to treat dysfunction. It was designed to help people who could not cope, regulate emotion, or function normally. In the clinic, it remains invaluable. The problem begins when a discipline meant for breakdown is applied to everyday life — and when therapeutic language becomes the moral vocabulary of society itself.

In today’s Western liberal culture, almost all behaviour is explained psychologically. Strength, restraint and silence are no longer taken at face value; they are interrogated. A man who absorbs pressure without complaint is not seen as reliable, but as “emotionally unavailable”. A man who prioritises duty over feelings is accused of repression. Endurance is recast as denial. Sacrifice becomes a failure of self-care.

This is not progress. It is the ideological misuse of psychology to legitimise weakness.

Modern liberal culture is deeply uncomfortable with obligation, hierarchy and judgment. It prefers explanations to expectations, validation to standards. Psychology provides the perfect language for this instinct. It translates moral failure into trauma, responsibility into burden, and weakness into injury.

Where earlier societies asked whether a man had done what was right, today’s culture asks whether he feels safe, affirmed and understood.

Nowhere is this clearer than on social media. Feeds are flooded with motivational quotes framed in the language of healing and self-care. Many of them sound profound. Most of them ask nothing of the reader.

• “You don’t owe anyone anything.”
• “Protect your peace.”
• “You are enough as you are.”

These messages spread because they flatter a tired and inward-looking culture. They offer relief without effort, reassurance without growth. In an algorithmic economy that rewards comfort over challenge, responsibility does not trend well.

This obsession with validation has been particularly damaging to men. Historically, men were formed around external demands: responsibility to family, accountability to law or God, duty to community. Western liberalism has steadily dismantled these structures, leaving men increasingly governed by their internal emotional states.

Feeling has replaced obligation. Comfort has displaced character.

Men are now encouraged to speak endlessly about how they feel, yet are rarely told what they are for. They are urged to be vulnerable, but given no framework for how vulnerability serves leadership, protection or sacrifice. Emotional expression is praised, while the ability to carry weight quietly is treated with suspicion.

The irony is stark. A culture obsessed with men’s emotional lives has produced men who feel more, articulate more — and endure less. When every discomfort is treated as harm, resilience becomes unnecessary. When every feeling demands validation, mastery becomes optional. And when some men are convinced their past gives them license to avoid responsibility, the moral erosion is complete.

It is worth asking what kind of men such a culture can realistically produce.

Figures like Umar ibn al-Khattab — the second caliph of Islam — did not emerge from societies preoccupied with self-analysis and emotional affirmation. They were forged in moral environments that demanded accountability before comfort, duty before self, and justice even when it cut against personal interest. Umar was known for his emotional depth and fear of moral failure, but those qualities intensified his sense of responsibility rather than dissolving it.

An Islamic society teaches men a simple but demanding lesson: your pain is real, but it does not excuse you from duty. It is a soil that cultivates character, discipline, and responsibility—producing men like Umar ibn al-Khattab and Khalid ibn al-Walid, whose courage, moral clarity, and commitment to justice reshaped their world. Yet these men were also profoundly human: Umar is reported to have wept upon hearing a recitation of the Qur’an, overwhelmed by the weight of responsibility and the fear of falling short in guiding his people, while Khalid was known to shed tears after the Battle of Yamama, mourning the loss of Muslim lives under his command. Strength, in this tradition, was never the absence of emotion, but the mastery of it in the service of duty.

Western liberal culture is ideologically incapable of producing such men. Not because men are weaker by nature, but because the culture itself treats strength as suspect, obligation as negotiable, and discomfort as something to be avoided rather than endured.

This is not a call to abandon psychology, nor a defence of emotional illiteracy. Understanding oneself matters. Experience shapes character. But explanation is not absolution. Insight should deepen responsibility, not erase it.

A healthy Islamic society teaches men a simple but demanding lesson: your pain is real, but it does not excuse you from duty. When psychology escaped the clinic and became a worldview, that lesson was lost. Strength was medicalised. Responsibility was softened. Fragility was rewarded with moral language.

A civilisation cannot survive on reassurance alone. At some point, it must decide whether it wants men who are endlessly soothed — or men capable of standing firm when conditions harden, as they always do.

Western culture has made its choice. The consequences are now impossible to ignore.