Waleed Aly says Mecca pilgrimage highlights ‘ridiculous’ manosphere’s ‘toxic masculinity’
Waleed Aly has shaved his head and “learnt a lesson about masculinity”, saying a recent trip highlighted the “ridiculous” claims of manosphere influencers.
Waleed Aly has shaved his head and “learnt a lesson about masculinity” from Islam, saying a pilgrimage to Mecca highlighted the “ridiculous” posturing of online manosphere influencers like Andrew Tate.
The former host of Channel 10’s axed panel show The Project, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald on Friday, revealed he had just returned from performing the Umrah, or lesser pilgrimage, to Islam’s holiest site in Saudi Arabia.
There, Aly wrote, the “astonishingly serene” setting and the behaviour of the record 500,000 people displayed none of the “toxic” traits from “our culture’s current fretting over masculinity”.
“Instead, you see the Indonesians in their colourful matching shirts, joining arms and walking through the crowds in formation,” he wrote.
“You see the even more colourful West Africans and the formidable Turks chart their course, and the swarms of people move around them like liquid.
“You see the South Asians, from Afghanistan through to Bangladesh, many elderly and frail, nimbly adjust to the human traffic.
“You see the Gulf Arabs saunter, the Americans strut, pilgrims from Kyrgyzstan shuffle along with their magnificent hats.
“No common language, few common customs, not even a shared culture of queuing. But it works because you constantly see deference: people gently bouncing off one another, giving way to each other, communicating with a smile or a glance.
“Men play their role in this. Holding the line to create space for their female companions. Standing as a buffer between them and the oncoming throng. Forging a path for their group, allowing a path for others.
“In short, and again with exceptions, putting others first.”
The men, he added, were also “not ashamed” of crying while visiting the grave of Prophet Muhammad, or circling the Kaaba in Mecca.
“The masculinity of the manosphere doesn’t survive contact with this,” he wrote.
“Whatever its online appeal, the preoccupation with wealth, dominance and womanising becomes immediately ridiculous here.
“It looks more like the masculinity of a puffer fish: a show of size to conceal something much smaller. Against the backdrop of Mecca’s forbidding mountains, all that seems not just out of place, but out of puff.”
Aly argued the “problem with the discourse of toxic masculinity is that it doesn’t sit alongside anything affirmative”.
“It points to genuine problems in male behaviour, but is less eager to say anything about masculine virtue,” he wrote.
“What if, instead, masculinity centred on service, on sacrifice, on self-effacement? What if it didn’t shy away from its archetypes of strength and firmness, but understood that they tip over into oppression when combined with ego, and shorn of patience and soft-heartedness?”
He added that he was “not blind to all the problems that beset the Muslim world, misogyny included … but in that time and that place I got the glimpse of this potential”.
Aly, a broadcaster and academic, was formerly the spokesman for the former Islamic Council of Victoria.
Earlier this year, he spoke of the challenges he encountered as the first Muslim man to front a major Australian TV program, revealing he received death threats and required 24-hour security while hosting The Project.
“I’ve never spoken about this publicly but [it was tough] having to deal with death threats and security out the front of my house — sometimes for 24 hours — having to explain to the kids why suddenly there’s this guy driving us around as we go the zoo and not telling them why,” he told a roundtable of former co-hosts on Hit Network’s Carrie and Tommy, Aly.
“That was very real. That was heavy stuff. So, I never thought about it that way [being the first Muslim on The Project] but I was forced to think about it … it was forced upon me.”
The 16-year-old show came to an end in June after a period of declining ratings and to make room for a new current affairs and insight program 10 News+.
Aly had been a co-host since the first episode aired in 2009 and became a full-time host in 2014. He paid tribute to the “audacious TV experiment” started by some “outstandingly creative people”.
“I had been on the show every week [filling in, prior to being cast as a regular],” he said.
“I hadn’t thought about it, it was just an extension of what I was doing. You go into commercial TV, and you realise everything becomes about personalities.
“I remember the moment when I was nominated for the Gold Logie, and it was me and Lee Lin Chin and there was a front-page story absolutely going [at] us, and only us … like, ‘Why are these guys nominated?’
“I remember moments like that where I was like, ‘Whoa, OK, this is a real thing. This is becoming real and it’s all foisted upon you.”
Originally published as Waleed Aly says Mecca pilgrimage highlights ‘ridiculous’ manosphere’s ‘toxic masculinity’
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