Teknevra

I have been wondering for a while now if stuff that has just a small bit of alcohol for preservative purposes.

Like vanilla or soy sauce.

We already discussed the verse about wife beating many times, and mostly came to an agreement that it can't be a physical punishment etc.

But what about lashing (24:2) and house arrest (4:15) as the punishment for adultery?

Do you think it's fair?

Is the common interpretations valid?

If so, why a physical punishment is now justified?

Western media often paints him in a bad light, and stuff such as controversial hadiths aren’t great for his character either.

It’s easy to like Isa because he is presented as a pacifist who never did anyone wrong.

My question is, what made you see Muhammad not only as a good person, but one of the best ever?

What is the Quranic / Islamic view on Adam and how the earth became populated?

In Christianity it’s commonly referred to as Adam’s children marrying each other which doesn’t exactly make sense due to incest.

And it also doesn’t fully align with science and the fact that there were earlier hominids on earth.

From what I gather, the Quran is pretty adamant on Adam being the first human - but how do we reconcile that:

1. It potentially doesn’t align with what we know scientifically about human evolution on earth

And

2. 2 people populating the earth with their children and their children only is incest?

We tend to think of the most religious or most beloved by God as the most outwardly pious person but that’s not how God actually works.

If you look at the stories in the Quran and in the life of Isa, it’s so clear that God isn’t just for the perfect. He’s for the broken, the struggling, the ones who keep messing up but keep coming back.

In the Quran, God is described over and over as the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful. That mercy(arguably) is for people who need it, not those who’ve already “arrived.”

Isa said he didn’t come for the righteous, but for sinners. He spent his time with the outcasts, the poor, the sick, the people religion had pushed to the side.

So why do we act like religion is only for the flawless? Like God only loves the people who never fall?

And why do we act like gatekeepers to Gods love / acceptance?

I see so many Muslims and Christian’s say that lgbt people are only worthy of love and mercy if they absolutely hate themselves - but most lgbt folks I know distance from God when they hate themselves / contemplate suicide. But when they learn to accept who they are, that’s when they rebuild a relationship with God and become closer to Him.

Note: when I say “we” I mean as a whole, and arguably a lot less in this space or progressive spaces.

The Quran says: “No soul bears the burden of another” (35:18).

But I still wonder… are we paying for Adam’s mistake?

If he hadn’t slipped, would we even be here on Earth?

Just wante dto point out that Islam is not the same as Sharia?

Masses of Muslims never followed the Sharia and never intended to. (lets take for example the Turks/Mongols who still adhered to the Törü when converting to Islam, or all the locals and indogenous people who stayed with their local customs, or many Sufis).

Just as a quick reminder, just because you talk to a Muslim it does not mean that they have revealed anything about their moral or political stance.

When we talk about Islam, we don't necessary engage in a normative moral discussion. We don't discuss law or politics.

I know this is hard to swallow for all the Islamists or those who may ahve grown up among them, because they long for some sort of revolution through "the unification and masses of the unified Ummah" and kinda perceive all the Muslims who literally do not care about any form of social, political or religious revolution, as traitors, but we just don't care. We never promised to help those guys. Its their fault if they beleived they will receive backup from the Ummah. And its their fault if they relied on us in the first place if they never asked us. You can't count on someone to whom you never received a promise or consensus.

And if you think that Islam = Sharia, because 90% of your understanding of Islam is law, then it is up to you to inform yourself about what else exists in that religion you claim to follow.

Back about a year ago when I was in the miserable Salafi hellhole, I thought that Islam was this evil force whose only purpose was to make the masses complete slaves, incapable of thinking past a certain framework. To destroy in the name of "reformation" and to strip away the joy of life while reaching for the hereafter.

Salafism made me think that anyone who didn't follow the rigid, ultra dogmatic structure of Islam was a Kafir, and all Muslims do is pray all day, destroy everything "haram" and speak badly about others. Well, cut back to reality and I see none of that. I never meet these people IRL.

Even on the internet, I cleansed my feed. It went from Salafi reels talking about stuff that was haram or whatever, to ordinary Muslims doing things like playing guitar, having fun, making art, etc. and they were all somehow related to Islam targeted for a Muslim audience, and all of these reels get hundreds of thousands of likes, whereas the Salafi or lecture ones only got maybe from 3k-50k.

So really even online, Salafis aren't a loud minority. It was just I purposely CHOSE to surround myself with Salafis, so that's why everything looked so bleak.

I started learning about Islamic history and cultures that Muslims are a part of, from the Rashiduns, to the Abbasids, to the Ottomans, to the Mughals, to the Malians, to the Swahili city-states... And I was amazed.

And then I kind of had an upbringing, realized that spending hours on the internet all day was doing me no good, and decided to actually go back to talking to Muslims in my life again IRL. They're nothing like the fundamentalist demons I encountered in some spaces.

Once I surrounded myself with regular Muslims again, things looked more colorful. I started to realize that Muslims aren't these demons that ex-Muslims, Islamophobes and even a lot of people in this sub make them out to be. They're just... people who live regular lives, think like regular people and enjoy regular things.

Even most of the BS you hear online about "Muslim countries being nightmares to live in" come from Westerners and Hindutvas who have never stepped foot into them, and just parrot whatever Islamophobic narrative they hear on the internet.

And then there's the talk about my home country Bangladesh turning into an "Islamist Shariah hellhole" that I keep seeing. Well, I live here and the music and film industry is doing better than ever... Natoks are getting millions of views in just a few hours on YouTube and majority of the women here still wear sarees/regular hijab. TBH, it's as expected, a lot of such claims are from chronically online people (most living in the West, for some reason) who get their perception of reality through Facebook bots.

Not saying people here aren’t still defending stuff like SA and child marriages, cuz they definitely are… but that’s literally been Bangladesh since forever. Nothings changed smh.

This might be controversial and feel free to disagree with me. But the threat of Salafism is not as big as people here make it out to be. Most Muslims are, well, moderate. Most don't care about what some random lecturer on Facebook has to say. Most Muslims are still heavily culturally inclined and aren't chronically online enough to doomscroll through fatwas or care what some random Redditor has to say.

It's just due to the internet amplifying certain voices, the extremes get more attention.

But even then, I haven't seen anything related to Salafism in a really, really long time. I almost completely forgot that there were Muslims who see music, movies, drawing, etc. as haram, especially considering all the Muslims I met love those things, especially among the older (and more conservative) generation.

So yeah, the internet is not a reflective of reality at all. Most Westerners are not pro-Israel, most Muslims are not Fundamentalists, most Hindus are not Hindutvas, etc.

I feel like a lot of people in this sub need to hear this. I do understand that some of yall might have grown up in extremely restrictive communities, but for those in less restrictive environments who used to shackle themselves with internet hellholes like I have... I can promise you, reality is far less grim than people make it out to be sometimes...

I came from a Christian background, so it’s quite easy to imagine God either as Jesus, or an old man.

With Islam, it’s hard for me to imagine god when either praying or simply thinking about him.

Do you imagine him as a man, the universe, light, something completely different, or nothing at all?

Why is it either full coverage or non at all?

Why don't we see people wearing a head scarf but short sleeves?

I tried and actually couldn't find a picture of that.

In all the flavors of Islam practiced this single thing seems to be so binary.

Since it's Muharram, I just wanted to know your opinions regarding this.

I've talked to some fellow Shias who have done this before when they were kids, and they kinda stopped.

I haven't talked to a fellow shia who has done this as an adult though, plus some marjas says it's forbidden.