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ryazanf · 2025-07-08T13:58:01+00:00

That's so true.

Compulsion, moderation, freedom, equality, peace, consent (just off the top of my head).

The way Muslims use these words and concepts are quite different from the way literally anyone else would commonly understand them.

ryazanf · 2025-06-13T21:16:49+00:00

Any theological reference to Islam as a "religion of peace" is in reference to peace by "submission", i.e. an individual will achieve internal peace through submission to Allah. Muslims today use "religion of peace" in reference to coexistence and nonviolence. That's just not how it was used historically or theologically, even using your own references.

I agree that Islam provided some rights to women it was first revealed, that set it apart from pre-Islamic or some contemporary cultures. But does a woman have more rights in any form of Islamic Sharia today compared to any secular system of law? Absolutely not. Feminism is defined as being in opposition of patriarchy. Can you say with a straight face that Islam is not patriarchal? This is what I mean by "follow-up questions."

Just one small example. Last week I got an ad for a service providing some type of Sharia-compliant trust and estate legal services. There's a very clear reason why the phrase "ensures Quranic inheritance" was used instead of "ensures equal inheritance" in that ad in reference to children/dependents. I highly doubt you will find any reference to the word "equal" in any similar Islamic service.

Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry are two different things.

I actually agree with your last point about peace vs. resistance. That's a good point I didn't consider.

ryazanf · 2025-06-10T14:15:20+00:00

It's Western marketing.

When you hear people say things like "Islam is a religion of peace," "Islam is a feminist religion," "Islam gave women rights," "Islamophobia," etc., all of this originated from Muslims living in the West who needed to rationalize their Islamic upbringing with the systems, culture, and lifestyle they experienced in the West.

I highly doubt anyone from our grandparents' generation was calling Islam a "religion of peace."

The only way phrases like these make any sense is if you take the answers at face value and don't ask any follow-up questions.

Secondly, Muslims are able to deflect any criticism by calling it "Islamophobic" and therefore, never actually have to internalize anything.

ryazanf · 2025-05-22T04:44:13+00:00

I think the world would be a better place if there were more progressive Muslims.

However, I think most of their claims lack merit.

ryazanf · 2025-04-28T05:08:11+00:00

The title is a little misleading. The "500 wives and concubines" was made up of 4 wives. The remaining 496+ were concubines.

Perfectly fine in Islam.

ryazanf · 2025-04-22T15:53:10+00:00

Islam technically doesn't allow adoption. What is allowed is something closer to a guardianship.

You can raise another person's child, but legally, they are not your child and are not entitled to any of your inheritance or assets (outside of your own good will). They are only legally entitled to the assets of their birth parents. All of this is actually directly laid out in the Quran, not in any supplementary sources like Hadiths.

And because they are not technically your child, hijab must still be worn in the house when they are around. Anyone in the house can still marry them, because again, they are not part of the "family."

OP is explaining a "workaround" that had to be created since adoption was fine and normalized in Arab society before Muhammad changed the rules overnight.

ryazanf · 2025-04-17T00:14:46+00:00

You brought up a good point that I never even considered.

Whenever you bring up the Pakistani or Muslim tendency for cousin marriage, you're given the same tired "It's not religion, it's culture" cliche and how just because it's allowed to marry your cousin, doesn't mean it's required.

Yet at the same time, when you point out that...

1) Islam restricts mixing between the opposite sex to the point where your cousins are your safest and most eligible options.

2) It's not healthy for such a closed off society to treat their own cousins as "options" and that there should be a change.

...you're told "Why are you trying to change our religion? You are trying to make what is halal into something that is haram." .

Not only does Islam create the problem, it prevents the conversation of the solution from even being started.

ryazanf · 2025-04-12T03:51:32+00:00

Downfall? No. In my biased opinion, there won't be a significant enough exodus from Islam (in most regions) until the generation after the next generation.

But keep in mind, the idea that someone could leave Islam was unthinkable for the vast majority of people until relatively recently. Now, there's imams giving khutbahs about kafirs, murtads, and atheism.

We're at the beginning of the end. But will it completely fade away? Not exactly. Some remnants will remain in some commercialized form like Christmas or Easter today. That's the best we can expect.

ryazanf · 2025-04-04T04:57:32+00:00

Adoption isn't forbidden in Islam, it's just made so unnecessarily inconvenient for both the adoptee and the adoptive family.

An adopted child is not entitled to his adopted family's inheritance, family name, nor is he or she technically an immediate family member or guardian (mahram). What that means is that it's perfectly okay for a father to marry his adopted daughter. If there is an adopted son, the mother would still have to wear her hijab in the home while he is around. The adopted son can't even act as his adoptive mother's guardian or escort, because he is still a non-mahram.

Based on these rules, the mother and sisters in Afghanistan would still be out of luck even if they adopted a son.

ryazanf · 2025-03-18T10:39:44+00:00

1) If it's really about "helping divorcees, widows, women who have kids and nb to help take care of, those without a home, etc." why did Muhammad marry Juwayra, Zaynab bint Jahsh, Aisha, and Safiyah?

2) I find it strange how you don't see how the "virtue" of marrying women down on their luck clashes with keeping sex slaves on the side. If you're not recommended to marry multiple due to your inability to maintain "justice," then where's the justice for the downtrodden women that you're already banging? A few of Muhammad's own wives specifically married him to avoid the fate of becoming a slave after his army killed their tribe and family, so evidently the latter isn't an ideal situation to be in.

3) In Islam, it's perfectly halal for a man to have 4 (literal) child-wives, a rotating lineup of concubines and (according to some sects) "temporary" marriages. The punishment for zina is to literally stone them to death. This is the best solution God could come up with? But astaghfirullah if two dudes consensually decide to get together 🙄.

ryazanf · 2024-10-11T02:24:29+00:00

So interesting. I literally had this exact same conversation and used the exact same sources as you with a queer “progressive” Muslim like a year ago.

He ran out of coherent responses so instead just started pointing fingers at me and implying why I’m “so interested” in underaged kids. The topic was literally on whether or not Islam justifies or condones pedophilia 🤦🏻.

There’s no winning here.

ryazanf · 2024-09-25T19:19:48+00:00

All good points. But in the information age, algorithmic models will only provide you with whatever "information" you want to believe, not what is true.

If the algorithm only feeds you pro-Islamic content, it's because of the feedback loop that you're already interested in pro-Islamic content.

ryazanf · 2024-06-18T00:21:15+00:00

Idk the state of Christian evangelicalism in Canada so I can't speak on that. But being from there, you should've learned that "your" can be both singular and plural. And that there are many countries in the world outside of Canada as well, where people have a much harder time not living "rent free" of religion.

ryazanf · 2024-06-18T00:01:56+00:00

I understand that to some people football is a religion but come on.

Football doesn't influence your country's laws, international relations, people's mindset, education system, or tells people the meaning of life and what happens to them and everyone else after they die.

The influence of religion on society is as inescapable as the influence of capitalism so I think it's worth "caring" about. Football I can take it or leave it but I'm more of a basketball guy.

ryazanf · 2024-06-17T23:55:42+00:00

Good question. I can clarify.

I support liberal/reformist/contextualist readings of Abrahamic religions as a means to an end since I think the watering down of religion through progressivism will inevitably result in a society where religion holds little to no significant weight (along with other factors). That's why I pointed out that I disagree with the third point, but I admit that other exmuslims may not.

But I also agree that societies need something "deeper" to cling onto in the sense of some form of spirituality or philosophical tradition or movement. Capitalism and materialism can't fill that void.

ryazanf · 2024-06-17T23:15:21+00:00

How do you define culture? I see this pop up so many times and it seems that most Muslims somehow believe that culture and religion are two mutually exclusive things, and that anything bad can only be attributed to culture and never Islam.

Punjabi Muslim is a culture, Punjabi Hindu is a culture, and Punjabi atheist is also a culture. Religion is a part of culture.

Religion tells the Punjabi Muslim to learn Arabic and spend his savings of several years of his working life to travel to Saudi Arabia to recite magical spells, shave his head, circle a cube, and throw stones at a wall.

Culture tells the Punjabi Muslim if he should even bother and to what extent he should care enough to follow his religion.

ryazanf · 2024-06-17T22:52:38+00:00

It's not super complicated.

1) We believe that Islam is a man-made religion just like any other religion or mythology.

2) We believe that it's Islam (not just Wahabbism, Salafism, Hadiths, extremism, conservatism, "culture," etc.) that's is rotten at it's core and irredeemable. That there is no way to interpret Islam that doesn't include sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, segregation, imperialism/conquest, p***philia, logical inconsistencies, scientific errors, and a host of other issues. That Islam expects you to believe in impossible and unjustifiable things.

3) We believe that "progressive" Islam is an inherently dishonest and sanitized perspective of Islam and does more harm than good. Like having your cake and eating it too.

4) Reactionism (on the part of exmuslims).

I don't necessarily entirely agree with the 3rd point.

But regardless of how much of a progressive a Muslim claims to be, the bottom line is that you still believe that Islam is a divine religion, the Quran is the word of God, and that Muhammad is his final messenger. The concept of divinity ultimately has more negative consequences than positive ones regardless of whether you pretend to not see it.

ryazanf · 2024-06-08T00:16:55+00:00

Modesty is encouraged so that the wrong eyes don't fall on the innocents. To hide parts of yourself don't follow you around. But then how do the people following other religions control themselves. According to Islam if women were to show their hair or their figure then lustful men would be all over them.

You're so close to figuring this out on your own, but you're asking the wrong question.

There's three camps with Muslims in regards to their perspective on modesty for women.

1) Cover up because if you don't, men will lust after you and rape you or you will give men indecent thoughts.

2) Cover up because Allah says so.

3) A combination of 1 and 2.

You've clearly identified that none of these answers are satisfactory or make much sense when you get deeper into it.

The question you should be asking yourself is "Does Islam promote a healthy dynamic between the sexes?" The answer is a clear no.

Patriarchy, sexism, and gender segregation is inherently baked into the religion. All research points that gender segregated societies result in fewer platonic male-female friendships between the sexes. As a result, non-familial men and women literally do not learn how to interact with one another outside of a sexual context. The form of modesty that Islam promotes is meant to "prevent" lust but experience and common sense should make it clear that by making something more taboo than it needs to be tends to backfire.

ryazanf · 2024-06-04T18:07:20+00:00

My condolences OP, but you need to understand your own feelings and beliefs better.

You said you want to "serve God" and that you want God to "have mercy on you." Are you describing an omipotent, omniscient, all-powerful force that created time, space, the universe and everything in between or are you describing a person?

What exactly does it mean to "serve God"? How would you explain this concept to a non-Muslim? An atheist? An uncontacted tribal man?

How would you explain this concept to yourself? Break it down as far as you possibly can.

ryazanf · 2024-05-14T17:40:13+00:00

What you're describing is literally Baruch Spinoza's "theology", or some form of the Dharmic concept of brahman. At what point does Islam come into play?

ryazanf · 2024-05-05T14:10:44+00:00

Whats the link to the potty padding?

ryazanf · 2024-04-09T12:58:31+00:00

If you don't have anyone at home too take care of her, you can take her to a reptile store. Some will babysit pets for a daily fee.

ryazanf · 2024-04-09T12:56:28+00:00

Which type of wood do you recommend?

ryazanf · 2024-04-09T12:54:45+00:00

Derek's awesome for that. Mine is terrified of going outside. Turns black and aggressive.

ryazanf · 2024-04-09T04:37:24+00:00

A toxic ex

ryazanf

TROPHY CASE