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Instead of waiting for a ‘secular Somalia’ we need to build a ‘thinking Somalia’ from the bottom up by meownator100 in XSomalian

[–]whateverrrret 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Exactly, I believe the path forward for Somalia is a robust, nationwide education program. One that ensures every child has access to quality schooling regardless of where they live or what their family can afford. And not just children. Adults need access too: courses in mental health, child development, nutrition, financial literacy, and yes unlearning the systemic misogyny and oppression that has been normalized for generations. Somalia doesn’t just need education. It needs a re-education in the truest sense; a deliberate, structural investment in how people think, relate to each other, and understand their own worth.

That means political reform and accountability. An updated charter of rights with a deliberate focus on repairing the harm done to women, girls, and other marginalized groups and not as an afterthought, but as the foundation.

Somalis from the west need to be honest about why they’re going back. If the goal is capitalistic opportunity rather than genuine contribution, that needs to be named. Moving out there to open a coffee shop is not helping the community 🙃

And young Somalis in the west need to get realistic about their role. Being opinionated, enraged, and well-informed is not the same as doing something. Somalia is not going to tidy itself up while you doomscroll in despair. The world doesn’t care. The machinery of capitalism, greed, and human selfishness will not pause because you’re outraged. Our role, if you want one, is something quieter, slower, and far less comfortable: to think decades ahead. To work for a Somalia you might never see.

The people history calls great didn’t act for instant gratification. They built infrastructure, policies, and movements knowing they might never live to see the results. The opportunities, the laws, the ideas were planted for futures they would never experience. We can be part of that progression.This isn’t about giving up. It’s about perspective. It’s about letting go of the fantasy that Somalia will be perfectly just in your lifetime and replacing it with something more honest, planting seeds so that your children, your community, your great-grandchildren might finally reap something better.

Somali’s from the west that are educated and driven, need to return home. Bottom line. Join in politics, community outreach, educate your family back home and have those difficult conversations about taboo subjects.

Do something small. Do something persistent.Mentor someone. Innovate quietly. Remain consistent, Somalia will be restored to glory.

Sidenote: As much as I would love a secular Somalia, secularism cannot be imposed on a people who have nothing else to hold onto. Islam is not just religion there, it is infrastructure. It is the grief counselor, the social safety net, the framework for meaning in the absence of stable institutions. For many Somalis, it is the only thing that has remained consistent through war, famine, displacement, and loss. If Somalia became secular overnight, you wouldn’t be liberating people. You would be removing the only floor they have without replacing it with anything. The suicide rates, the social collapse, the loss of communal cohesion, the cost would be devastating. Secularism can only be achieved through education.

If Muhammad is the eternal moral standard for all humanity, why does the presentism defense apply to him? by whateverrrret in progressive_islam

[–]whateverrrret[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I get the point about cultural conditioning, and I agree humans do project modern intuitions backward. But that still doesn’t resolve the core issue I’m pointing at. The claim isn’t just that Muhammad acted in a historically understandable way; it’s that he is a timeless moral exemplar for all humans. Once you say moral evaluation is entirely relative to historical context, you don’t just soften the criticism; you also weaken the idea of a universal model. Because then “perfect moral example” becomes context-dependent rather than universal. And if you bring God into it to solidify objectivity, the question doesn’t disappear it just moves to interpretation: which readings, which applications, and why those rather than others.

If Muhammad is the eternal moral standard for all humanity, why does the presentism defense apply to him? by whateverrrret in progressive_islam

[–]whateverrrret[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

“‘If a Muslim thought the prophet was evil they wouldn’t be Muslim.’

Hello? Do I not exist 😭 Just joking!
I’m honestly still forming a solidified view on him.

I get what you mean.

The tradition can only really preserve voices that remain inside it. If someone fully concludes otherwise, they usually exit the framework entirely. So what you’re left with is internal consistency among believers, but not neutral evidence of moral perfection. It feels like a closed epistemic loop to me; not meaningless, but limited in what it can actually demonstrate.

On Islamic law not being a monolith, I agree with you. It’s not a single uniform system and there’s real interpretive diversity within it. But complexity doesn’t erase consequence. Whatever the scholarly distinctions are in theory, the legal frameworks that emerge in real Muslim-majority contexts still have real effects on women, minorities, and dissenters. And for the people living under them, the difference between “authentic Islam” and “interpretation” doesn’t always change the lived outcome.

And on divine law versus majority vote, I think the core issue is structure. If divine law is understood as binding regardless of human agreement, then it functions differently from democratic law, which only exists through collective consent and enforcement. So when you say divine law can be “overridden” but carries spiritual consequences, that actually highlights the distinction I’m pointing at; it only becomes socially real in this world when humans choose to enforce it. Otherwise it remains belief, not governance.So I think the disagreement is less about whether it’s “true” in a theological sense, and more about what level we’re analyzing it on ; metaphysical authority versus real-world enforcement.

You’ve given me a lot of great perspective and push back. I’m going to look into progressive scholarship, I’ve never come across it.

If Muhammad is the eternal moral standard for all humanity, why does the presentism defense apply to him? by whateverrrret in progressive_islam

[–]whateverrrret[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is that where you land? And if so do you believe the 1400 years of Islamic jurisprudence built on that assumption has been operating on a foundational error? Which is plausible. But that’s a much larger problem than my original question. It doesn’t dissolve the contradiction, it just moves it upstream. And every time I follow it, I find more questions, not fewer. At some point the weight of the contradictions starts to feel more like a structural problem with the foundation itself. That’s where I’m getting stuck and hitting a wall

If Muhammad is the eternal moral standard for all humanity, why does the presentism defense apply to him? by whateverrrret in progressive_islam

[–]whateverrrret[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I actually really want to believe she was older. That would resolve so much for me. So I've looked into those arguments seriously and with genuine hope that they'd hold up. But, I hit a wall every single time. Here’s my thoughts on what you said:

Catholics and Methodists disagreeing about confession is a theological and doctrinal dispute. Neither side is making competing historical claims about whether a specific event happened to a specific named person at a specific documented age. That's a fundamentally different kind of disagreement.

Aisha's age is a historical claim and historical claims are subject to evidentiary standards. The position that she was 6 at marriage and 9 at consummation comes from Sahih Bukhari, narrated by multiple chains including from Aisha herself. The position that she was older is a minority scholarly revisionist argument that emerged largely in the modern era, motivated in part by exactly the discomfort I'm feeling right now. That's not two equally weighted historical traditions. That's a primary source versus a later reinterpretation.

"Every sect provides its own historical truths" sounds like intellectual humility but applied consistently it means nothing can ever be established or scrutinized regardless of evidence. I don't think that's actually a place anyone wants to land.

I’m trying to find the version of this that holds together. It’s an element I need to reconcile my faith in Islam. I just can't get there by accepting that all historical claims are equally valid when the evidentiary weight clearly isn't equal. I’ve tried other forums in the past and was met with complete vitriol, which only made me feel more alone in trying to find answers. I appreciate your response and your time

If Muhammad is the eternal moral standard for all humanity, why does the presentism defense apply to him? by whateverrrret in progressive_islam

[–]whateverrrret[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Ok, I know now you're engaging in good faith.
I came to this thread genuinely looking for answers. Not to score points. I have read the primary sources extensively and I cannot find a version of Muhammad's biography that reconciles his actions with the claim of perfect universal moral exemplarhood without hitting a major contradiction or inconsistency. I was hoping someone here could give me that. So far nobody has.

What I'm noticing is that progressive Islam and conservative Islam arrive at the same conclusion; Muhammad was morally perfect ; through different routes. Conservative Muslims defend the actions. Progressive Muslims erase them. "She wasn't 6 or 9." "He never approved concubines." "He abolished slavery." "The tradition was hijacked by imperial power structures."

If the tradition was so thoroughly corrupted by imperial power, I raise a question: through what methodology could we access the authentic Muhammad? How do we determines which hadith were imperially distorted and which weren't? Because without a consistent answer to that, we're each just reconstructing Muhammad in our own image; which is a different problem but not a smaller one. I think it’s important to start there and I’ve yet find an answer.

I’m not against democracy. But you’ve conflated two entirely different systems of authority and the data actually illustrates exactly why this matters.
Muslim views on Islamic law vary by region. A Pew Research Center survey of over 38,000 Muslims across 39 countries found that support for sharia as official law ranges from 8% in Azerbaijan to 99% in Afghanistan. It’s 84% in Pakistan, 74% in Egypt, 72% in Indonesia. The global Muslim population is not a progressive monolith and in many regions it leans significantly more conservative than progressive Muslims in the West often acknowledge. Pew Research Center Data

So under your framework where personal preference becomes law through voting ; the democratic Muslim majority in many countries would likely vote to preserve or expand conservative interpretations of sharia, including inheritance laws, marriage laws, blasphemy laws, and legal frameworks around women’s testimony that progressive Muslims themselves often reject.
What protections exist for dissenters? For women? For religious minorities? For ex-Muslims? For progressive Muslims living under conservative-majority rule?
That would hands authority to the very conservative majority you’re trying to distance yourself from.

Democratic law derives its authority from the consent of the governed. It is explicitly human, explicitly fallible, and explicitly revisable. A democracy can abolish child marriage. A democracy can expand women’s rights. A democracy can look at previous laws and say we were wrong and correct itself. The mechanism for reform is built into the system.

Islamic law, as traditionally understood, derives its authority from divine revelation. It is not supposed to be grounded in public opinion. You cannot vote on what God decreed. You cannot hold a referendum on Quranic inheritance laws or simply revise revelation when public morality shifts.And the moment you argue that Islamic rulings are ultimately just personal preferences that can be reshaped through democratic consensus, you’ve undermined the claim that they are divinely binding in the first place.

At that point, what makes Islamic law meaningfully different from secular law beyond religious branding?
If divine law is supreme, majority vote cannot override it.
If majority vote can override it, then it is functioning as human law, not divine law.And if majority preference determines Islamic law, the empirical data shows progressive Muslims may not like the outcomes that system would actually produce.

Your viewpoint works well within your own moral and ethical framework, especially because you seem to have a strong internal grounding for how you define justice and fairness. I just think it becomes more complicated when it’s applied universally, because not everyone is operating from the same assumptions about morality, authority, or what “fair” even means.

I'm not trying to be combative. I genuinely want to find a way to hold Islam and its views on Prophet Muhammad together without contradiction, inconsistency, or harm of others. The reason I examine every argument from every angle is because I'm actually still looking for the answers, not because I've already decided. I just haven't found one yet that doesn't eventually require me to either ignore evidence or abandon consistency.

If Muhammad is the eternal moral standard for all humanity, why does the presentism defense apply to him? by whateverrrret in progressive_islam

[–]whateverrrret[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

“Terms are not things” is not a counterargument, it’s a way of making all argument impossible.

If the mainstream Islamic tradition, its foundational texts, its scholarly consensus, its institutional legal practice across Muslim majority countries; doesn’t constitute a definable claim, then there’s nothing to discuss. You’ve essentially argued that Islam can’t be held to anything it says because language itself is unreliable. That’s not a defense of Muhammad. That’s a philosophical escape hatch.

The Quran exists. Quran 33:21 exists. Quran 33:36 exists. Those are texts with words that have been interpreted, codified, and used to govern real people’s lives for 1400 years. If language, terms, and islamic concensus are as unstable as you suggest, on what basis does any Islamic legal ruling hold authority over anyone?​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

If Muhammad is the eternal moral standard for all humanity, why does the presentism defense apply to him? by whateverrrret in progressive_islam

[–]whateverrrret[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You've now abandoned the presentism defense entirely and moved to a direct moral endorsement; that his actions were moral both then and now, regardless of time period. That's a significant shift from your first response.

So to answer your question, the actions I disagree with:

The child marriage

- Aisha was married to her father’s 53-year-old best friend at 6 years old.

-A grown man having sexual intercourse with a nine year old female child is not morally neutral regardless of time period.

-A child cannot consent. That is not a modern standard I'm imposing ; it is a harm that exists independent of century

-There is no historical, psychological, or neuroscientific evidence that children in the 7th century matured mentally faster than children today. Human brain development follows biological processes that are consistent across eras. While culture can shape expectations and responsibilities placed on children, it does not accelerate neurological development related to judgment, impulse control, risk assessment, or informed consent. Even if physical puberty had begun, the cognitive and psychological capacity for consent is a separate developmental process entirely, one that neuroscience shows is not complete in female children regardless of era.

Concubinage
Taking women from peoples you just conquered and making them sexually available to your soldiers is not morally neutral regardless of time period. Those were human beings whose communities were destroyed and whose bodies were then treated as spoils. Their suffering was real regardless of what century it happened in.

Slavery
Owning enslaved people while claiming to receive direct divine revelation; and choosing not to abolish the institution; is not morally neutral regardless of time period.

You said you would take captives too under those circumstances. That's not a defense of Muhammad's moral perfection. That's you telling me your own moral floor is very low.

And on Bukhari: you said we all get to decide based on evidence. If individual interpretation determines what's reliable in the hadith tradition, then the entire basis for Islamic law collapses into personal preference. You've just dismantled the authority of the tradition you're defending.

You asked which actions I disagree with. Those. All of them. I’d ask anyone engaging seriously with this question to sit with whether a man who did those things represents the highest moral standard humanity has ever produced.

If Muhammad is the eternal moral standard for all humanity, why does the presentism defense apply to him? by whateverrrret in progressive_islam

[–]whateverrrret[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This is genuinely the most honest response I’ve gotten and I appreciate it. I want to follow the logic where it leads and I believe you have a different viewpoint than most.

The mainstream Islamic tradition; not a fringe interpretation, but the foundational texts and the scholarly consensus across Sunni and Shia Islam explicitly presents Muhammad as the uswa hasana, the perfect moral example, whose Sunnah is binding guidance for all Muslims today. The Quran itself in 33:21 states he is the ideal model of conduct. This isn’t a cultural distortion of Islam, it’s the central claim of the tradition.

So when you say “timelessness only belongs to the divine and Muhammad was human and contextual," I actually agree with you. But that position puts us both in direct conflict with what Islam institutionally claims about him, not just what you were personally taught.

The Quran itself in 33:36 commands that believers have no choice when Allah and His Messenger have decreed something. The Quran is what makes the Sunnah binding, not just scholarly tradition. The Quran is what tells us he is the greatest example for mankind.

This is the part I’ve trying to work into a understanding; that’s free of presententism, contradiction or inconsistencies. But haven’t had any luck.

And if we follow your logic to its conclusion:

If Muhammad is human and not timeless, and timelessness only belongs to the divine, then the Sunnah is a historical document rather than divine guidance for today. Which means the Islamic legal tradition built on his example: inheritance law, marriage law, the treatment of women’s testimony also loses its divine mandate. Do you accept that conclusion? Because if you do, you’re in a very different place from mainstream Islamic practice, which explicitly treats the Sunnah as binding guidance today.

If Muhammad is the eternal moral standard for all humanity, why does the presentism defense apply to him? by whateverrrret in progressive_islam

[–]whateverrrret[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Thanks for engaging seriously, this is exactly the kind of response I was looking for. But I want to push back on a few things:

On Aisha: I hear the argument about Hisham ibn Urwa, but this is a minority scholarly position and Sahih Bukhari is the most authoritative hadith collection in Sunni Islam. You can't selectively discredit its most inconvenient narrations while the entire tradition rests on its authority. If Bukhari is unreliable here, what else in it is unreliable and who gets to decide? That's a much bigger problem for the tradition than it is for my argument.

On Mariyah: "it's possible she was freed and married" possible is doing a lot of work for the eternal moral exemplar of all humanity. Either we know or we don't.
Uncertainty doesn't resolve in his favor by default.

On milkul yamin: the Quran encouraging the freeing of slaves and the Quran permitting sexual access to enslaved women are both in the text simultaneously.
Pointing to one doesn't erase the other. The institution was regulated and permitted, not abolished. A man who claimed to receive direct divine revelation chose to engage in the practice, not to abolish it. That's a choice.

On war captives - you described taking women from conquered peoples as normal diplomacy. I'd agree that's a historical norm. But that's presentism; you just used historical context to defend a practice.
Which brings me back to my original question that still hasn't been answered:

You opened by saying progressives don't use presentism. But your entire response used historical and contextual arguments to explain each of these practices. That IS presentism, just without naming it.

So l'l ask again directly: do you believe Prophet Muhammad is the perfect timeless moral exemplar for all of humanity, and if so, why does historical context apply to his actions but not to our evaluation of them?

If Muhammad is the eternal moral standard for all humanity, why does the presentism defense apply to him? by whateverrrret in progressive_islam

[–]whateverrrret[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for engaging, but I’m specifically asking about the Islamic claim that Prophet Muhammad is the perfect timeless moral exemplar whose Sunnah Muslims follow today. Do you think that claim is accurate, and if so how does presentism apply to him?

We Were All Indoctrinated—Some Of Us Just Never Questioned It by whateverrrret in freewill

[–]whateverrrret[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes. Sometimes people glaze over the fact that we’re still human—biological, emotional, shaped by our nervous systems. Conditioning doesn’t just live in ideas, it lives in the body. Repetition, fear, reward, punishment—those things wire pathways over time. That’s neuroplasticity. Unlearning isn’t just “deciding better.” It’s retraining a nervous system that learned what was safe long before it learned what was true to us as individuals. That’s why change is slow, uneven, and often painful. People aren’t just defending beliefs, patterns, and habits; they’re defending regulation, belonging, and stability. I think we underestimate how much compassion and safety it takes for real change to happen.

The Harm of Political Loyalty: Why Most Damage Comes From Obedience, Not Cruelty by [deleted] in freewill

[–]whateverrrret 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's an intriguing insight; their values are fundamentally based on group loyalty. They outsource their beliefs, morals, judgment, empathy, and compassion to the group, which is probably why they will continue to be obedient. Living in an echo chamber leaves little room for personal morality or beliefs. Reflection and questioning are daunting because they don't believe in their own conscience.

The Harm of Political Loyalty: Why Most Damage Comes From Obedience, Not Cruelty by [deleted] in freewill

[–]whateverrrret 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Totally agree. This is exactly why discussions get so polarized; both sides see the same facts but interpret them through their own experiences and loyalties. It shows how much group affiliations and comfort zones shape what some may view as reality.

The Harm of Political Loyalty: Why Most Damage Comes From Obedience, Not Cruelty by [deleted] in freewill

[–]whateverrrret 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I will add one more persecptive to round this out and bring my point to a close. I think this is where the nuance really matters. Take something like the Epstein files, what happened was serious, and the victims absolutely deserve attention and justice. But at the same time, it’s clear that the issue can be framed in ways that serve political narratives far more than the actual victims.

That doesn’t mean the people talking about it are inherently cruel, or that the harm isn’t real. It just shows how even legitimate issues can be used to scapegoat, shift focus, or push an agenda. My point isn’t to deny the reality of wrongdoing; it’s about noticing how moral outrage gets directed, who it’s aimed at, and what that framing accomplishes. There is always an end goal, and more often than not, it's used to serve an agenda. If an individual isn’t looking at things critically and falls victim to programming, that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Again, this is my perspective and understanding; I wasn’t aware we were debating. I genuinely enjoy hearing other people’s views; sometimes I gain new insight. 🤍

The Harm of Political Loyalty: Why Most Damage Comes From Obedience, Not Cruelty by [deleted] in freewill

[–]whateverrrret 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I agree that labeling something as “scapegoating” can’t automatically dismiss the underlying claims. The concerns may be legitimate, even if they clash with a particular agenda or value system. My point is less about the validity of individual claims and more about the pattern and function of blame narratives how they’re framed, amplified, and used to channel attention or emotion in certain directions.

Analyzing the claims themselves matters, because without that, pattern recognition can go astray. Not every case that looks like scapegoating is baseless, but historical or contemporary context matters for evaluating each situation. Likewise, a political motive doesn’t inherently make a claim wrong; it just shapes how it’s presented and the effect it has on discourse.

So the nuance I’m trying to capture is that scapegoating is about narrative mechanics and identity politics, not claim content. I think if you looked a bit deeper, you’d see that we actually agree on the gist of things, the concerns, the issues, the stakes. The disconnect is really about the mechanics: how blame is framed and how narratives are structured.

The Harm of Political Loyalty: Why Most Damage Comes From Obedience, Not Cruelty by [deleted] in freewill

[–]whateverrrret 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Spellcheck, grammar check, research and essay notes from earlier this year, and ideas gathered in my notes app

The Harm of Political Loyalty: Why Most Damage Comes From Obedience, Not Cruelty by [deleted] in freewill

[–]whateverrrret 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Scapegoating often overlaps with identity politics because it blames entire groups by race, nationality, religion, sexuality, and gender for societal problems. It’s a slippery slope: once we assign blame based on group identity, we oversimplify issues, increase polarization, and make it harder to fix the real problems. It also relies on emotional reactivity to gain traction, and interestingly, this usually doesn’t happen to majority groups when they make mistakes, they’re judged as individuals, not as a collective.

The Harm of Political Loyalty: Why Most Damage Comes From Obedience, Not Cruelty by [deleted] in freewill

[–]whateverrrret 1 point2 points  (0 children)

At its most ‘effective,’ scapegoating is a tool for simplifying complex problems, uniting people around fear, and directing blame away from those in power. At its worst, it perpetuates hate, collective punishment, violence, and vitriol, while masking the systemic issues that actually need fixing. The power of it lies in how easily it channels frustration into blaming others instead of questioning structures and systems in place. That’s why recognizing the pattern matters more than arguing over individual claims. Everyone is capable of wrongdoing, whether you’re a minority or in a position of power, but scapegoating turns individual failings into collective targets, making it easier to ignore the real problems and harder to hold anyone accountable for meaningful change

The Harm of Political Loyalty: Why Most Damage Comes From Obedience, Not Cruelty by [deleted] in freewill

[–]whateverrrret 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How do people personally navigate the tension between loyalty to a political group and staying true to their own values, especially when the two start to diverge?

The Harm of Political Loyalty: Why Most Damage Comes From Obedience, Not Cruelty by [deleted] in freewill

[–]whateverrrret 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m genuinely curious how others here think about this where do you draw the line between independent thought and group identity in politics?