u/FastAdvantage71

EPIC City was a community in North Texas, tied to the East Plano Islamic Center, that was pitched as a Muslim-centered neighborhood with more than 1,000 homes, a mosque, faith based school, retail space, and other amenities near the Dallas area.

This project caused a lot of controversy and faced many oppositions from the right wing Christians. However as of the latest news, Texas judge has sided with the city developers so the project will probably be successful in the end. You can find all the news if you search in the internet.

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However my question is should Quranists living in the US (especially Texas) purchase properties there? The good side would be that halal meat will be very easily available there and you will have a lot of Muslim neighbours. But my fear is that I think this will be a very judgemental community since the community will be tied to Epic Masjid which itself is conservative Sunni (obviously not radical like the Salafi Wahhabis but still within the mainstream conservative paradigm), so they might make you feel like you don't belong there if you publicly identify as a Quranist. I'm also afraid that you may face judgement from the community if you do not go to the mosque on Fridays. And there were some online dawah guys who even though did not like Yasir Qadhi and considered him to be too liberal were seemed interested about this Epic city project because it was advertised for Muslims, and I don't think those guys will let a Quranist live in peace.

So overall I am kinda torn in between. On one hand I would love to belong to a community and be around other Muslims but on the other hand I am also worried given how judgemental traditionalist Sunnis & Shias are about Quranists and Sahih Hadith skeptics.

Yaqeen Institute has always been conservative, but they were not promoting the conservative fiqh ruling 7-8 years back. Their works were mostly academic and theology related.

But it seems like everything changed since that Imam Tom Facchine guy joined Yaqeen. Now they constantly keep promoting the conservative rulings and ideas. Like Imam Tom Facchine sharing the story of how he smashed his guitars and threw away music cds in the dumpster, how music impacts your brain, if you celebrate or let your kids participate in halloween then you basically have no self esteem as a Muslim and don't care about the deen, if you are not ready to wear hijab yet then it's basically a sign of arrogance and you are listening to the whispers of shaitan.

Yes Omar Suleiman used to promote conservative ideas (like Boys and Girls can't become friends for example but these videos were normally uploaded by other youtube channels. Yaqeen's official YouTube channel and website did not have this kind of contents. But now they are doubling down on propagating conservative ideas. Why? Does it have to do with all the bashing Yaqeen Institute and Omar Suleiman received from Daniel Haqiqatjou, Uthman Ibn Farooq, Mohammed Hijab and other hardcore extreme conservatives for supposedly being "liberals"?

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And tbh I find this Tom Facchine guy a nutjob. According to him Muslims in western countries should not integrate but they should form their own communities/ghettos. He praises the British Muslims for this and wants American Muslims to do the same, he doesn’t like American Muslims being integrated to the broader American society (this full interview was uploaded on another youtube channel)