u/No_Assistant8404

Kindly please read what the sidebar of this subreddit says.

On old.reddit layout:

>Although geared mostly towards Traditionally minded Muslims who seek to adhere to the Quran and Sunnah in an increasingly morally unstable world, we welcome open civilized discourse with those who might have Liberal, Feminist and Secular views.

On www .reddit layout (which is also the layout of Reddit IOS/Android app)

>Our purpose is to discuss intersexual & gender dynamics along with male & female nature, and relate it back to Islam. This includes open discussions from both Muslim and non-Muslim perspectives. Philosophico-theological debates are allowed and encouraged to help strengthen our faith in Islam and teach us about the religion more, particularly in ways not commonly discussed.

This subreddit also has user flairs labeled “Progressive” and “Non-sectarian Muslim”.

So therefore everyone is welcomed here

>:Ya Shaykh, is it haram for me to text a friend that's an opposite gender?

>:Firstly, having a friendship of the opposite gender is problematic because it's a stepping stone to something that's gonna be haram. Secondly, our Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam told us to cut off the doors of temptation, not just the actual temptation. So Allah says in the Quran, don't approach zina, don't come close to zina. And when you start texting, inevitably it's gonna lead to a stronger friendship, which inevitably is gonna lead to flirtation. I would say if there is a need for a brother to come in with his sister, then create a WhatsApp group. An MSA might have an event, something has to be done. So bring in other people so that it's never private. This is the default. You don't wanna open the door to things that are gonna bring you regret. And the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam said, those who avoid the doubtful matters, they're gonna be the ones that remain safe. Let's remain safe, inshallah.

Seeing how his views are comparatively more lenient than the Salafi Wahhabis, I expected to see more of an open minded take on befriending and texting the opposite sex from him. So seeing him problematize friendship between men and women like this was disappointing.

Let me start the post with a comment I saw on this subreddit the other day:

>I can already imagine the future of Muslims who adhere to the Qur'an alone. It will be decades in the future, the world will be a vastly different place - and yet we will remain on Reddit arguing if whether salat means ritual prayers or unicorn tickling tournaments. Audhubillah, aren't we supposed to be the ones conducting our affairs via shūrā (mutual consultation)? When will we stop forcing feel-good beliefs from humanism and universalism onto Islam?

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[The text below has been formatted with AI assistance since English is not my first language & as a result I'm not expert with English grammar & many vocabularies. Mentioning this for rule 7]

I write this post as someone who is tired of watching the “Qur’an alone” project selling itself as a clean, unified alternative while looking increasingly fragmented in practice. The five pillars are supposed to be the backbone of Muslim religious life, yet the Quran-only world keeps showing that it has no stable, shared working definition for the most basic ones. That is not a minor branding problem. It is a survival problem.

The biggest disaster is salah. Even among Quranists who insist that salat is a ritual prayer, there is no settled standard: some count five daily prayers, some argue for four mandatory prayers, and others build very different prayer frameworks from the Qur’an itself. One Quran-only source says the Qur’an supports five daily prayers with one optional, leaving four mandatory; another Quranist source argues the Qur’an’s salat is not ritual prayer at all and rejects the usual idea of fixed prayer movements, fixed prayer times, and even the normal ritual structure. That is not a small disagreement over a detail. That is a direct disagreement over what the pillar even is.

And the division inside the “ritual prayer” camp only gets worse. Some Quranists defend physical bowing and prostration, but then argue about whether “ruku” means bowing or kneeling, whether sujud is literal or symbolic, whether raka‘at exists at all, whether prayer is one unit or several, whether hands should be placed a certain way, whether qibla is literal, whether wudu is required, and whether Friday prayer exists. The moment you ask for the actual mechanics, the movement starts splintering into competing reconstructions that often contradict one another at the level of basic structure. A movement cannot call itself a coherent religious program when people are still fighting over the grammar of the ritual itself.

Then there is the even bigger contradiction between the ritual-prayer Quranists and the Quranists who say salat is not ritual prayer at all. That is not the same kind of difference as Sunni madhhab differences. Sunni schools may argue over where to fold the hands, whether to raise them, how loudly to say “ameen,” or other details within a shared prayer structure. Quranist disagreement is often upstream of the structure itself: whether salat is bodily ritual at all, whether it is communication, reform, remembrance, or something else entirely. Those are not comparable levels of disagreement. One is a family argument inside a common liturgy; the other is a fight over what liturgy means in the first place.

Fasting is no better. In mainstream Islam, Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic lunar calendar, and the month is traditionally identified by the lunar cycle, sometimes by sighting the crescent and sometimes by calculation. But among Quranists, the calendar problem becomes another fracture line: some argue for the familiar lunar Ramadan, some try to pin fasting to a fixed solar month like September, and others propose calendar schemes that try to keep the observance seasonally stable rather than purely lunar. So the movement cannot even settle when its fast begins, what calendar it belongs to, or whether the inherited Islamic calendar is valid at all. A basic act of worship cannot function as a common pillar if people cannot agree on the month.

And once again, the problem is not just theoretical. Ramadan is supposed to be a shared communal rhythm, but Quranist debates turn it into a calendar war. One side insists on the lunar structure; another tries to tie it to the solar year; others invent hybrid readings to rescue their preferred outcome. That kind of fragmentation destroys unity at the exact point where unity matters most: the annual act that is supposed to bind the community together in a single month, in a single discipline, under a single shared practice.

Zakat and Hajj are examples of the same problem. Within Quranist writing, zakat is debated in terms of whether it is a fixed percentage, whether it applies annually, what wealth it covers, and how it is distinguished from general charity. Hajj is just as messy: some Quranists strip away much of the inherited ritual, some place it inside different sacred-month frameworks, and others reject major parts of the standard pilgrimage structure. When the movement cannot even settle the basic rules of giving and pilgrimage, it is not presenting a unified religious system; it is presenting a pile of competing private readings.

And this is where the movement needs to stop pretending that “we all just disagree a little.” The truth is that Quranism needs an actual convergence project. It needs to come to some shared agreement on the basic pillars: what salat is, how it is performed, when fasting happens, what counts as zakat, what hajj involves, and what minimum common practice is required for the movement to function as a religion rather than a collection of independent theories. It does not matter whether that shared method ends up looking Sunni, Shia, or completely different. What matters is that there is a method at all. Otherwise the movement will keep splitting into factions faster than it can grow.

• History already showed one important lesson about religious fracture: communities that want to survive eventually force consensus around core disputes. If you look into the history of early Christianity: The First Council of Nicaea was convened in 325 not because Christians already agreed, but because the disagreements had become dangerous enough to threaten the unity and stability of the entire community. Bishops from different regions, traditions, and theological schools gathered under imperial pressure to debate foundational questions publicly, argue their interpretations, condemn positions they believed crossed essential boundaries, and finally establish a creed that could function as a common center. The resulting Nicene Creed did not eliminate every disagreement overnight — conflict continued for decades, and the creed itself was later expanded at the First Council of Constantinople in 381 — but the process created something the movement desperately needed: a recognized baseline. Christians could now distinguish between disagreements inside the shared framework and disagreements that rejected the framework itself. That distinction mattered because no civilization can survive indefinitely if every community is still arguing over the definition of its own foundations. That is the lesson Quranists need to learn fast: not every dispute has to be solved forever, but the foundations do have to be fixed if the movement wants to endure. Without that, it is just a movement of unresolved arguments dressed up as reform.

So stop treating endless fragmentation as a virtue and start building a serious framework for survival. If the movement truly believes the Qur’an alone can sustain a religious civilization, then it needs more than scattered individual interpretations uploaded to websites and debates on social media — it needs a real process of convergence. Call it a council, congress, assembly, symposium, or something entirely new, but gather the major Quranist thinkers, communities, and schools into one sustained effort to establish a minimum shared foundation for the core pillars: what salat fundamentally is, how it is practiced, how Ramadan is determined, what zakat obligates, what hajj requires, and what counts as the movement’s common religious baseline. No movement can survive indefinitely while its followers disagree not only on details, but on the definition of the practices themselves. Unity does not require absolute uniformity, but it does require recognized boundaries and a shared center. Without that, “Qur’an alone” risks remaining not a coherent religious tradition, but a permanent argument about whether one even exists.

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You can already see the points in the info-graphic diagram picture above, but I would like to write my thoughts as well.

Lately I’ve been looking more into the old Arab calendar system and the whole discussion around the Nasīʾ (intercalary/leap month), and honestly the more I look into it, the more I feel like a lunisolar calendar makes far more sense for Ramadan than the purely lunar calendar we use today.

Before anyone misunderstands me: I’m not a Quranist. I’m Sunni. I’m not claiming “everyone got Islam wrong” or saying I reject Ramadan as Muslims practice it today. I’m just talking about something I genuinely find intellectually interesting and difficult to ignore once you start thinking about it. Even Mufti Abu Layth has discussed the topic and pointed toward the old Arab calendar possibly being lunisolar before the Nasīʾ (leap month) system disappeared (despite him being a Sunni just like me).

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One thing that always puzzled me is how Ramadan today completely rotates through every season. Sometimes it falls in winter with short, cool fasting days. Other times it falls in peak summer where people fast 18–20+ hours. During the Summer solstice, In some northern countries like Norway or Sweden the sun barely sets at all and you have to fast for around 20 hours, while in some southern regions like Australia, Argentina, South Africa fasting can be shorter than 12 hours at the exact same time.

That creates a situation where Ramadan can become radically different depending on geography and historical timing. One generation experiences relatively moderate fasting for most of their lives, while another generation experiences extremely long and exhausting fasts for decades.

And then there’s the polar issue. During parts of the year, regions near the North and South poles can experience 24 hours of daylight or darkness. Modern scholars have had to create all kinds of workaround fatwas because the calendar itself no longer aligns naturally with balanced daylight conditions. That alone makes me wonder whether something about the original system changed historically.

The theory is basically this:

The pre-Islamic Arabs used a lunar calendar, but every few years they inserted an additional month (Nasīʾ) to realign the lunar months with the solar seasons (it was the leap month, just like February being the leap year in contemporary Gregorian calendar). Similar systems existed among other ancient peoples too. This would keep months tied to consistent seasons instead of endlessly rotating backward through the solar year.

If that’s true, then Ramadan may originally have remained around the same seasonal window every year instead of drifting across all seasons.

And honestly, when you think about Ramadan specifically, that actually solves a huge number of problems.

If Ramadan stayed around the September–October equinox period, fasting conditions globally would become far more balanced. Day and night around the world become much closer in length during the equinoxes. You don’t get the massive seasonal extremes you see during summer or winter solstice periods.

Instead of some Muslims fasting 8 hours while others fast 20 hours, most of the world would be fasting something closer to a relatively moderate and stable range.

It would also largely avoid the absurd polar daylight problem where entire regions have almost no sunset or sunrise at certain times of the year.

And also from a practical perspective, a stable Ramadan season also creates a much more predictable rhythm for life, worship, sleep, work, travel, and community practices every year instead of Ramadan constantly shifting into entirely different climatic realities.

• What makes this even more fascinating to me is that many of the Arabic month names themselves seem seasonal in nature. Rabi‘ literally relates to spring. Ramadan is often linked linguistically to intense heat or the end of summer heat. Some researchers argue these names only really make sense if the months originally stayed attached to particular seasons.

I’m not saying I know for certain that this theory is correct. But I do think it deserves way more discussion than it gets.

Because when you compare the two systems side-by-side, the lunisolar model seems dramatically more coherent for Ramadan from both a practical and global perspective.

Even Hajj becomes interesting to think about under this lens. Under the current purely lunar system, Hajj rotates through every season imaginable, including periods of brutal Arabian summer heat. But under a lunisolar system, pilgrimage would remain anchored to a stable climatic season every year.

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So why don't we revert back to that Luni-Solar calendar system?

1. He discouraged wearing of hijab and encouraged Turkish women to adopt western clothing. As far as I know, Quranists believe that wearing the hijab isn’t mandatory for women

2. He used to drink alcohol. And according to Quranists, consuming alcohol is not haram

3. He disallowed teaching religion in schools. And Sunni Islam was predominant in Turkey during then. So in other words he prevented children from being taught Sunni Islam.

4. He replaced the Lunar Hijri calendar with Solar English Gregorian calendar. And according to Quranists True Islamic Calendar is Solar Not Lunar, Each Month is 30 Days Unlike Islamic Hijri Calendar & Muslims Don't Fast in Ramadan

5. He banned the thobe & turban and replaced them with western clothes like hat & shirt. And as you know, many sunnis consider thobe & turban to be Sunnah dress.

6. He banned Arabic Adhan and made it mandatory to give Adhan in Turkish. And he also replaced the Arabic alphabet with Latin alphabet. And as far as I know, according to Quranists you can pray in whatever language you want, it doesn’t have to be only Arabic.

7. He replaced Sharia law with secular law in Turkey. As far as I know, Quranists are against implementing the sharia law like triple talaq, distribution of property (where son gets double than daughter) stoning adulterers, chopping off hands for theft, flogging for fornication?

8. He abolished the sunni Ottoman Caliphate. And according to Quranists there is no such thing as Caliphate as far as I know.

9. He translated the Quran from Arabic to Turkish so that lay people who didn’t understand Arabic could read the Quran & interpret it according to their own understandings instead of following scholars?

So was he a Quranist? Anyone here from Turkey? What do you think? I'm not a Quranist but I'm curious to know.

Edit: Why am I getting downvoted so much?