First of all, I’m straight and I’m just asking this question to learn more about Islam. Please correct me if I’m wrong and I’m asking this to clarify the doubts that I have.

So from my knowledge right now (I haven’t done much research yet), having feelings for the same sex isn’t a sin because obviously we cannot control how we feel and this is just the way people are.

Is it a sin to marry someone of the same sex? If you make it halal, is it still a sin? Why should people be punished for wanting someone (I believe love can happen between anyone and we shouldn’t judge other people for how they feel)?

I have heard the story of Prophet Lot (Lut) and even now in many Muslim countries, homosexuality is illegal and you can get punished for it.

It doesn’t make sense to me that God would punish people for wanting to be with someone they like (as in a guy getting married to a guy or something)

(Also I’m not sure if this is the right place to post it because they keep removing my posts from the other communities)

Thoughts on this video?

Note: This has to be said but please give it a watch with undivided attention and provide serious answers instead of dismissive shallow ones. I understand that we have every right to be angry of Islam for its harms on countless of Muslims and ex-Muslims (like us). But we also have to be intellectually honest and respectful when it comes to engaging and arguing with Muslims and about the validity of Islam itself. This is so that Muslims will hopefully get to see us as dignified human beings who has the right to leave Islam and co-exist peacefully and respectfully.

Even the verses about hypocrites — he himself was a hypocrite, and those verses were basically meant to prevent people from kicking his ass.

It’s just heaven, pure bliss, having only predictable noble slaves who do whatever is most beneficial for Momo.He doesn’t give a shit about the noble slaves who live according to his algorithms.

There is a documented and observable connection between the extreme forms of gender segregation practiced in a number of islamic societies and the sexual exploitation of boys by men. I had no idea how many classical islamic scholars addressed this issue that plagued past Muslim civilizations. To the point that even the scholars themselves struggled with this. Here are some troubling statements from Islam's great scholars:

- Sufyan al-Thawri saw a beardless young man and he said: "Take him out from here, because with every woman walks one demon (tempting people towards her) and with every boy walk ten demons." ["Tilbis Iblis", 1/338].

- Al-Najib ibn al-Suddi said: "A man should not spend the night in a house with beardless youths." ["Al Durr Al Manthur fi al Tafsir al Mathur"]

- Abu Saaib said: "On a worshipper, we fear the temptation of one boy more than we fear the temptation of seventy virgins." ["Dham al-Hawaa", 92].

- Al-Hassan ibn Zakwan said: "Don't sit with the children of the affluent, because their boys look like women and they are a bigger temptation than virgins." ["Shu'b al-Iman", 4/358].

- Bishr bin al-Haarith said: "Stay away from the youthful boys." ["Dham al-Hawaa", 94].

- About Imam Malik it is reported: "Imam Malik used to prevent beardless youth to enter his gatherings." ["Majmu al-Fatawa", 4/26].

- Imam al-Bayhaqi even made a chapter titled "What is narrated about [the prohibition of] looking at a beardless boy with lust."

- Ibn Muflih Hanbali quotes Ibn al-Jawzi as saying: "The pious predecesors used to say about the beardless boys: They are a greater temptation than virgins, so looking at them is a bigger temptation." ["Al-Furu", 5/113].

- Ibn Taymiyah said: "A beardless young man has the same ruling as a strange woman in many situations ... so it is not permissible to look at them with lust, and this is agreed upon." ["Al-Fatawa al-Kubra", 3/202].

- Al-Malibari said: "It is forbidden to shake hands with handsome beardless boys, as it is forbidden to look at them with lust." ["Fath", 3/263].

- About Imam Ahmad it is reported: "A man came to Imam Ahmad and with him was a handsome boy. Imam Ahmad asked: "who is this?" The man said: "This is my son." Imam Ahmad said: "Don't come with him again." ["Tabaqaat al-Hanabilah", 1/127]. According to other narrations, he said it because he feared that other people might not know its his son and would accuse him of carrying with him a boy for intimacy.

- Imam Nawawi ash-Shafi'ii said: "Similarly the scholars forbade a man to look at the face of a beardless youth if he is handsome, whether with or without desire, and whether it is free of fitnah (temptation) or there is the fear thereof. This is the correct view which was favoured by the scholars. This was stated by al-Shaafa’i and the prominent scholars of his madhhab (may Allaah have mercy on them). The evidence for this is that a beardless youth is, in some ways, like a woman; he may be desired as a woman is desired, and his form may be beautiful like that of a woman, and many of them may be more beautiful than many women. The prohibition applies more to them for another reason, which is that in their case there may result from attachment to them types of evil that do not occur in the case of women." ["Sharh Muslim", 4/31].

To top this all off, there are incidents throughout islamic history where scholarly figures have been embroiled in scandals with young boys. One of them had to do with Imam Al-Kisa'i, who was a master of Arabic grammar and one of the seven canonical authorities of Quranic recitation. Again, one of the flipping 7 Quranic recitations go through him, like Hafs and Asim. Apparently, a scribe came by Kisa'i's classroom and caught him in a compromised position with a young student. The student remained standing startled to which Kisa'i said to the visitor "The action fell upon him so he became erect/standing". And this was known among scholarly circles, even his greatest student, Al Duri, was questioned about Kisa'i's dirty habit but he deflected by emphasizing his precision in Quranic recitation, great knowledge of the arabic language and truthfulness in ahadith.

Another case is Yahya Ibn Aktham, an influential jurist, mujtahid (authoritative interpreter of Islamic religious law) and Chief Justice (High Judge) during the Abbasid Caliphate. He was notoriously dogged by accusation of attraction to young boys, to the extent that it became the subject of satire in Baghdad. There is the incident with Ibn Zaydan, a young scribe who used to write in Yahya ibn Aktham’s presence. The judge pinched his cheek, and the boy became embarrassed and ashamed and dropped the pen from his hand. Yahya then said to him, “Take the pen and write,” then dictated:

"O moon, I scratched you and you grew angry,

And in your pride you have turned away from me.

If you dislike scratching and biting,

Then, my master, remain forever veiled.

Do not display your temple-locks as a temptation to people,

Making of them scorpions above your cheeks;

For you kill a poor man, seduce a devotee,

And leave the judge of the Muslims tormented."

When these troubling reports concerning Yahya reached the Caliph al-Ma'mun, he wanted to test him. He set upon him a slave of extreme beauty, then went to eavesdrop on them. He heard Yahya say to him, “Were it not for you, we would have been believers.” a self-incriminating line where Yahya is essentially admitting that his desire for the slave is so overwhelming it undermines his own faith/piety. Al-Ma'mun then entered while reciting the two verses of Ibn Hakimah, Rashid ibn Ishaq the scribe:

"We had hoped to see justice manifest, But after hope, despair succeeded us." (Al Falaka Wa Al Maflukun)

And finally we have Ahmad Al Ghazali, the younger brother of Abu Hamid Al Ghazali (the famed islamic scholar and mujaddid). Ahmad was a scholar in his own right, as well as a preacher and a master of Sufi mysticism. He also had his own scandal which Ibn Al Jawzi documents in Talbis Iblis. Apparently, some visiting sufis once found Ahmad alone with a boy and roses laying between them, and he would look at the roses at one moment and at the boy at another moment. When they sat down, one of them said, “Perhaps we have disturbed you.” He replied, “Yes, by God.” Then the group cried out in a display of ecstasy

In another incident, someone wrote to Ahmad on a note: “You love your Turkish boy.” Ahmad read the note, then summoned the boy. He raised his gaze toward him, kissed him between the eyes, and said, “This is the answer to the note.”

Conclusion

The causal pathway is real in these high-control environments. When women are systematically removed from the social lives of men, some men redirect their sexual energy and frustration on the next most accessible subordinate males - prepubescent and adolescent boys. Beauty ideals shift towards youthful male features when female ones are veiled (niqab/hijab). As a result, boys can be dressed and treated as temporary “women", or even worse, they become a permanent viable option over women.

This was an open secret throughout much of Saudi society until MBS recently relaxed islamic rulings, and in Afghanistan, the Bacha bazi phenomenon is still alive and kicking, going back many generations. I think it's safe to say that Islam created terrible conditions via strict gender segregation rules that fueled the exploitation of young boys throughout the past 1400 years.

1. Pharaoh vs. Moses — Pharaoh tried to suppress Moses and his message, but Pharaoh and his army were ultimately destroyed while Moses and the believers were saved. Qur’an 10:90–92, 28:40.
2. The people who plotted against Jesus — They planned against Jesus, but Allah says: “They plotted, and Allah planned. And Allah is the best of planners.” Qur’an 3:54.
3. The Quraysh plotting against Muhammad ﷺ — They planned to imprison, kill, or expel him, but Allah protected him and their plan failed. Qur’an 8:30.
4. The people of Prophet Ṣāliḥ — Nine men plotted secretly to kill Ṣāliḥ and his family, but Allah destroyed the plotters. Qur’an 27:48–51.
5. The people of the trench / those persecuting believers — Those who persecuted the believers were ultimately condemned, while the faith they tried to extinguish remained. Qur’an 85:4–10.
6. The general principle:“And those who plot evil will have a severe punishment, and the plot of such people will only perish.” Qur’an 35:10.

So Muslims hold that Kalam and Kalamullah are divine, yet only Allah is divine, but yet Jesus is the word of Allah...

I know what a Muslim will say, that he was made from the Word of Allah, but all knowing being surely could have just said it properly, The Quran calls it self clear and eloquent. This would be as far from clear and eloquent as possible. Instead it clearly says "is the word of Allah" and not from the word of Allah

You can play with language all day, but "is the word" is clear as day. You would be assigning all the properties of the word of Allah, to Jesus, there is no play with it.

Muslims are adding the "made from" parts in notes, this is not what was actually said, the actual words are just plain and dry, that Jesus is word of Allah. So again, why is Allah so unclear and ineloquent when he promised the Quran to be so clear and eloquent? There are plenty of ways to say this in Arabic correctly.

>"And do not invoke with Allah another deity. There is no deity except Him. EVERYTHING will be destroyed except His Face. His is the judgement, and to Him you will be returned." Qur'an 28:88

The propensity of Muslims to make theological cheap shots is all too often on display during interreligious debates. Rather than genuinely engage with the opposing position, Muslim interlocutors frequently resort to scripted taunts that require little theological understanding and merely expose their own shallowness. Their familiar refrain, "how many Gods died on the Cross?" is a textbook example, it ignores elementary Christian theology and those who deploy it seem unaware of how ignorant it makes them appear. Meanwhile, Muslims remain strangely unaware that their own texts do more; they pose genuinely awkward theological problems for Islam.

Qur'an 28:88 states that EVERYTHING will be destroyed except His Face. The verse does not say "everything created", or "everything other than Allah" in some abstract way. It simply says everything, with the sole exception of the Face. When taken in the literal sense, this implies change that extends to the very composition of Allah, something fatal to Islamic monotheism itself. Yet, even when parsed through the interpretive logic of the various Islamic theological schools, the problem caused by this verse does not disappear, but only becomes more glaring.

Through the logic of Athari aqeedah (the creed of textual literalism)

In Atharism, the Face is affirmed as an Attribute (sifah) of Allah. The Attributes are held to be NON-identical to His Essence (dhat), but instead constitute real distinctions in Allah (see example). According to the standard logic of Atharism, when the Islamic source texts refer to an Attribute, the reference is to the Attribute itself and NOT to undifferentiated Essence. ⤵️

>"...the doctrine of Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamāʿah is to affirm the attributes of Allah..." (Ibn Taymiyyah, Kitāb Majmūʿ al-Fatāwā, 5/206)

>"whatever among the hadiths concerning the attributes is authentically reported from the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, the imams have unanimously agreed that their interpretation is simply to recite them... And whatever Allah has mentioned in the Qur'an...All of this is without [asking] how and without interpretation." (Ismāʿīl al-Taymī al-Aṣbahānī, al-Ḥujjah fī Bayān al-Maḥajjah wa-Sharḥ 'Aqīdat Ahl al-Sunnah)

>"... [the Attributes] mean that which can be understood INDEPENDENTLY of the described [the Essence] in a general sense, even though it is not a separate entity" (Ibn Taymiyyah, Kitab Majmu' al-Fatawa, 3/337)

This is simply a more elaborate way of saying that the standard logic of Athari aqeedah collapses Islamic theology from within. Since the Qur'an says EVERYTHING will be destroyed except Allah's Attribute of Face, since the Face is distinguishable from Allah’s Essence, and since Atharism insists the Qur'anic wording is to be affirmed without reinterpretation, it follows that Allah must lose His other Attributes and thus undergo change. Conclusion: following the standard logic of Atharism renders Allah as a contingent being and implodes Islam. 💥

However, in practice, when it comes to this specific verse (Q28:88), Athari scholars perform a selective sleight of hand. To 'save' Islam, the standard logic of their own system is abandoned and Allah's Attribute of Face is arbitrarily reinterpreted in this verse as referring to Allah's Essence. 😂 A bait 'n switch has taken place.

>"In this case the Face has been used to express the Essence of One who possesses a Face." Ibn Uthaymeen, Sharh al-'Aqidah al-Wasitiyyah 1/288

In clear violation of their own interpretive rules, they have no explicit verse or hadith from which to derive this exception. To stop Islam from imploding, they were forced to resort to special pleading. 👀 Thus, in trying to save Islam, it is destroyed again - their attempt at a theological Band-Aid solution rests entirely upon a logical fallacy. The Islam-breaking problems of Q28:88 remain.

Through the logic of Ash'ari and Maturidi aqa'id (the creeds involving speculative theology)

The Ash'ari and Maturidi schools of aqeedah try a different route. Unlike the Atharis, their interpretive framework can accommodate metaphorical language. They also use philosophically-informed reasoning to conclude that Attributes, such as the Face, are neither identical with the Divine Essence nor other than it, which they present as a sophisticated middle path.

>(Everything will perish except His Face) – Mujahid said: its meaning is "except Him." (Tafsir al-Qurtubi)

>"The seven attributes, which we established are not the essence, they are additional to the essence..." Al-Ghazali, Al-Iqtisad fi al-I'tiqad, First Characteristic

>"We claim that all of these attributes subsist in God's essence..." Al-Ghazali, Al-Iqtisad fi al-I'tiqad, Second Characteristic

So, the Attributes are NOT the Essence, are ADDITIONAL to the Essence, but SUBSIST in the Essence... 🤔 However, logic does not allow a third option between identity and non-identity. Either the Attributes are the same as the Essence or they are not. By simultaneously asserting that they are not the same, yet they are not distinct, the Ashari/Maturidi kalam tradition violates the law of the excluded middle. Again, as we saw with Athari aqeedah, their solution rests entirely upon a logical fallacy. The doctrine is incoherent on its own terms and the Islam-breaking problems of Q28:88 remain.

Conclusion

Qur'an 28:88 exposes fatal flaws in Islamic theology that yet again undermine the internal coherence of the religion itself. Following the logic of the various interpretive frameworks of Islamic theology, there are ultimately two options. Either:

🔹 'Allah' loses multiple Attributes, meaning he's a composite being subject to change, is not the immutable God claimed by Islam, and so Islam is false.

🔹 Or various types of fallacious reasoning must be deployed to avoid that conclusion, meaning the coherence of Islam rests on logical fallacies, and so Islam is false.

Those are the options.

So I know someone who needs the answer to these questions.

1. Beating a woman and justifying it by saying it's just light hitting

2. The way everyone interprets hijab however they like

3. The idea that a woman is an 'awrah and has to be covered – even though what's considered 'awrah is already clear (and yes, she really should cover)

4. The idea that as soon as a woman gets married she has to obey her husband completely, because they say Islam says so

5. In married couples, if the woman refuses sex – whether she's tired or even not in the right headspace for it – why should she be cursed for that!!

And why should I be responsible for someone else’s actions and when they’re completely out of my control??It’s complete bullshit.

I understand that the traditional Islamic position is that a woman’s hair is `awrah and therefore has to be covered in front of non-mahram men.

But my question is: why?

Why would Allah make covering our hair an obligation in the first place? I understand covering the body and not deliberately showing the shape of the body, but I genuinely don’t understand why hair itself needs to be hidden.

I personally think hair is just hair. A woman can be beautiful with her hair covered or uncovered, and men are still responsible for lowering their gaze. So I don’t understand why hair specifically is something that Allah would make obligatory to hide.

And please don’t answer with:
“Allah commanded it, so just follow it.”

I already know that is the traditional answer. I’m asking why this is considered a command in the first place and how we know that this specific obligation is what Allah intended.

I’m also not asking for someone to tell me that I’m “thinking too much” or that I should just have faith. I want to understand the reasoning and what do you think when you read this verse and what it means for you

“…and let them draw their khumur over their bosoms…”
— Qur’an 24:31

This is a simple problem that keeps coming up. It also acts as a follow up from my last post.

Quran 10:94 says:

>

The surah just finished telling the stories of Noah, Moses, Aaron and Pharaoh. Muhammad is told that if he has any doubt, he should go ask the people who already have the earlier Scripture.

1. What Scripture were they actually reading?

The Jews in Arabia in the 7th century. They were reading the Torah as it existed at that time.

2. What do the actual manuscripts of that Torah say?

We have them. Dead Sea Scrolls and the textual tradition behind the Septuagint are centuries older than Muhammad. The stories of Noah, Moses and the Exodus in those manuscripts match the biblical versions, not the Quran’s versions.

3. The usual response

“The Quran is correcting the corrupted Torah.”

Okay. Then where are the manuscripts of the uncorrupted Torah that match the Quran’s stories? Even one would help. None have shown up.

4. This isn’t just one verse

• 16:43 / 21:7 – “Ask the people of the Reminder if you don’t know.”
• 5:43 – How can they come to you for judgment when they already have the Torah with Allah’s judgment in it?
• 5:68 – People of the Scripture are standing on nothing until they uphold the Torah and the Gospel.

In all of these the Quran treats the Scripture the Jews and Christians actually had as still usable and authoritative. It never points to some other lost version.

5. Muhammad himself treated their Torah as the reference

In a well known incident recorded in Sahih Bukhari and Muslim, Jews brought an adultery case to Muhammad. He asked them what the Torah said about the punishment. They produced the Torah, tried to conceal the verse of stoning, and were forced to show it. Muhammad then carried out the judgment according to what was written in the scroll they had.

The same collection records that the Jews in Medina used to read the Torah in Hebrew and explain it in Arabic to the Muslims.

The Quran itself says in 3:93: “Bring the Torah and recite it, if you are truthful.”

So the “Scripture” in 10:94 is not some lost pure version. It is the book they were actually reading and could physically bring out.

The problem

You can’t tell someone to go check a corrupted book to confirm the truth of what you just revealed. And you can’t claim the Quran is restoring the original stories when every manuscript we have of the earlier Scripture disagrees with the Quran and agrees with the Bible.

So the question is simple, if the Torah available in Muhammad’s time was already corrupted, why does the Quran keep telling people to consult it? And if it wasn’t corrupted, why do the stories not match?

Based on the field of textual criticism, scholars estimate that the New Testament is 99.5% to 99.9% textually accurate compared to the original writings from 2,000 years ago. For the Old Testament, discoveries like the Dead Sea Scrolls have shown a similarly high word-for-word identity rate of roughly 95% to 99% for over a thousand years of copying.

Secular historians, agnostic scholars like Bart Ehrman, and conservative theologians disagree on theological implications, they broadly agree on the data itself, the vast majority of changes have nothing to do with theology

No individual verse of the Quran can be traced to Muhammad with a surviving document written during his lifetime (or in his presence) that we can examine today. There is no autograph, no contemporary inscription, and no manuscript fragment that scholars can confidently date to before 632 CE and attribute directly to him or his scribes.

The Bible is mostly a record of God acting and speaking in history. It’s full of stories, laws, poems, prophecies, letters, and wisdom stuff. God speaks through prophets, does things in real events like creation, the Exodus, or Jesus’ life, and people write it down under inspiration. Even when it has God speaking directly, the whole thing still feels like a historical account across different kinds of writing. The claim is that God showed himself in history and the text is witnessing to that.

The Quran is different. It presents itself as God’s actual words, spoken directly. It talks in the first person as Allah speaking to Muhammad and through him to everyone else. In the traditional Islamic view, it’s uncreated divine speech that Muhammad just recited exactly as he received it, with no normal human author involved.

The issue this creates, is the compilation coming after his death with no way for him to verify its accuracy and solely relying on companions who did not all agree on the recitations. Fast forward through time and we have Tafsir, Usul al-Fiqh. Include the Sunnah and there is no way to know the Quran is truly as Muhammad recited it, and with the later interpreting systems, do we know if we are getting further or closer to the true intended meaning of the clear concise universal message.

Jews, Christians, and Muslims define their God as PERFECT, OMNIPOTENT, and OMNISCIENT.

But it is easy to show that this God is false because these three attributes are false.

PERFECT? They say their God is perfect, but the world and the beings that their God created are imperfect. How can a being be called perfect if its creations are imperfect and full of flaws? For instance, a craftsman cannot be described as perfect if his works are faulty.

Another problem with perfection: They say their deity created the universe. But why would a perfect being desire or want to create anything at all? By definition, a perfect being cannot desire or want something, as that would imply it lacks something, and therefore that it is not perfect.

OMNIPOTENT? God can do anything; nothing can limit his power. If he were almighty, he could have created any world. Otherwise, he is not almighty.

So what stopped him from directly creating a happy world with free and perfect beings? Why would he have created instead a world full of pain, with beings full of flaws, who must suffer and be tested in order to be sorted out? This is all the more incomprehensible given that the scriptures tell us he was able to create another place without pain, populated by free and happy creatures, called heaven.

Religious people have tried to resolve this contradiction by saying that their creator wanted humans to be free and that it is humans who create pain. Unfortunately, this argument does not hold, since it shows that their God was unable to create a world with free humans and no pain, which proves that he is not omnipotent.

Three possible solutions to the problem of this supreme being's omnipotent nature: 1 - He is not omnipotent; he just did what he could. 2 - He is malevolent; he deliberately created a world full of misery when he could have created any world he wanted. 3 - He is false.

OMNISCIENT? He knows everything—the past, the present, and the future. The scriptures claim that this creator knows the future and everything that will happen. And they also claim that he created humans free and endowed with free will. But if he knows the future, then it is already written. Free will is therefore an illusion.

If God knows what you will do tomorrow, you have no alternative. If you can act otherwise, then this being is mistaken, so he is not omniscient. If you cannot act otherwise, then you have no freedom.

Other contradictions: If this deity knows in advance that humans will do evil and creates them anyway, who is responsible? This omniscient being knew, even before creation, all the evil he was going to create.

CONCLUSION These three attributes are the very definition of this god. If even one is false, this god is impossible.

As Stendhal said when facing the misery of the world, "God's only excuse is that he does not exist.

I myself stick to islamic teaching and grew up in a country where people are predominantly muslim. But how can I not question the morality of Islam if prophet Muhammed(SAW), who is supposed to be supreme moral example, married Aisha when she was only 6? If her age wasn’t actually 6(though she was described as playing with dolls which isn’t a typical behavior that would be done by a girl that reached puberty) she would be maybe 16 at best and that would still be morally questionable. The fact of the matter is this pushes very bad narrative especially in countries like Afghanistan where they mischaracterize and weaponize Islam to oppress women.

So how is this morally defendable because you can’t say presentism fallacy because it would mean that Islam has outdated morality?

Again I repeat that I am not anti Islam I just wonder how I should proceed next in regards to my faith.

Mark 2:5–12

Jesus tells the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” The scribes immediately object that only God can forgive sins. Jesus then doesn't correct their premise. Instead, he heals the man “so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”

Mark 2:27–28

A prophet normally calls people back to God's Law. Jesus instead describes himself as Lord of the Sabbath the institution given by God himself.

John 14:8–10

Philip asks Jesus to show them the Father.

Jesus responds

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.”

Then he asks how Philip can say, “Show us the Father,” after Jesus has been with him.

There are several places where Jesus is worshipped after his resurrection without rebuking the worshippers.

For example Matthew 28:9

The women take hold of Jesus' feet and worship him.

Matthew 28:17

The disciples see him and worship him.

And then John 20:28

Thomas responds to the risen Jesus

“My Lord and my God!”

Jesus doesn't respond, “Don't call me God.” Instead, he responds to Thomas' belief.

John 5:22–23

Jesus says that the Father has entrusted judgment to the Son so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.

So this isn't an argument about the trinity. This is, Is Jesus merely a prophet?

For a non-Muslim, the hadith looks good at first glance, but I think it's problematic theologically. Because when you look at it literally, it basically tells you that the Muslim who killed a dhimmi will go to hell. But there are plenty of other hadiths which say that basically all Muslims go to heaven. Also no matter how big was your crime, there is always the option of repentance. Is Allah no longer the most merciful after you kill a dhimmi? And the Muslim scholars actually do "interpret" the hadith as "you can actually still go to heaven", but it just contradicts the hadith.

And Allah forgave to this mass murderer (Bukhari 3470):

>The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "Amongst the men of Bani Israel there was a man who had murdered ninety-nine persons. Then he set out asking (whether his repentance could be accepted or not). He came upon a monk and asked him if his repentance could be accepted. The monk replied in the negative and so the man killed him. He kept on asking till a man advised to go to such and such village. (So he left for it) but death overtook him on the way. While dying, he turned his chest towards that village (where he had hoped his repentance would be accepted), and so the angels of mercy and the angels of punishment quarrelled amongst themselves regarding him. Allah ordered the village (towards which he was going) to come closer to him, and ordered the village (whence he had come), to go far away, and then He ordered the angels to measure the distances between his body and the two villages. So he was found to be one span closer to the village (he was going to). So he was forgiven."

So either you can kill a dhimmi and repent and go to heaven - in that case Bukhari 6914 is wrong. Or 6914 is right and a Muslim will go to hell, which contradicts many texts, for example Bukhari 2856: "He should not punish him who worships none besides Him". Not doing shirk is supposed to guarantee paradise. And there are many hadiths like "Do this and he will forgive you all sins. Do that and he will forgive you all sins." And then out of nowhere 6914 totally blocks paradise.

I find the natural explanation to be that the dhimmis fabricated the hadith to protect themselves.

There's no article on it on WikiIslam. And it seems as if nobody cares. But the mubahala is supposed to be one of the Islam-validation techniques! So let me open this topic.

Firstly, the term mubaahala (مباهلة). It is a verbal noun from the verb baahala (باهل), which Wiktionary means "to curse one another". And it is of from III, which is often "trying to do form I". For example form III qaatala (fighting) is for trying to do form I qatl (killing). And there is also the basic form بهل which just means "to curse". So I guess form III means "trying to curse the other one, unless he curses me". Just like a muqaatala would be "trying to kill him, unless he kills me".

And that is really the essence of the mubahala. Two parties who have a conflict call upon their god(s) to send curse upon the wrong one. And they both sincerely believe that it will afflict the other party and the real gods will do the job and reveal who was right. So the expectation is that one of the parties will be observably cursed - the ultimate result that comes to mind would be death. Because god(s) supposedly control who dies first. I'm an Atheist and what I actually expect is that, both parties will try to claim that "You see! This is the result of the curse on you!" - for anything that happens.

There is only one word from the root بهل in the Quran, in 3:61. And it's actually form VIII ibtahala (ابتهل), specifically nabtahil (نبتهل), meaning "we curse". So again, mubahala is like the word tawheed. It's not in the Quran, but it's considered a very important word in Islam by most Muslims. I'll first look into the context of 3:61. The part where I start is preceded by Mary (the sister of Aron) giving birth to Jesus and then it calls out Christians:

>55. God said, “O Jesus, I am terminating your life, and raising you to Me, and clearing you of those who disbelieve. And I will make those who follow you superior to those who disbelieve, until the Day of Resurrection. Then to Me is your return; then I will judge between you regarding what you were disputing.

>56. As for those who disbelieve, I will punish them with a severe punishment, in this world and the next, and they will have no helpers.

>57. And as for those who believe and do good works, He will give them their rewards in full. God does not love the unjust.”

>58. This is what We recite to you of the Verses and the Wise Reminder.

>59. The likeness of Jesus in God’s sight is that of Adam: He created him from dust, then said to him, “Be,” and he was.

>60. The truth is from your Lord, so do not be of those who doubt.

>61. And if anyone disputes with you (حاجك) about him (فيه), after the knowledge that has come to you, say, “Come, let us call our children and your children, and our women and your women, and ourselves and yourselves, and let us invoke God’s curse on the liars (نبتهل فنجعل لعنت الله على الكاذبين).”

>62. This is the narrative of truth: there is no god but God. God is the Mighty, the Wise.

>63. But if they turn away—God knows the corrupt.

>64. Say, “O People of the Book, come to terms common between us and you: that we worship none but God, and that we associate nothing with Him, and that none of us takes others as lords besides God.” And if they turn away, say, “Bear witness that we have submitted.”

So it starts with "if someone disputes with singular-you" (refers to Muhammad, according to Tabari). And "about him" refers to "about Jesus". But Tabari also says that it could refer to truth - "about truth". Arabic has no "it". So "the truth" (الحق) is also "him". And "the truth" is supposed to be that Jesus is just a slave of god. And it's challenging Christians to participate in this mutual cursing. It seems to me that the plan is: We kill you and then we say "Allah did it". It would be totally in line with other parts of the Quran where humans killing are considered as Allah killing (like in 8:17).

And what actually motivated me to write this is the mubahala that recently happened on the Arabic YouTube between محمد ابن شمس الدين and the مدجنة about the takfeer of Suyuti, and bid'a of Abu Hanifa and Nawawi. And they actually did an online mubahala, but in it they said that they want Allah to bring the destruction بغير قتل ("not by killing") - looks like they know how the traditional mubahala works... and so far nothing happened.

I'd add what Ibn Hajar said:

>It is known by experience that he who calls to al-mubahala while being a liar, one year would not pass after the day of al-mubahala except that he is perished.

So yeah, someone is supposed to die within one year after the mubahala. And I wish some Christian critic of Islam would do the mubahala, hide for one year and then say: I was expected to die within one year and I didn't die! Of course after he eventually dies they would say it's the mubahala, but it would be too late in traditional Islam.

You will find nothing if you search for mubahala in the hadiths, but you need to search for "Lian" (لعان). And it's actually safer to search in English, because it only appears in brackets and the original only refers to it vaguely. In Sahih Bukhari / The book of military expeditions / Chapter 72: The story of the people of Najran (Christians), we find that the Christians of Najran (who also pointed out the sister of Aron problem) rejected the offer and basically, they agreed to pay the jizya and become dhimmis:

>Al-`Aqib and Saiyid, the rulers of Najran, came to Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) with the intention of doing Lian one of them said to the other, "Do not do (this Lian) for, by Allah, if he is a Prophet and we do this Lian, neither we, nor our offspring after us will be successful." Then both of them said (to the Prophet (ﷺ) ), "We will give what you should ask but you should send a trustworthy man with us, and do not send any person with us but an honest one." The Prophet (ﷺ) said, "I will send an honest man who Is really trustworthy." Then every one of the companions of Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) wished to be that one. Then the Prophet said, "Get up, O Abu 'Ubaida bin Al-Jarrah." When he got up, Allah's Messenger (ﷺ) said, "This is the Trustworthy man of this (Muslim) nation."

I'm not a big fan of the 9th century Muslims writing about what supposedly happened in the 7th century, but it should also be noted that Lian in the hadiths is also used for problems in a marriage. It is used in cases when the husband accuses his wife of adultery, but doesn't have the 4 witnesses, so the husband and wife do the Lian (like the mubahala) and it ends up with a divorce (Bukhari 5314):

>The Prophet (ﷺ) made an Ansari man and his wife carry out Lian, and then separated them by divorce.

There is a pre-Islam "sotah" tradition in Judaism too (Ordeal of the bitter water). And actually, a lot of "Muhammad's creativity" can be explained by just copying from the Jews.

So the Quran instructed Muhammad to do the mubahala about Jesus (is he just a prophet), but the Christians supposedly rejected to do the mubahala. And I'd also add that Muhammad did arrive with Fatima, Ali, Hussain and Hasan, which is a kind of pro-Shia point ("he wasn't supposed to bring Abu Bakr and Umar, because they're hypocrites anyway").

So the first question is: Was the mubahala in the Quran for Muhammad only, or are the Muslims expected to continue to do mubahalas? I don't know, but the loudest sect are the salafais and they say Muslims should continue to do mubahalas.

And there are stories about the sahaba doing mubahalas: Ibn Masud was challenging his opponents to do mubahala about the idda of women (he said it ends with delivery). Ibn Abbas was also challenging people to do a mubahala multiple times, but again, everyone ran away from it. It looks like the traditional narrative is that a righteous Muslim challenges to do a mubahala and then everyone runs away. But so far, no one actually did a mubahala.

The first mubahala, where both parties actually agreed to do it, was between Yahya ibn Abd Allah and Abd Allah ibn Mus‘ab al-Zubayri, dated around 800 CE, that is 200 years after Muhammad. Zubayri accused Yahya of planning a rebellion against the Abbasid caliph. After the mubahala, Zubayri supposedly died on the same day. Since it's highly political, it could be just a political propaganda. Also it's very early and I've read there are multiple versions of what exactly happened to him. But based on this story, the expectation is clear: You should die on the same day of the mubahala. And not on the first year. Why would Allah wait to punish the liar?

I found that Ibn Taymiyyah (14th century) was calling for mubahalas, but they didn't take place. Looks like mubahalas are not happening much. Then Ibn Hajar in 15th century made the claim about people dying within 1 year after mubahala, after supposed personal experience where he did a mubahala, with a follower of Ibn Arabi, who died in 2 months.

Then kinda no mubahala happened (maybe low-profile cases were not recorded). Then the Ahmadiya founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (19th century) challenged people to mubahala. There's a lot of debate about interpretation of the challenges. So it's like "Mirza challenged him, but then Mirza died first!" but Ahmadis say "But the other party didn't accept the challenge, so it means nothing". And I'm not actually planning to analyze all of his mubahalas, even thought it is an interesting topic.

Then there were some lower-profile mubahalas after which people fight over the interpretation of the outcome.

And in our century, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the spokesman of ISIS challenged people to a mubahala in 2014, but there was no face-to-face actual mubahala done and he died in 2016. Again since nobody accepted, it's hard to make anything of it.

In 2022, there was the YouTube mubahala between Ali Dawah and The Apostate Prophet (who was an Atheist at the time). It was a bad joke.

Until we arrive to this year (2026) mubahala between Muhammad ibn Shams ad-Deen and the Mudajjana group. These guys have millions of subscribers, so we expect Allah to show his power. So far, nothing is happening.

I have some questions: Firstly, why are we even trying to curse? Why not use rational argumentation instead? And why is the result of mubahala not clearly interpretable? And why are Muslims not doing it regularly? And why is Allah not doing an immediate punishment?

If mubahala worked, we would have a clear sign from god on what the truth is. But even according to the Islamic stories, at Muhammad and sahaba time, an actual mubahala didn't even happen. Then there are some lower profile cases where it supposedly was very effective, a lot of cases where it's a matter of interpretation and one joke.