r/CritiqueIslam

I am a Muslim from Kazakhstan, born and raised in the West. I consider myself fairly religious and I'm married to a Pakistani Muslim man.

However I was raised by parents who discussed religion, not just Islam, very openly and were very open to questions and critique. I was raised to believe Islam and the Quran are up for interpretation and I don't follow any Hadith or tend to listen to scholars. I have opinions and there are things that I openly disagree with within our religion.

However, I don't consider myself fully westernised and since becoming active on reddit only this year I found some acceptance within muslim communities here, mostly among women. I'm not white enough for the whites and not muslim enough for the muslims.

But I wonder is what I see on reddit genuinely a good representation of the thoughts in our communities? Some of the posts I'm seeing are so extreme, I have made a few myself, asking simple questions wanting the perspective of non western people thinking there'd be more understanding of the nuances of being raised within Islam. But instead my comments and most replies to any comments I make are filled with attacks on my whole character, how I'm going to hell, or normalising sin by simply living in a way that doesn't align with their views. Theres a lot of that 'holier than though' attitudes coming through as if the people commenting have never sinned in their life. Everyone sins, and everyone has a different level of what they consider a sin they would never commit. There's millions of tik toks out there joking about this exactly, how a muslim will commit every sin imaginable but will look at you like you're satan himself for offering them bacon. They're jokes yeah but that's how many muslims around me live. Being a strict muslim is not realistic imo, south asians are often the exception. My husband grew up in the west but within a much stricter religious home, and this is what I see amongst many Pakistanis.

I don't see an issue with that, you can be religious but I don't understand the hate for muslims who choose not to be, or who decide to question. This was a source of a lot of our arguments within our marriage at the beginning due to the fact that I thought my husbands lack of comprehending his own religion, his lack of questioning anything just showed he was willing to blindly follow something he doesn't understand or even knows if he agrees with it or not.

Like I said before, I believe all religions are up for interpretation and therefore I don't stick to all the rules that are seen amongst many muslims as black and white, but having this opinion apparently isn't allowed, because there's nothing 'personal' about Islam according to them.

I'd love to see the perspective of muslims here who see themselves as having a moderate haram/halal ratio, what do you think about this. But also from non muslim perspective, I know most of you aren't active in muslim subs but have you noticed this?

I think this is the strongest argument against classical theism but let's apply it to islam.

If God is omnipotent and omniscient, he can lie to us and change our reality. So how can we know if everything said in islam (Charia, Paradise for believers) is true?

Let's say, for the sake of argyment, that Islam is true in the sense that a well-defined Allah sent a revelation and laws to Muhammad. What guarantee do I have that I will go to Paradise after following Islam?

Allah could send atheists to Paradise and Muslims to Hell,
Christians to Paradise and others to Hell,
500 pagans to Paradise, 200 Zoroastrians to Hell, and billions into infinite reincarnation. (Why not?)

Or perhaps he created Hell but has never actually sent anyone there. There are infinitely many logical possibilities that contradict your creed like this.

You cannot refute this by saying,

"If everything in our religion is true, then everything will happen as written in our text."

Because your God could modify every aspect of reality, our minds, or even your texts without us ever noticing it. Your creed would have no power against a God capable of doing such things.

So we don't have any rational reason to believe in islam even if islam is true !

Once you realize this, it becomes absurd to submit your life to a God who can do whatever he wants, regardless of what you believe or do.

Three years ago, these question would have sounded blasphemous to me. I put the disclaimer in the title so it does not cause unnecessary hurt sentiments, so if you're like that please don't proceed.

I find that the only way to truly accept Allah and the religion is when you erase the YOU. There are no questions, no doubts, no nothing. Islam is very clear on the subject of servant and god.

I find islam, the religion used in the worst possible ways. I'm aware, the religion itself has little to do with it. But I find the evilness, among me and my fellow men, to be extremely irritable. We as humans are something of a terrible species, individually and more so collectively.

Now, of course, god created me to worship him. Why? I am to enter heaven only by his mercy? I am, as I said before, nothing. And Nature, and life in its way, drills the lessons of helplessness, and misery, and fear into us mortals. It pushes us to our kness, which makes me question.

Do I only believe in Allah, because I'm hopeful a judgement day? A day where everything shall be weighed? Every action? Every sentiment? I barely accept god of my own accord? It seems pretty cruel to me that a world of good and evil and suffering. A test and a consciousness that screams rebillion, and a life and death and the exam. It seems to me, that god only exists becaue I want it to. Is that enough evidence for him to be there?

I've been told to not ask questions, I'm aware I have little intellect and rationality, and the questions can't be tackled in the way, I am going about it. But I have been gifted with life. I have to live and supposedly am a part of this test. And aupposedly have no say.

I find god to be cruel. I find god to be aloof.

I do not think there is a superior way of life than islam. I do not believe that the religion is archaic. I am not of the opinion that human intellect is the one and only source of truth or capable of every answer.

But I find myself a useless cog in a machine, nothing of my choice, and I feel used and abused in a system far bigger than anything, I feel forced and persecuted. I feel lost and angry, and sad, depressive.

I never quieten the questions. Quietning them is wrong to me. Because I would arrive at truth only by seeking not abstaining.

I want to believe. Perhaps I will.

TLDR;

WHAT MAKES YOU BELIEVE IN ALLAH? THE CORE ARGUMENT THAT YOU FALL BACK TO WHEN YOU HAVE DOUBTS.

I have been watching youtube shorts of both christian and muslim apologist. They always post videos trying to convert each other and hurling insult on each other. Don't they know half of the world doesn't follow christianity or islam. What is the need for sowing hate.

I hope you all heard about Cornell frat university raping incident where 7 disgusting men drugged and raped a girl at a fraternity house. So i have multiple things to say :

Baqarah 286: God does not burden any soul beyond its capacity. How can a human being support this kind of « thing »? Nobody can bear it like i wouldnt too, tell me if you could bear it pls.

And after all this, you go back to prayer and say alhamdulillah. and imagine that woman is not muslim, she will die and go to hell because she didnt believe in god i dont know if i have a low iman but how can a human not be angry towards allah. astaghfirullah. allah gave free will but come on bro what is this. allah gives the hardest challenges to his favorite creations but come on im a little sad and angry.

i couldnt post this anywhere else, i dont have enough karma i think. pls dont be mean in the comments

This is why saying things like “Islam is a religion of peace,” “this is not real Islam,” or “these are just bad people using Islam to do bad things” is largely unpersuasive to many non-Muslims in the West.

The reason is that many of them are not judging Islam primarily by its theology or by what Muslims say Islam ought to be. They look at the societies of Muslim-majority countries and at the outcomes they associate with them: levels of prosperity, individual freedom, women’s rights, LGBT rights, education, democracy, and so on.

From that, some draw a fairly simple conclusion: they would not want to live in, or see their families live in, societies with those characteristics.

That is not a rigorous way to determine what Islam itself causes. Muslim-majority countries differ enormously, and their outcomes are shaped by history, institutions, politics, economics, conflict, and many other factors. It is ultimately a crude and unreliable heuristic.

But perceptions matter. If Muslim-majority societies consistently performed much better across measures of human development, freedom, equality, and quality of life, I suspect arguments about Islam would encounter considerably less skepticism and hostility in the West.

It has additional hadiths with non-sahih chains under chapter names. And it has the isnads in the regular hadiths - the isnads should be translated too. Aren't the isnads supposed to be the most important?

And we need a critical edition that looks at the surviving manuscripts and tells us about the variants. This should have been done a long time ago. We're debating Sahih al-Bukhari for so long and it wasn't even fully translated until this day.