Ex-Muslims

[Ross]

Thoughts on these people. Are they fully justified to leave the religion completely or are they wrong and they should stick to being secular/moderate/non-practicing Muslim? Are there moral lessons and ideas that they should keep from Islam, or just embrace Western thinking? 

[Ross]

???

[PurpleTree]

just ditch it baby

[Ayham]

To be honest, a lot of them hold Islam in bad regard, the key is to think of Islam as something that evolves over time.

Check out Mufti Abu Layth on youtube

Check out Progressive Islam on Youtube,

And check out my long reply in another thread: 

 

Quote

Okay so, this is kind of my current obsession as I usually have an obsession with a topic every few months, so I am researching this topic.

 

This is related to a lot of history, and particularly the Salafi/Wahabi movement (I will be referring to them as Salafi as Wahabi is used as an insult sometimes, but they are almost the same).

When Islam first divided, there was shia and sunni (and at first it was a political stance not a religious one), sunni has 4 schools: hanafi, maliki, shafii, and hanbali.

Now the Hanbalis were most extreme but are still not like the Salafis of today, Hanbalis believed in Allah having a physical body for example too, which is the Athari theology, they believe in literal intereptation, avoiding philosophy

The rest of the sunni schools were Ashari/Maturidi in theology, which are largely the same we won't delve into them, but basically, they believed in Kalam, or using philosophy to understand things, they also had other methodologies other than literal and complete adherence to Hadith and Quran, they also believed Allah doesn't have a body.

Won't delve into Shia's as it is not my expertise much.

Fast forward to the Islamic golden age, the mainstream of Islam is literally Sunni Sufi Ashari Theology,

Sufism, it doesn't have a clear origin but there are theories, in the Islamic golden age, a sufi is someone who practices purifying the heart, by a lot of rememberence of god, inducing and drowning in divine love, strict adherence to Islam, and following a Tariqa, or Sufi order.

A Sufi order, has a number of disciples centred around a Sufi master, whose lineage goes back to prophet Muhammed through Imam Ali usually (Naqshbandis are the only order who go back to the prophet through Abu Bakr), each person who joins the order gets blessings and initiation of the Sheikh or master, and also gives a pledge, it is an initiation, and this Sheikh or master guides you to reach the end point of Sufism, and he also appoints his best student as the next master afterwards.

Now Ibn Taymiyya, A hanbali scholar, the first Salafi, emerged in the 12th century I believed, he spread the Salafi Ideology but he wasn't taken seriously by scholars of the time, he was thrown in prison a lot, but he also had a lot of students.

Salafi Ideology is characterized by:

Literal intereptation of the Quran and Hadith, causing extremism and also believing Allah has a literal body

Believing that vising tombs or shrines or praying there is forbidden 

Consider the Sufi practices as innovation 

Consider themselves the only true Muslims

Meanwhile Sufi mystics believed that the Quran is ever changing, that its meaning changes depending on how spiritually advanced you are.

Now the first belief is the same as early Hanbalis, but, the Salafis claim to follow the "Salaf" which are the first 3 generations after the prophet, who he declared are the most rightous according to a Hadith, but here is the thing, the early hanbalis aren't even in the first three generations.

The whole Salafi ideology is based on going back to the Salaf, the first 3 generations after the prophet (even though their beliefs such as believing in god having a body or considering vising graves as Haram are not from the Salaf).

And despite Ibn Taymiyya's attempts to spread his thought, they didn't work until the 18th Century (excuse me if I am wrong with the dates), where Muhammad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab came in, a very famous scholar and Jihadist who used Ibn Taymiyya's books as a resource, he declared all muslims who don't follow him as Kuffar and disbelievers, he killed thousands as "jihad", and he allied with the Saudi royal family, and also some people say he got financial support from the UK.

Due to the big financial backing, the ideology spread, and even though, majority of scholars today are not Salafi, if you google anything related to Islamic rulings, you will only find Salafi scholars, that's how big their online presence is.

and look at this short article, in which the Saudi prince says that the west asked them to spread Wahabi ideology after the cold war to counter the Soviet influence: https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2018/03/243388/spread-wahhabism-done-request-west-cold-war-saudi-crown-prince

In my opinon, the real reason was to kill Islam from the inside.

Also Sufism in the islamic golden age was much different from Neo-Sufism in the west today, it is much more rooted in Islam.

(I could have wrong facts here so i don't mind correcting)

In general, I would say the western culture is better for most people, but if you wanna use Islam for real spirituality, this is the way.

Or if you want to use it to integrate blue, also helpful.

Edited September 8 by Ayham

[manuel bon]

Do you need to justify yourself if you leave a religion? 

[Epikur]

On 4.9.2024 at 10:50 PM, Ross said:

Thoughts on these people. Are they fully justified to leave the religion completely or are they wrong and they should stick to being secular/moderate/non-practicing Muslim? Are there moral lessons and ideas that they should keep from Islam, or just embrace Western thinking? 

They should stay with islam if they want to stay in the community and be part of the tribe. Some people are good with pretending. Life is already often a pretend game. Lying is part of life also in the West.

I am an ex muslim. I was always a bit science minded. So I could not handle their lies. I became quite allergic against Islam but after experiencing the woke left they don't seem to be alone with their crazy.

I have to say I got some stuff from the religion which is good like that alcohol is forbidden. There are other stuff as well like being able to be more humble and less greedy.

Edited September 9 by Epikur

[gambler]

Continuously broadcasting that you're an ex muslim and making that your identity and community is a form of jerking yourself off as something special in order to feel special. And in order to reap the social benefits you continue to moral grand stand, and the harder you go the more reward you get, so you just demonize people as sub-humans and that makes you the world's most good person. Garbage community. Garbage behavior.

Edited September 9 by gambler

[Epikur]

44 minutes ago, gambler said:

Continuously broadcasting that you're an ex muslim and making that your identity and community is a form of jerking yourself off as something special in order to feel special. And in order to reap the social benefits you continue to moral grand stand, and the harder you go the more reward you get, so you just demonize people as sub-humans and that makes you the world's most good person. Garbage community. Garbage behavior.

I think this opinion is garbage. I think ex muslims are one of the few groups who earned to be allowed to be extreme. It is like being extreme against fascists. People who defend islam do not know much about islam or they like to virtue signal.

[Gennadiy1981]

@Epikur I give you a lot of props. It’s not easy to leave especially a religious community no matter what it is, any religion as you will be looked down as infidel or some other name. And this applies, especially to closed communities like those on the more strict, religious sector. Those who are moderates it’s easy to check out, but if you are part of any religious group, you are not so equipped to be in a secular world and it would be pretty challenging. 
But I think that’s a step towards advancing, it’s making a step from stage blue to stage orange and beyond, so this is on a path of human development into higher stages. So good for you actually. 

[MutedMiles]

 

On 9/9/2024 at 11:04 PM, gambler said:

Continuously broadcasting that you're an ex muslim and making that your identity and community is a form of jerking yourself off as something special in order to feel special. And in order to reap the social benefits you continue to moral grand stand, and the harder you go the more reward you get, so you just demonize people as sub-humans and that makes you the world's most good person. Garbage community. Garbage behavior.

What do you expect ? There are laws against them to be executed if they happen to be in wrong place and stating something very obvious.

Everyone has a particular experience of religion in their life while growing up, due to how it is interpreted by society and people around them. For some it's like a "toxic relationship" which they need to quit to be alive and healthy again. Mostly early on Ex-Muslims are filled with rage due to obvious reasons and some make the rage an identity but many find there way in life after few years and being an Atheist doesn't play any major role in there lives. 

I found seasoned ex-Muslims to be really balanced and un-biased people. It's a rare combination of courage, integrity and insight that makes someone take such a huge call, specially people from some of the less privileged countries.

[thedoorsareopen]

I don't really like labeling myself an ex-Muslim, cuz I only practiced for a year when I was 8. But I unfortunately did have a lot of Islam related experiences. I was dragged on the pilgrimage to Mecca against my will, as one example. Muslims did a lot of things to me without my consent, which I have never experienced in any other spiritual or religious community.

I have complex thoughts about the issue that I don't hear echoed very often, honestly it makes me feel pretty isolated because aside from the effect their bullshit teachings had on me, I otherwise grew up with an American parent. It's a real weird culture clash, Wahhabi Islam and materialist southern California culture.

Funny enough, since getting into spirituality I have started to see some value in Islamic stuff, but I only find that's true if the religion is explained by NON-MUSLIMS. Like, if a western professor talks about it in a comparative religion context, or an eastern meditation practitioner talked about mystical Islam or something. But all I've seen from actual Middle Easterners is racism, delusion, and justifications for the shame-based culture of intergenerational trauma they've got going on over there.

I think the reason is because if a non-Muslim talks about it, they can take what's good about it and house it in the context of a modern world largely underpinned by the implicit beliefs of the global economy which largely come from the west.

But if a Muslim talks about it, it's not usually about a personal practice or a cultural understanding. It comes with the full ideology of Muslim society: that Islam must spread around the globe and establish a worldwide Sharia government. Plus Muslim personal ethics fucking suck. Way too many of these people are still comfortable with murder, oppression of women, and all the other crap. 

To give an idea of what I mean about shitty Muslim morals, I attended a Muslim school for 8 years in SoCal. I met so many Muslims at the time who told me verbatim that the laws of the United States were quite literally tools of Satan, and thus Muslims had a DUTY to break the laws as a form of passive jihad. They told me this verbatim, many many times.

My Muslim dad followed this advice and got arrested about 20 times. 

Not to mention the school instructed me for 8 long years that it was my soul-bound duty to wage jihad against the federal government of the United States, to make my life's work to infiltrate an office of government on the federal or state level, to if not destroy America, at least turn it into a Muslim state. (Which is adorable, BTW)

So... I don't ever want to follow a religion in my daily life that explicitly instructed me to be hostile to the country in which I live. I don't want to follow a religion who's sense of civics is so twisted, they explicitly instructed me to break the local laws in which I live.

Do you hear that? This school/mosque, theoretically a place of moral instruction, was literally instructing kindergarteners to grow up to BREAK THE LAWS of the land in which they live. A "moral" institution. Does it get any more twisted than that?

Don't get me started on how the teachers, in a school in Orange County CA in the early 90s, used the authority of the office of teacher to instruct us kids that "the Jews" have "pig brains" and walk with limps because they're so crooked.

It just goes on and on. These people are not serious yet. The Muslim region of the world still has a lot of work to do to evolve up the Spiral Dynamics chain and join the rest of us here in the 21st century. I say that as an Arab American who has been to the Middle East many times. In the US most white people would consider that racist, I think, but my experience with the Muslims was harsh and my freedom from them was hard won. It's really easy to have naive beliefs about what goes on inside Muslim society, looking out from the West. 

Is every Muslim like that? Of course not, but I don't care. Too many of them are, and the group think still leads to things like Oct 7. 20 years later they're still marking days on the calendar with mass murder. You can't convince me they hold any moral authority whatsoever.

Furthermore, whatever secret sauce teachings the Sufis got, you'd be better served by going with Advaita, Buddhism, or any of the nonduality teachers.

I find that the western conversation around Islam is too constrained by westerners's well meaning attempts to give Muslims the benefit of the doubt. That's part of our character as a society, it's part of how we help people assimilate into the west. But then Muslims take advantage of that to both-sides things like the Oct 7 attacks.

Frankly my opinion is that we in the west have this word, religion. And we assume that each one is equal to each other one. But I perceive vast differences between the coercive practices of the Muslim community I was a part of, the dearth of substance in their teachings, the moral character of the followers, contrasted to other religious and spiritual traditions.

Obviously #NotAllMuslims, but that's my hardwon opinion after dealing with those jokers for a couple decades. Don't miss em.

[gambler]

19 minutes ago, thedoorsareopen said:

I met so many Muslims at the time who told me verbatim that the laws of the United States were quite literally tools of Satan, and thus Muslims had a DUTY to break the laws as a form of passive jihad. 

My Muslim dad followed this advice and got arrested about 20 times. 

Not to mention the school instructed me for 8 long years that it was my soul-bound duty to wage jihad against the federal government of the United States, to make my life's work to infiltrate an office of government on the federal or state level, to if not destroy America, at least turn it into a Muslim state. (Which is adorable, BTW)

Do you hear that? This school/mosque, theoretically a place of moral instruction, was literally instructing kindergarteners to grow up to BREAK THE LAWS of the land in which they live. A "moral" institution. Does it get any more twisted than that?

Don't get me started on how the teachers, in a school in Orange County CA in the early 90s, used the authority of the office of teacher to instruct us kids that "the Jews" have "pig brains" and walk with limps because they're so crooked.

You’re so full of shit. GTFO this forum if you’re going to gaslight and lie this outlandishly on this level.
 

Disgusting devil. 

Edited September 21 by gambler

[Leo Gura]

@gambler Don't do personal attacks here.

[gambler]

2 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@gambler Don't do personal attacks here.

Do you not understand the level of shock that I’m in. 
 

I’m from a Muslim background. It’s Haram Islamically to break the laws of the land, especially foreign lands, or to encourage people to do this. What is this person on. It’s obvious to any Muslim from the west who reads his post to know he’s lying through his teeth. 

Edited September 21 by gambler

[thedoorsareopen]

Yknow how the Jesuits say, give me the boy to the age of 7, and I will give you the man? That school taught me those things pre-age 7. Which if you know anything about the brain, means those beliefs and experiences are permanently etched into my brain. 

Of course you have to dismiss my experience because Muslim beliefs cannot hold up to the light of day. So you have to deny, gaslight, standard cult stuff. I have seen Muslims deny the things they taught me, many many times. It's part of their survival strategy. Don't hate the player, I guess.

[gambler]

Just now, thedoorsareopen said:

Yknow how the Jesuits say, give me the boy to the age of 7, and I will give you the man? That school taught me those things pre-age 7. Which if you know anything about the brain, means those beliefs and experiences are permanently etched into my brain. 

Of course you have to dismiss my experience because Muslim beliefs cannot hold up to the light of day. So you have to deny, gaslight, standard cult stuff. I have seen Muslims deny the things they taught me, many many times. It's part of their survival strategy. Don't hate the player, I guess.

How many rakats in wudhu. I’ll give you 20 seconds so you don’t google. 

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, gambler said:

Do you not understand the level of shock that I’m in. 
 

I’m from a Muslim background. It’s Haram Islamically to break the laws of the land, especially foreign lands, or to encourage people to do this. What is this person on. It’s obvious to any Muslim from the west who reads his post to know he’s lying through his teeth. 

Maybe he had some corrupt bad experiences?

Maybe ask him before attacking him.

[gambler]

Times up. Gave you the simplest question and you couldn’t do it. 

[gambler]

Just now, Leo Gura said:

Maybe he had some corrupt bad experiences?

Maybe ask him before attacking him.

No. There is precisely 0% chance anything he said is true. 

[thedoorsareopen]

Rakats are a measure of Salat, not wudu. Wudu is ablution. And yes, those movements are burned into my nervous system as well, the cupping of the hands, the washing the head etc.

4 rakats in Zuhr, 2 in Fajr.