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Most religious people are not zealots. I don't think they condone slavery, women's subjugation etc just because they go to church sometimes. You think they hang

Most religious people are not zealots. I don't think they condone slavery, women's subjugation etc just because they go to church sometimes. You think they hang gays in Turkey? Besides, the overreliance on the writings of scriptures is a distinctly protestant characteristic

mardifoufs 5y ago
"Overrreliance" on scripture is an extremely important concept in islam. In fact I think every major sect (sunni or shia) and madhab are centered on that "reliance". Even the islamic schools of thought that usually take a less literal approach to the koran would probably be much much literal in their interpretation than your average protestant denomination. Innovating on the scripture by derivation, by cherrypicking or by selectively discarding part of it for social expediency is explicitly not allowed and is one of the biggest sin in islam. In a way, from an islamic perspective, it's much much better to just acknowledge that you are not living by the teachings of the koran even if that means living a sinful life than it is to try to remake or drastically reinterpret the koran in way that whatever you are doing isn't a sin anymore. Now obviously that does not apply to the hadiths which are, a part from the extremely consequential early caliphate intestine wars, probably one of the biggest source of inter and inner sect conflict and disagreement. Much more so than the koran itself imo. How to interpret them, how much theological value they hold and even which are valid are all questions that will probably be debated forever. In fact we (in my direct entourage, not all Muslims obviously ;) ) always find it a bit odd how... cavalier christians can be with their scripture when it comes to picking what they like and discarding what they don't. To me I couldn't see the point, but I know enough to understand that christian theology is much much more complicated and extremely intricate, but that's still what it can look like from my perspective. So it's funny to me to see someone say that not everyone is as literal as... protestants!
- rayiner 5y ago
  I think this is an excellent analysis. In my experience (my family is from Bangladesh) American Muslims tend to get around this by relying on their status as a religious minority. To draw an analogy: what did Jesus think of Roman divorce law? As a religious minority it didn’t matter what the Romans doing, unless they were regulating Jews directly. Similarly, American muslims don’t have to reconcile their religious beliefs and political beliefs because as a practical matter someone else is making the rules. The dominant group faces a different problem, because someone has to make the rules. “When does life begin?” Clearly society must answer this one way or the other—we won’t let people exercise their personal “choice” at say 2 months after birth. If religion doesn’t decide that question, some other non-falsifiable moral framework will.

mardifoufs 5y ago

"Overrreliance" on scripture is an extremely important concept in islam. In fact I think every major sect (sunni or shia) and madhab are centered on that "reliance". Even the islamic schools of thought that usually take a less literal approach to the koran would probably be much much literal in their interpretation than your average protestant denomination. Innovating on the scripture by derivation, by cherrypicking or by selectively discarding part of it for social expediency is explicitly not allowed and is one of the biggest sin in islam. In a way, from an islamic perspective, it's much much better to just acknowledge that you are not living by the teachings of the koran even if that means living a sinful life than it is to try to remake or drastically reinterpret the koran in way that whatever you are doing isn't a sin anymore. Now obviously that does not apply to the hadiths which are, a part from the extremely consequential early caliphate intestine wars, probably one of the biggest source of inter and inner sect conflict and disagreement. Much more so than the koran itself imo. How to interpret them, how much theological value they hold and even which are valid are all questions that will probably be debated forever. In fact we (in my direct entourage, not all Muslims obviously ;) ) always find it a bit odd how... cavalier christians can be with their scripture when it comes to picking what they like and discarding what they don't. To me I couldn't see the point, but I know enough to understand that christian theology is much much more complicated and extremely intricate, but that's still what it can look like from my perspective. So it's funny to me to see someone say that not everyone is as literal as... protestants!

rayiner 5y ago
I think this is an excellent analysis. In my experience (my family is from Bangladesh) American Muslims tend to get around this by relying on their status as a religious minority. To draw an analogy: what did Jesus think of Roman divorce law? As a religious minority it didn’t matter what the Romans doing, unless they were regulating Jews directly. Similarly, American muslims don’t have to reconcile their religious beliefs and political beliefs because as a practical matter someone else is making the rules. The dominant group faces a different problem, because someone has to make the rules. “When does life begin?” Clearly society must answer this one way or the other—we won’t let people exercise their personal “choice” at say 2 months after birth. If religion doesn’t decide that question, some other non-falsifiable moral framework will.