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- laico
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OP - December 05, 2014, 06:05 PM

Hello my infidel companions.

twenty-two year old Brit from west London here, I have never been a Muslim myself but have been interested in Islam and it's influence on the world for a good few years now, there was a time when you could say 'Allah was guiding me' until I had to confess in the end that I was just trying to convince myself of something that I knew deep down was nonsense.

I suppose I am similar to one of those white non-Muslim converts that you often hear Muslims boasting about (Religious peoples obsession with converts ), the only difference is that I wasn't able to delude myself enough to go through with it, Maybe thanks is due to my secular minded father that instilled within me a down to earth, rational approach to life.

Looking back on it now, I was (and still am) a young man simply trying to find my way in the world and discover who I am and what I believe, this insecurity in many young people such as myself is a goldmine for religious preachers who are able to attract many young people of their religion/ideology by offering a direction and sense of purpose. I almost fell for it.

From what I have seen of the forum, it is nice to read voices of reason when discussing Islam, away from the "Islam is evil, Muslims are evil" bullshit. I struggle to find rational criticism of Islam, I think this is mostly due to the fact that Non-Muslims in the west simply don't know enough about Islam to criticise it and nobody can speak out against Islam from Muslim countries without putting their life at risk.

Well, I kind of rambled on a bit and can't think of anything else to say right now, feel free to ask any questions. It is nice to join you guys here
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Reply #1 - December 05, 2014, 06:41 PM

Hi laico, welcome to the forum. As Islamic evangelism increases, there seems to be a side effect that evangelists didn't count on, and that is a wide spread questioning of the beliefs and ideas that get prosletysed!

"we can smell traitors and country haters"

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God is Love.
Love is Blind. Stevie Wonder is blind. Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God.
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Reply #2 - December 05, 2014, 07:21 PM

Yes, I remember listening to Hamza Tzortiz talk about "the anti-dawah" movement, critics are getting under his skin
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Reply #3 - December 05, 2014, 07:49 PM

Welcome laico
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Reply #4 - December 07, 2014, 01:45 AM

Welcome
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Reply #5 - December 07, 2014, 04:10 AM

Hi laico,
20 year old never-moose here but a somewhat similar story to yours. Never believed Islam was true but was more anxious of the concept of hell. Welcome to the forum, everyone here is so nice
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Reply #6 - December 07, 2014, 09:49 PM

Quote from: questioner on December 07, 2014, 04:10 AM
Never believed Islam was true but was more anxious of the concept of hell.

Yes! I can relate to that, to be honest I still get anxious over hell, that somehow I could be wrong. I often find myself going over how I arrived at my convictions over and over in my head.
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Reply #7 - December 07, 2014, 11:47 PM

A late welcome from me! I was one of those white converts everyone bragged about. Whoops!

Hope to see a lot more from you!
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Reply #8 - December 07, 2014, 11:49 PM

I wasn't white enough :/

"The healthiest people I know are those who are the first to label themselves fucked up." - three
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Reply #9 - December 07, 2014, 11:53 PM

I think being American gave me some bonus points. A Muslim convert spawning from the United States, that terrible country, the Great Satan! Mashallah.
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Reply #10 - December 08, 2014, 12:01 AM

Thanks everyone.
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Reply #11 - December 08, 2014, 12:03 AM

Quote from: lua on December 07, 2014, 11:47 PM

Hope to see a lot more from you!

I was wondering when I would get my parrot
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Reply #12 - December 08, 2014, 12:04 AM

Interesting that you found hell so hard to let go of. Actually, for me as a Christian this was always the hardest thing for me to square. How could eternal punishment be just? Even the people who died in the Holocaust and all the other genocides and wars of the XXth century had an eventual end to their suffering here on earth. Even if Hitler were to suffer 100 years for every one year of suffering any person on earth had to endure due to his regime, eventually it would come to an end. Also, the Hebrews most primitive belief was in sheol, a kind of Hades where souls went into darkness and nothingness under the ground. That this idea evolved into Hell was always plain to me (the word in Arabic, jahannam, comes from Gehenna in Aramaic, which was the name of a trash dump where gentiles threw their pig bones and trash was burned; legend had it the Cananites used to sacrifice children to their gods at that location--Jesus' use of it seems to be the origin of the modern idea of hell, but early Christian texts actually indicate it was a place of annihilation, not eternal punishment). I always found it hard to accept, and towards the end of my belief in god I dropped it totally. I really want to believe again, in fact, but Hell is the biggest stumbling block to me accepting Christianity again (not to even mention Islam, with all of the lurid details in the Quran and Bukhari about skins being flayed and put back onto bodies, people being forced to drink boiling water, etc.; if you're interested, all of these ideas actually originated in the 3-6th Christian centuries, especially in times when persecuted Christians were imagining their persecutors suffering for what they were experiencing).

إطلب العلم ولو في الصين

Es sitzt keine Krone so fest und so hoch,
Der mutige Springer erreicht sie doch.

I don't give a fuck about your war, or your President.
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Reply #13 - December 08, 2014, 12:10 AM

Quote from: countjulian on December 08, 2014, 12:04 AM
Interesting that you found hell so hard to let go of.

After seriously entertaining the idea that hell might be something that actually exists, it is hard to put that idea out of your head, after all, it is eternal skin roasting.
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Reply #14 - December 08, 2014, 12:11 AM

Quote from: laico on December 08, 2014, 12:03 AM
I was wondering when I would get my parrot

Don't worry, laico, I've got you.

Countjulian, I'm with you in that it makes no logical sense whatsoever, but I totally understand why people who know this nevertheless are anxious. It's a scary "what if, by some incredible miracle, I'm wrong" thought to have hanging over your head, even if your every rational thought is that it's illogical. It was designed to have this effect on people, after all. It was made to be intimidating, and really can be.
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Reply #15 - December 08, 2014, 12:30 AM

Quote from: laico on December 08, 2014, 12:10 AM
After seriously entertaining the idea that hell might be something that actually exists, it is hard to put that idea out of your head, after all, it is eternal skin roasting.

I would highly advise studying the history of the afterlife in the Judeo-Chistian-Islamic tradition., starting with the ancient Hebrews beliefs preserved in the Torah and the book of Job, inter alia. The afterlife started out as sheol, very similiar to the Greek Hades, where all souls would go; then in the later books we here about an end of the world and eternal life for Israel; then in Maccabbees they are gathering money to make offerings for the dead; the in Rabbinic Judaism and Jesus's movement you have the idea of a final day of judgment where everyone is judged and sent either to Gehenna or heaven. If you carefully read Revelation and the earliest letters of Paul, as well as Jesus in the 3 synoptic gospels, you will see that Gehenna (the origin of jahannam) is not a place of eternal torment, but is only a place where the bad people's bodies (and remember, all early monotheists including Muhammad envisioned the afterlife as bodily, it was only to be experienced after the physical rising of the body) are thrown after their judgement and they are destroyed forever. Only in the latter psuedo-epigraphia and Christian patristic writings, probably influenced by the powerless wrath of people who were being persecuted for their beliefs, do we get the idea that hell lasts forever. And only much later do you get the idea that everyone goes to heaven or hell right after they die, before the last judgement. This is a modern idea with little basis in any scripture.

إطلب العلم ولو في الصين

Es sitzt keine Krone so fest und so hoch,
Der mutige Springer erreicht sie doch.

I don't give a fuck about your war, or your President.
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Reply #16 - December 08, 2014, 04:30 AM

I was learning about zoroastrianism and reading through the Book of Arda Viraf. This describes Zoroastrian hell. This book probably originates in the Sasanian period before the Arabs conquered Persia putting it probably around the same time (or earlier) as when the Quran was written. It gives you a tour through hell and in it people are subject to many punishments such as being hung upside down while being eaten by vermin, being ripped open by dogs and wild animals, being forced to drink menstrual blood, and eating their own feces. Extremely cruel and unusual punishment (not sure if they were supposed to be eternal) and the reasons why they have to endure such horrible punishments are things such as women preparing food while they were on their periods, having sex with a woman on her period, apostasy, homosexuality, and not respecting the ritual purity of fire and water (as these elements are of great importance in Zoroastrianism). In heaven, the women most honored are the ones who were most obedient to their husbands.

I think this gives you a window into the time period. Religions back then proposed extreme tortures in the afterlife because they lived in a harsh and cruel world and wanted to control the populations. It was seen as extremely important for women to obey their husbands and menstruation was seen as a disgusting sickness. All of this is reflected in the Quran which is strong evidence that the Quran fits perfectly into what men thought in the time period (since according to muslims, zoroastrianism would be a man-made religion)

If the Persians had fought back the Arabs and expanded their influence, we could possibly be having the same conversation about you being scared of being hung by your tongue and being eaten by worms for being an apostate from Zoroastrianism. The thing about Islam is that since it looks, feels, and smells like something men would invent in the 7th century, it almost definitely is.

"I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
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Reply #17 - December 08, 2014, 04:32 AM

Reading about other religion's hells is a good way to desensitize yourself from religious afterlife threats

"I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
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Reply #18 - December 08, 2014, 04:46 AM

@julian

Does Revelation use the word Gehenna? I thought it used "Lake of Fire?" I have always considered Revelation as the earliest clear reference to a eternal hellish afterlife in Christianity.

"I moreover believe that any religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."
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Reply #19 - December 09, 2014, 06:42 AM

Welcome to the forum laico, have a rabbit!

You sound like you have a good head on your shoulders. Look forward to seeing your contribution here, and hope you enjoy!

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harakaat, friend, RIP
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