Help requested on Islam

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- shootist
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OP - January 28, 2015, 09:43 AM

I have never been a Muslim, nor have I ever held any strong religious beliefs. Islam, in it's present incarnation, worries me and I feel I need to learn more, specifically, the issues I perhaps have misunderstood. So, can I have some advice from the knowledgeable upon the following issues. This is a genuine call for advice and not posted to start an argument. Thanks in advance for your efforts. There may be more.

Is the Koran the absolute word of God, conveyed to Mohammed through the angel Gabriel?

Does it offend Islam to deny even one sentence contained in the Koran?

Is the Koran the same for all sects of Islam?

Is there any doubt that the proper way of dealing with a confirmed apostate is to kill him?

Are the various punishments for crimes, E.G. amputation, stoning, etc. clearly laid down In the Koran?

What is the real status of females in Islam, in practical terms, i.e. how it affects their lives whether they like it or not.
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Reply #1 - January 28, 2015, 10:32 AM

Is the Koran the absolute word of God, conveyed to Mohammed through the angel Gabriel?
in sunni islam, yes.

Does it offend Islam to deny even one sentence contained in the Koran?
a sunni that denies this is considered a zindiq/out of the religion.

Is the Koran the same for all sects of Islam?
don't know. but sunnis make up 90% of muslims.

Is there any doubt that the proper way of dealing with a confirmed apostate is to kill him?
doubt? yes. it's from a hadith, and some debate it's only under specific circumstances. but in sunni islam, the consensus of the majority of scholars is that apostates should be killed.

Are the various punishments for crimes, E.G. amputation, stoning, etc. clearly laid down In the Koran?
not every punishment. 40 lashes for drinking isn't there. neither is stoning for adultery, execution of apostates, etc. but amputation for theft, amputation for "fasad" (or even crucifixion!), 100 lashes for adultery is.

What is the real status of females in Islam, in practical terms, i.e. how it affects their lives whether they like it or not.
I'm not a female so I wouldn't know. but I assume it's horrible. can't go out if your husband doesn't allow you to, can't go out without a mahram, etc

for those more knowledgeable, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

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we let them know - bang! bang! - coz it's dawah time!"
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Reply #2 - January 28, 2015, 03:58 PM

Many thanks for the input. Part of my interest was generated in talking to a man I worked with. He is a devout Sufi Muslim from Pakistan. He maintained that despite the different sects all are brother Muslims first, and anything else after. He was also extremely reluctant to discuss the less pleasant aspects of Islam. I also, ironically, first started looking at Islam after the 'Satanic Verses' publication and subsequent debacle.

I hope that others will contribute that I may learn a bit more about the core issues.
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Reply #3 - January 28, 2015, 04:12 PM

Quote from: shootist on January 28, 2015, 03:58 PM
Many thanks for the input. Part of my interest was generated in talking to a man I worked with. He is a devout Sufi Muslim from Pakistan. He maintained that despite the different sects all are brother Muslims first, and anything else after. He was also extremely reluctant to discuss the less pleasant aspects of Islam. ..............

well give the link of this site and get that sufi over here, we will teach him the right ways, and right aspect of Islam shootist and give him these links..

http://www.snipview.com/q/Pakistani%20Sufis

Pakistani sufis range from This to..to this

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Reply #4 - January 29, 2015, 02:35 AM

Just so you know, shootist, all of these issues have been exhausted many times over many many threads in this forum, and I think a lot of veteran users are burned out by now. Try browsing around a little bit.

TL;DR responses to all of your questions:

Yes, yes, pretty much, yes, some punishments for some crimes (no for stoning period), and your last question is impossible to give a single answer to and assumes that an Islam could be agreed upon at all, but even the most lenient interpretations of Islam for women place them at a disadvantage to men and at the mercy of the men in their lives.
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Reply #5 - January 29, 2015, 02:43 AM

Quote from: shootist on January 28, 2015, 09:43 AM
I have never been a Muslim, nor have I ever held any strong religious beliefs. Islam, in it's present incarnation, worries me and I feel I need to learn more, specifically, the issues I perhaps have misunderstood. So, can I have some advice from the knowledgeable upon the following issues. This is a genuine call for advice and not posted to start an argument. Thanks in advance for your efforts. There may be more.

1)Is the Koran the absolute word of God, conveyed to Mohammed through the angel Gabriel?

2)Does it offend Islam to deny even one sentence contained in the Koran?

3)Is the Koran the same for all sects of Islam?

4)Is there any doubt that the proper way of dealing with a confirmed apostate is to kill him?

5)Are the various punishments for crimes, E.G. amputation, stoning, etc. clearly laid down In the Koran?

6)What is the real status of females in Islam, in practical terms, i.e. how it affects their lives whether they like it or not.

1) If you are Muslim, yes.
2)Yes, unless they are abrogated
3)Yes
4)Yes
5)Some
6)Women are governed by their Mahram. Mahram good, life is good. Mahram bad, life is bad.

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Reply #6 - January 29, 2015, 04:52 AM

I disagree with three's answer for no 6, women aren't governed by their mahram. a woman is governed by her husband if she's married, or her wali if she's not married. a mahram is just somebody you can't marry. for eg, a son is a mahram to his mother, but that doesn't necessarily mean he has authority over her.

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we let them know - bang! bang! - coz it's dawah time!"
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Reply #7 - January 29, 2015, 07:38 AM

Quote from: shootist on January 28, 2015, 09:43 AM
Is the Koran the same for all sects of Islam?

The Ahmadiyya version has an extra ayat (verse) in each sura (chapter). So they are off by one.

However they are considered non-Muslims by mainstream Muslims and heavily persecuted in Pakistan, their country of origin. Interestingly, their bonus prophet said that those non-Ahmadiyya Muslims who have heard of his prophethood and not accepted his prophecy have left Islam and will be met with a great punishment. However Ahmadiyya does not prescribe death for apostasy. They are 19th century modern like that.

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Reply #8 - January 29, 2015, 07:43 AM

if I'm not mistaken rashad khalifa's group has a different quran too, because it didn't fit the number 19 theory.

and (or so I've heard) that shia believe in a "mushaf Fatima", that is way larger than the present quran, and has many other things in it, which is now currently with the occulted Mahdi.

"we stand firm calling to allah all the time,
we let them know - bang! bang! - coz it's dawah time!"
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Reply #9 - January 29, 2015, 11:37 AM

William Dalrymple Nine Lives has fascinating descriptions of some varieties of Muslim.

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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Reply #10 - January 29, 2015, 12:02 PM

Quote from: shootist on January 28, 2015, 09:43 AM
I have never been a Muslim, nor have I ever held any strong religious beliefs. Islam, in it's present incarnation, worries me and I feel I need to learn more, specifically, the issues I perhaps have misunderstood. So, can I have some advice from the knowledgeable upon the following issues. This is a genuine call for advice and not posted to start an argument. Thanks in advance for your efforts. There may be more.

oh I see., now I understand where you come from shootist., well before I answer those questions let me give you a pdf link of a book and the book is

[/img]

Please click the picture to download the pdf file of that book and please read it

Hmm this is a good one...

Our evolution as a species of co-operators is sufficient to explain the actual psychology of moral reasoning [...and] requires no special concept of religious agent, no special code, no models to follow [even though] you can easily insert them in moral reasoning that would be there in any case. To some extent religious concepts are parasitic upon moral intuitions.” ....... Pascal Boyer

Do not let silence become your legacy.. Question everything
I renounced my faith to become a kafir,
the beloved betrayed me and turned in to a Muslim
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Reply #11 - January 29, 2015, 05:50 PM

Quote from: kephas on January 29, 2015, 04:52 AM
I disagree with three's answer for no 6, women aren't governed by their mahram. a woman is governed by her husband if she's married, or her wali if she's not married. a mahram is just somebody you can't marry. for eg, a son is a mahram to his mother, but that doesn't necessarily mean he has authority over her.

^This.

Also, most women who converted in the West and don't want to/can't get married, which is a growing number, don't have a male Muslim family member who is mahram to her. So they don't really have anyone to dictate what they can and can't do, and they can't even go on hajj, because the Saudis don't want women to get the idea that that's ok through their heads.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I have a sonic screwdriver, a tricorder, and a Type 2 phaser.
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Reply #12 - January 29, 2015, 07:45 PM

I actually don't see the significance of the points you are making in relation to his question. A great deal of Islam is lifestyle instructions within the ummah and family relations.

Mentioning that a woman in a secular country with no Muslim relatives who decides never to get married technically won't have anyone ordering her around seems to me to be no more relevant than saying that, if a man were the last man on Earth, he wouldn't have to provide for his wives or give to charity anymore.

Regardless of how the society changes, the instructions in Islam are pretty clear--or at least the core ones are, which, even when standing alone, put the women at a severe disadvantage. When in practice, it all depends on where it's being practiced and the environment and the family of the woman. In other words, it depends on the woman's luck. If she was born in a religious family in Indonesia, in Pakistan, whatever, her situation may be vastly different from someone's in the UK, or yes, a US convert's, but that is not in spite of Islam but in complete harmony with it. It's all a roll of the dice for women and nothing about Islam offers them security in practice. It's all in theory, and even prodding it somewhat in theory reveals their protections as useless.

Also, women are allowed to make the hajj. You have to get your father or someone else to sign a permission slip saying that they're aware that you're travelling and you have their permission and a fill out a form declaring that you are indeed a believing Muslim last I checked. I believe even some imams would be willing to do this, as my local one stood in for me whenever I needed a guardian for some odd reason or another. Some Western women will make the pilgrimage in groups with other women to make things easier.
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Reply #13 - January 30, 2015, 12:17 AM

Quote from: lua on January 29, 2015, 07:45 PM
Also, women are allowed to make the hajj. You have to get your father or someone else to sign a permission slip saying that they're aware that you're travelling and you have their permission and a fill out a form declaring that you are indeed a believing Muslim last I checked. I believe even some imams would be willing to do this, as my local one stood in for me whenever I needed a guardian for some odd reason or another. Some Western women will make the pilgrimage in groups with other women to make things easier.

Yeah but many get disowned by their families when they convert, or they convert when they're old enough that their parents or whoever is dead, so they don't have anyone to sign for them. I don't think an imam or someone who wasn't a mahram could do it last I checked, although that was a while back now.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I have a sonic screwdriver, a tricorder, and a Type 2 phaser.
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Reply #14 - January 30, 2015, 12:30 AM

Uhh, I guess the situation can occur where literally every male relative of a Western convert totally abandons her and leaves her high and dry and she also will never marry anyone and the Saudi government, who freezes Hell every time they spend any extra effort, refuses to accept an Imam's signature, but I don't think that happens very often.

So I guess I still don't see how these situations are relevant at all. And it's not because "the Saudis don't want women to get the idea that that's ok through their heads," then, right?
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Reply #15 - January 30, 2015, 01:55 AM

kephas:
Quote
if I'm not mistaken rashad khalifa's group has a different quran too, because it didn't fit the number 19 theory.

Also their Qur'an has some stunningly weird "translations" of certain verses, which are wholly different from how everyone else - Muslim or non-Muslim - agrees those verses actually read. The Khalifa Qur'an is a "translation" like the Jehovah's Witness Bible is a "translation" of the Masoretic Text. It's easy to read but it can NEVER BE TRUSTED. Whereas I generally do trust Pickthall, Muhsin Khan, and Pooya Azdi; their deviations to the text are minimal, it's their footnotes and parentheses which might lead you wrong.

shootist:
Quote
Is the Koran the absolute word of God, conveyed to Mohammed through the angel Gabriel? Does it offend Islam to deny even one sentence contained in the Koran? Is the Koran the same for all sects of Islam?

Yes, yes, yes; but with some important asterisks. Here's one clearing-house to start your research on those asterisks -
http://www.answering-islam.org/Quran/Text/

* Sunni ahadith note verses and even some suras which were taken out of the text ('lifted' was the term); and some of these are quoted in canonical collections. So, the variants are never quotable as Qur'anic, but they may be quotable in sermons and legal-rulings as hadith. The verse-of-stoning is usually the example given. And then there are these:
http://answering-islam.org/Quran/Miracle/ubay.html

* The first Shia remembered their own variants to the text. These variants tend to be starkly royalist and to support the wilaya(t) of 'Ali and of his bayt. A critical scholar on this topic was Sayyari; also Kafi, Ayyashi, and Qummi made note of these variants. The wilaya verses (there was even a whole sura called the Wilaya) are obvious forgeries. I'm less certain of the generally royalist verses / variants; the Umayyads could have used them too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surah_of_Wilaya_and_Nurayn

But nowadays the Sunnis and Shia both seem embarrassed by these ancient records of variants. I would not recommend approaching an imam / mullah with them.
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