Kafir Salat

Haafizah said:

Stop taking Islam as a joke.

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Aprender said:

FreakOffALeash,

I know what happened to you because the same thing almost happened with me. I can understand coming into a new religion and having everything be so different and new. All of a sudden you're trying to pray 5 times a day and stay away from this and that and it becomes tiring. I think the first mistake you made with Islam was trying to do too much too fast and you also should have at least read all of the Quran with commentary to make sure you were sure about Islam. I remember before you said that you had been studying it for "months" now and that you only were upset that the Kabba wasn't actually a giant cube with a cloth over it but you had no other problems with Islam. Now, all of a sudden you seem to be repulsed by the religion. Sounds to me like you have a bad case of burn out and frustration from trying to do too much too fast and you should have taken the advice of the other members here and slowed down like they said.

I'm also a revert to Islam. It'll be 1 year for me in a few days. The problem that you have with Islam is not in the core of its teaching but the interpretations of people. I said this before and I will say it again. If you accepted Islam for the sake of other people they are always going to let you down. If you accepted Islam because you believe in your heart that Allah is the one true God and Muhammad (peace be upon him) is His last and final messenger then you would know that Allah will never let you down.

Unfortunately, you went into this while being an "Internet Muslim". And what I mean by internet Muslim is that you went on Google searches to get all of your information about Islam which isn't the right thing to do. There is a lot of sectarian garbage out there, a lot of anti-Islamic filth out there that is presented as "legit" and in terms of hadith, I have also found incorrect translations of them from Arabic out there. Secondly, you've probably been on some social networking websites or other Islamic internet forums where people might have been rude, said things that seemed backwards and wrong to you, that whole back home culture mentality and told you that everything about you, the fact that you are an American and everything else is just haraam. Everything being haraam. I've come across people like this on the internet too and it is annoying. I fear sometimes that Muslims on the internet do more to turn people away from Islam than non-Muslims do astaghfirullah!

But my point is that I feel that you went into this too fast and tried to change too much about yourself at once and it all ended up frustrating you. You didn't like what you learned about your dog so that upset you. I have a dog too and I also live in a non-Muslim family but my dog is still here in the house. Just keep the dog out of the area where you go to pray. Keep the dog out of your room. You did a Google internet search of your name and then all of a sudden you want to go and change your name to something Arabic. Just because a name means different things in different cultures doesn't necessarily mean that your name has to be changed based on some internet Google search that you did. You should have probably looked into that further than from going off a Wikipedia or internet Google search but if you did want to change your name than alhamdulillah that is fine too.

Next, you should have taken the advice of other members here when they told you to get OUT of the house and go and interact with other Muslims in the community to have good people around you. Patience is something that we should all strive for as Muslims but you want instant gratification and that's why you ended up burning yourself out with Islam. The Muslims here in my community often go out in nature, help out the community by feeding the homeless, having bbq's at the park, and even going on rollercoaster rides as a group for a day of fun. It's not all black and white as it might have been presented to you from being an internet Muslim. It is a shame that you weren't able to slow down, ask more questions from knowledgeable Muslims who could help you understand better, or even try to reach out to other brothers who could help you make sense of everything. So instead of taking the time to do that, you kept doing internet searches, seeing explanations of things that didn't make sense to you or you didn't like and instead of asking for clarification from a knowledgeable Muslim in your community or with us here online, you came to your own conclusions and decided that you wanted something new. The waswas came to you bad and unfortunately it seems like it was successful. Anything that is worth having isn't going to be easy. I'm sure you've heard that before but instead of running away from it, you as an academic should have made sure you had all of the information put together before you made any decisions like that. This is why you are sad now and confused. But as people have said to you before, there is no compulsion in religion in Islam.

I pray that Allah (swt) helps you make sense of everything and guides you to happiness in this life and protects you from all harm and evil in this world.

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Aprender said:

I don't believe that is true. You said yourself on the forum that even though you know that people don't represent a religion it could sway your decision when you cried out for help in the other thread. Our experiences with other people always have an influence on our decisions in life. It would be naive to say otherwise.

I read plenty of stories of other people leaving Islam before I decided to become a Muslim and none of them were for legitimate reasons. I sensed deception in a great number of them and fallacies in their words. The only ones that I found acceptable were those individuals that simply lost faith in God all together and chose to become atheists. It wasn't that they had any issues with theology, simply that they just didn't believe in God.

Based on what you have posted on this forum, I'm certain that you left Islam because there was much about it that you didn't understand and didn't like because you didn't understand it. It's tough looking at a religion and having grown up in a culture that has taught you things that might go against some of its teachings. It can be hard to reconcile with that especially is it's presented in the wrong way. You got only some of the story and based your decision off of that. I clinged to Christianity for quite a while before I became a Muslim. I made sure I read my Bible, even the different translations of it that we had lying around the house, I made sure I talked to Christian scholars, I made sure to talk to other Christians but the evidence was quite clear that something about the theology was unacceptable for me and even then I still tried to hold onto it for the sake of not being the "other". But eventually I let go and I went on a search for other religions. I studied Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Mormonism (since that seems to be on the outside of the other Christian sects) and many, many other religions. Islam was the last. And while those religions had spiritual aspects to them that were quite pleasing to me, I still found something that wasn't quite right with them too that I couldn't accept. Once I stumbled on Islam, I studied it for 4 years before I took my shahada and even then I still have much to learn.

You think the promise of paradise in Islam is solely hedonistic but that is far from the truth. If any of us are granted paradise we really have no idea what it's going to be like. The mentions of some of the things that we see in it are only a miniscule glimpse into what awaits there. It is something that we cannot possibly comprehend or grasp as human beings and it is not only for pleasure. I'm sorry that what was painted to you made you think so.

Are you familiar with the concept of nafs in Islam? There are certain elements of that too that some of the other religions I mentioned above talk about. It's already an element of Islam. There are so many things in Islam that you need to learn but because you burned yourself out with all of the trickery and baloney you would never know it.

The reason why you have yet to share your reservations about Islam is because you know that they're due to your own conclusions about the religion that you based off of your own limited knowledge. If you posted them here on this forum other members would be able to correct the misinformation that you were given from your internet searches. And I'm certain that some of what you write would be offensive because you allowed something that was wrong to begin with to influence your thoughts unfortunately. Same thing happened to me.

I think you might have brainwashed yourself into sadness and depression from your "hobby" and now you don't know what is the truth anymore. Satan is very cunning indeed.

Perhaps you should take some time off for a while, get out in the real world, and live in reality for a while. Maybe you will learn more about yourself that way. You are young and you have a lot to learn.

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Qurratul Ayn said:

Islaam is correct. There is good in everyone. Simples.

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