Salaam,
I am a non-Muslim who has been interested in Islam for some years now. Unfortunately, for a non-Muslim to try to find out what Islam is, it is much easier to find haters of Islam who are willing to explain it to you than to find knowledgeable Muslims who will do the same. This is true at least for the Internet, but also in real life when I have tried to raise critical questions about Islam to Muslims I have sometimes been met, not with hostility but with misunderstanding, so that I have not in the end received an answer to my question. The most delicate question I have about Islam, which is yet to receive an answer, is about the Sunnah. We are told that the Sunnah is all the things that the prophet Muhammad said, did, and approved of, and also his appearance and his character as a person. But this raises some difficult concerns as for what is allowed or encouraged for Muslims to do.
What Islamophobic agitators will tell you - in my experience their favorite argument - is that the doctrine of Sunnah leads to a whole lot of evil actions from Muslims. After all, Muhammad is supposed to have allowed for, in various situations, robbery of non-Muslims, assassinations of poets critical of Islam, forcing women into sex-slavery, among other things. This is also no doubt what ISIS/Daesh and its followers would say. Now as a matter of fact I know that most Muslims do not agree with this - but I don't understand HOW YOU ARGUE AGAINST IT. To me it seems like a perfect closed logic that cannot be dislodged. Let me therefore quote one prominent anti-Islamic ideologue on the matter:
[quote removed]
Dear Muslims, what do you respond to this? Could the murderers of Charlie Hebdo, for instance, or a Muslim man who kidnaps and rapes a non-Muslim woman, be sentenced guilty in an Islamic court? What if the perpetrators of such attacks claim that they are merely following the Sunnah? How do you demonstrate that these actions are not in accordance with Sunnah?
I am a non-Muslim who has been interested in Islam for some years now. Unfortunately, for a non-Muslim to try to find out what Islam is, it is much easier to find haters of Islam who are willing to explain it to you than to find knowledgeable Muslims who will do the same. This is true at least for the Internet, but also in real life when I have tried to raise critical questions about Islam to Muslims I have sometimes been met, not with hostility but with misunderstanding, so that I have not in the end received an answer to my question. The most delicate question I have about Islam, which is yet to receive an answer, is about the Sunnah. We are told that the Sunnah is all the things that the prophet Muhammad said, did, and approved of, and also his appearance and his character as a person. But this raises some difficult concerns as for what is allowed or encouraged for Muslims to do.
What Islamophobic agitators will tell you - in my experience their favorite argument - is that the doctrine of Sunnah leads to a whole lot of evil actions from Muslims. After all, Muhammad is supposed to have allowed for, in various situations, robbery of non-Muslims, assassinations of poets critical of Islam, forcing women into sex-slavery, among other things. This is also no doubt what ISIS/Daesh and its followers would say. Now as a matter of fact I know that most Muslims do not agree with this - but I don't understand HOW YOU ARGUE AGAINST IT. To me it seems like a perfect closed logic that cannot be dislodged. Let me therefore quote one prominent anti-Islamic ideologue on the matter:
[quote removed]
Dear Muslims, what do you respond to this? Could the murderers of Charlie Hebdo, for instance, or a Muslim man who kidnaps and rapes a non-Muslim woman, be sentenced guilty in an Islamic court? What if the perpetrators of such attacks claim that they are merely following the Sunnah? How do you demonstrate that these actions are not in accordance with Sunnah?
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