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Ask a Muslim anything

Peace DC,

I think if a dude wants to marry another dude, that's their concern and not mine. I'm strongly pro-gay marriage because I believe, as an American, that our country was founded on the standard that all people have the same rights.

I'm also a non-denominational minister, which means I can legally marry people. Due to my personal beliefs, I wouldn't conduct a same-sex marriage ceremony, but I'd definitely refer the couple to someone who would.

cool :) you seem to be a believer that is easy to come along with.
 
Peace Humes,

What makes Islam true differs from person to person. For me, it's the verses that deal with the universe, I love space, and those verses tug at me with unimaginable relevance to current discoveries. Not everyone is going to accept the Qur'an as the Word of God, and not everyone is going to accept the existence of God. As I said before, I didn't come here to convert anyone, just answer any questions people want to ask and discuss other topics on these forums to expand my knowledge, as well as see who's trying for that million dollar challenge of Randi's :)


How do you interpret the following

does modern discovery indicate that the sky ever needed PILLARS to be raised (visible or not)?

Does the Sun run in its course just like the moon does?

How can the sun and moon PRAY to God.... (this is in another Sura not the one below)????

So how do these verses TUG at you in the light of recent discovery?




Sura 13 (Ar-Rad = Thunder)

﴿اللَّهُ الَّذِى رَفَعَ السَّمَـوَتِ بِغَيْرِ عَمَدٍ تَرَوْنَهَا ثُمَّ اسْتَوَى عَلَى الْعَرْشِ وَسَخَّرَ الشَّمْسَ وَالْقَمَرَ كُلٌّ يَجْرِى لأَجَلٍ مُّسَمًّـى يُدَبَّرُ الاٌّمْرَ يُفَصِّلُ الآيَـتِ لَعَلَّكُمْ بِلِقَآءِ رَبِّكُمْ تُوقِنُونَ ﴾

(2. Allah is He Who raised the heavens without any pillars that you can see. Then, He rose above (Istawa) the `Arsh ﴿Throne﴾. He has subjected the sun and the moon, each running (its course) for a term appointed. He manages and regulates all affairs; He explains the Ayat in detail, that you may believe with certainty in the meeting with your Lord.)
 
Peace Leumas,

Ibin Kathir's tafseer is not akin to the talmud of the Torah. At all. Tafseer is arabic for "commentary" and contains one man's opinions. Unless you have a question, I'm going to kindly disregard this post.

Of course you are. Just another silly, intellectually dishonest, deluded life waster. Good luck, everyone, on getting any "answers" that enlighten you about anything other than Ryan's personal delusions and rationalizations for them.
 
Peace AdMan,

The Qur'an strongly disapproves of homosexuality but again, I can't force people to believe the way I believe, as the Qur'an also says that I am responsible for my own salvation. No compulsion in religion.

Personally, I don't care as to whether somebody is gay or straight. I am an American and I do not agree with restricting rights of people based on sexual preference. I am a massive proponent of gay rights.

Jinn,

You disagree with your God?
 
No. There is no "pulsing lighthouse effect", and pulsars do not generate light.

What pulsars do is spin. SN 1054 - the pulsar at the center of the Crab Nebula - rotates about 30 times per second. So if you could detect it, which certainly did not happen prior to the 20th century, you'd perceive it as a low hum.

None of this relates at all to the verse you cited; that's just really, really bad confirmation bias.

Edit: Damn, ninja'd.


Only after you have converted the GAMMA RAYS through some electronic device (transducers+ amplifiers+oscillators+filters++++) to sound so as to make it audible sound waves as representations for gamma rays..... i.e. you interpret (transduce) the gamma rays intensity to a sound wave volume level.

Pulsars DO NOT send SOUND through EMPTY SPACE and they DO NOT send LIGHT except as normal starts and are almost invisible to the naked eye.....they send GAMMA RAYS....which we can detect through SPECIAL ELECTRONICS APPARATUS and even at that almost barely.

God in the quran never mentioned x-rays or gamma rays or alpha particles or microwaves….. he just says TARIQ = KNOCKER….ie makes a sound like one makes when knocking at a table or door.

He even says that he created thunder and lightning to SCARE PEOPLE and that he uses lightning to HIT anyone he wishes to hit.

So he never explained that lightning is in fact static electrical discharge and that if you use a grounded metal rod with the right diameter you can AVOID HIS WRATH.... I can see why he may not want to do so.
 
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Jinn,

You disagree with your God?


He definitely does.....in the Quran the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is told and the same condemnation as in the bible is applied.

ONE DIFFERENCE....in the bible it was never explicitly made clear that the Sodomites actually did sodomy....but in the quran it is EXPLICITLY and CLEARLY stated that that is what they did.
 
i think he made it clear he believes in free will.
and he seem to say exactly what i think believers should do. they should not get married to someone of the same sex, but they should also not deny the right to others in doing exactly that.
 
DC,

He may believe in free will, but does he believe, like his God, that it is wrong?
 
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Fascinating to have a muslim here for a change.
Welcome :)

I do have a question, which I've also seen asked (and not answered by) to christians.
Why did your god, assuming he/it is the only true and all powerful being, chose to reveal its teachings in such an incredibly limited and unconvincing way as revealing a chosen text in secret to a single man somewhere in a desert?
Regardless of its teachings of peace, islam was spread relatively violently and in a human way and then split into many factions disagreeing with each other.

Wouldnt revealing the quran to everyone on earth at the same time in an incontrovertably godlike way (say flaming writing in the sky anyone can read at any time) have been a much more convincing way to do so?

I know the quran says god will judge those that have been good and not muslim anyway, but that seems a human written cop-out as to why their all powerful god did not show its power at all. After all, if that is the case, there is no need for a religious text to follow at all since god will judge you by your deeds, not the ability to follow some random arbitrary rules.

Have you ever considered the fact that the quran might not be divinely inspired at all, but rather written by a man? And that all the wisdom you take from it did not come from some nebulous outer source, but rather from the creativity of our own species?

Peace Lukraak,

The Qur'an, in multiple places, states that it is a reminder, and that all nations prior had received the Message. Muhammad's only duty as a Messenger was to reveal the Qur'an. Muslims believe that every Messenger before Muhammad preached the same Message: a monotheistic belief of one Creator and to believe in Him. The Qur'an also states that not all nations accepted the Message. Messengers were rejected and even killed. The only difference between the previous revelations and the Qur'an is that the Qur'an is the final revelation.

The Qur'an was not revealed in secret. After the first revelation, Muhammad would receive verses in public over the course of 23 years.

As far as Islam being spread violently, I'll quote historian DeLacy O'Leary for starters.

History makes it clear, however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of sword upon conquered races is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated.

You can visit http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/quote1.html for more.

As I've replied to another, the Qur'an states that if God had willed, we would be one nation united in Islam, but then what's the point of free will? Muslims believe life is a test, not a forced copulation of values. The beauty is that you and I are able to stand on opposite sides of a fence and still communicate in a wonderful manner and share different views of the world and beyond. I wouldn't be able to listen to Amon Amarth and yell about how awesome vikings were if there was no free will. The beauty of human diversity would be gone.

It is of popular opinion among many Islamic scholars that you MUST accept the Qur'an to be a Muslim, but as far as Islam is concerned, that is a rather stupid statement. We believe that every Messenger, from Adam to Muhammad was a Muslim, yet none of them had the Qur'an, each relayed the Message to their people in their language.

As far as "random arbitrary rules" I'd love to hear your view on a few of them. As I have said before, I am not a mainstream Muslim, and many of the rules that apply to the major sects such as Sunni, do not have their foundation in the Qur'an.

It's always a valid question: Is the Qur'an fabricated? And I assume you know both answers I'm about to give: To those who believe in it, it isn't. To those who don't, it is. One of the most amazing things I love about the Qur'an is its self-confirmation of its own controversial nature. The Qur'an is not shy in saying that not everyone is going to believe, not everyone is going to see the way believers do and many will never believe. Ultimately, everyone's fate is unknown until Judgement Day. It would be a gross fallacy to say that I've got a better chance of going to Heaven than you, because I am not God. Unfortunately, not every Muslim grasps this concept and thinks that if they blow up an ice cream shop, they get virgins and other such hooey. I could rattle off reasons why I believe in the Qur'an, and you could produce a counterargument to each one, which, believe it or not, is one of the reasons I believe in the Qur'an.
 
These are terribly vague. Do you also interpret Nostradamus quatrains?

Do you understand what a prediction is? That it is not taking a recent discovery and then going back into an ancient book and finding a particular translation that might be twisted into suggesting that discovery?

Peace gerdbonk,

Which translation would you like me to use? I have several I can settle upon. I'm not exactly seeing your logic, which (correct me if I'm wrong) seems to hinge upon the notion that I'm twisting verses out of their Arabic words. If I am translating wrongly, please do tell me which words do not correctly correlate.
 
i think he made it clear he believes in free will.
and he seem to say exactly what i think believers should do. they should not get married to someone of the same sex, but they should also not deny the right to others in doing exactly that.

Oh.... I am not complaining... I wish all theists were able to contort, warp, wriggle and thrash their scriptures into meaning "Live and let live".

Oh I wish they all did that....there would then be no need to debunk them.

The problem as I said before.....is the PETRI DISH EFFECT....this is where it all falls apart.

Just as a NICE person (albeit benighted) is able to INTERPRET their scriptures in a nice way.....so can another interpret it in a BAD way.....and like in a petri dish.....bad bacteria will feed and thrive in the environment of nice sugary benign faithfuls....and will spread and finally become a VIRULENT POISON.

So what we need is to make the sugary medium less hospitable to those bacteria......how to do it?????

Maybe one way is to make the sugary ones HAVE MORE SENSE so that they cannot be TOLD to go along.
 
What about those that claim the Qur'an describes/predicts specific scientific discoveries? This remains your interpretation, though it is demonstrably incorrect?

Peace gerdbonk,

please elaborate. Saying "you're wrong" is hardly communicative enough.
 
but in 51:49 he screwed it up totally.



Leiolepis ngovantrii debunk the Koran :)

Peace DC,

Parthenogenesis still creates from pairs of chromosomes, in the case of the lizard, the pairs are XX instead of XY. Remember, Muslims believe in the virgin birth of Christ, we have no problem with self-replicating lizards :)
 
Oh! another question popped to mind, if you have the time to answer it of course.

Why does the quran lack basic microbiology?
And not the 'wash your hands' and stuff which had been empirically discovered by humans LONG before the quran was written.

No I mean why did an all powerful, all knowing being neglect to mention things like bacteria, virusses(virii?), how they are transmitted and at least a basic description on how to pasteurize/sterilize and make simple antibiotics? All of these could easily have been performed with the technology available at the time and would have prevented immense amounts of suffering, while at the same time showing the superiority of the text.

Peace Lukraak,

As I said in another answer, the Qur'an is not a science book, it is a book of signs.
 
Peace DC,

Parthenogenesis still creates from pairs of chromosomes, in the case of the lizard, the pairs are XX instead of XY. Remember, Muslims believe in the virgin birth of Christ, we have no problem with self-replicating lizards :)

:D i like that answer.
 
So, you even misinterpret your sources? Try studying pulsars. They are not bright.

From your link:



Alex then says exactly what I explained before. The pulsar provides energy to the nebula. Not visible light.





So, given that your source does not support your assertion that pulsars are bright (or "knocking"), do you acknowledge that the Qur'an does not accurately describe a pulsar?

I fear we may be getting off topic. Feel free to open up another thread in this forum and we can gladly start where we left off. :)
 
I hope this doesn't come across as rude, but from many Muslims I have heard that it's a religion of peace. However, I have heard that apostasy is punishable by death, as dictated by the Quran (this is what I have heard - I have never read it myself, so please correct me if this is wrong). But if this is so, how do you explain such a thing?

Peace KinskiTemper,

The Qur'an does not punish apostasy by death. Most death decrees are from hadith, which I have serious distrust in.

Most verses that talk about killing unbelievers are quoted out of their context, which unfortunately isn't hard to do.

hope that helps.
 

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