Is there a problem with Islam?

[LeafBud7]

My answer to this has always been, no, even if there are problematic elements within Islam especially for women, you can say the same about any culture or ideology, or religion.
I have been reading and thinking more about this recently, and i'm going round in circles. My brother in law is Muslim, and I am going to ask him what he thinks when I next get the chance for a proper chat, also a female colleague who I think would be open to talking about this..
In the meantime, what do you think? Is it as I have always thought, above, or is there something potentially within the religion what makes it more problematic, or is it not the religion itself, but more how things evolve in some communities? Is it all just a imaginary "problem" used by racists to whip up a storm?
One thing is for sure, it seems one is not really allowed to ask these questions in some circles, without being accused of being racist, which I find really unhelpful.

I can't quite understand why they're never accused of being barbaric colonisers, or why we hear so much about 'white imperialism' and never anything at all about any other form of imperialism. How come all those Arabs who are a very long way from Arabia aren't ever considered evil colonists, but a European living anywhere outside Europe is?!

then the second where Jesus wanders about being super-nice to everyone and preaching love and kindness.

The Christian New Testament also contains misogyny and a hatred towards non-believers. These may be aspects that nowadays, in the West, most denominations do not stress as much. They're still there, just as they're there in the writings of the 'Church Fathers' who established Christianity.

I think the Judeo/Christian/Islamic religions were all invented by men to corral and control access to women and breeding rights.

Tbf most religions have a bit of a bloody history. What matters is how people act now. I would say political Islam is a threat, theres a reason the Muslim Brotherhood is widely banned in middle eastern countries. The reality is most religions are oppressive to women, I would like to see religion placed back in a box as an entirely private matter and not given space in the public sphere.

I do worry that women are experiencing domestic violence under the guise of religion such as Yasmin (referenced above by pp). People hide behind “oh it’s all male violence” but when you believe your control and violence is your right and sanctioned by god then thats something else imo.

The New Testament has a lot of sexism and misogyny. I’m not comparing it to Islam or any other religion but just in its own right it is very problematic.

Some examples:

1 Corinthians 14:34-35

• Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

1 Corinthians 11:3-9

• But I want you to realise that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God... For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.

1 Timothy 2:11-15

• A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.

Ephesians 5:22-24

• Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church... Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Titus 2:3-5

• Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live... Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.

Edited as cross-post with someone who does indeed have examples! I was more referring to accounts of Jesus' own behaviour, coming to the defence of women and slaves etc. But yes, the examples provided are certainly from the new testament and should be therefore be observed by literal christians. I stand corrected.

The ghost of Lady Margaret Beaufort would disagree (Henry VII's mother).

I think it’s modern teaching of history. People struggle to step back and look at things in a neutral and objective way they overlay their own “liberal” viewpoints so need to find a way to explain away behaviour that isn’t critical of non europeans. I mean I think slavery is disgusting regardless of the colour of the person doing it. It doesn’t become less bad if it’s a black or brown person oppressing someone.

Western colonialism is also seen as the most recent and we talk about the transatlantic slave trade for a good reason because it’s local and the British did do some terrible things, but I struggle to understand even there why we don’t talk about the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Belgians etc. or the kings of Africa who were happy to sell people, europeans weren’t going in an kidnapping people, they bought them off other africans. Then theres the whole Arab and North African slave trade. Oman only banned slavery in 1979 (still shocked by that one).

European imperialism also drew lines on maps that are still at the heart of conflicts today. So yeah I think there is stuff that it is absolutely right to be critical about.

We have stepped away from the idea of universal values to relativism. Personally as a brown woman this pisses me off because it has clearly become more impressive to prove your credentials as a non racist than it has to care about what the actual impact on women is. Today if sutee was being practised some stupid woman claiming to be a feminist would definitely be talking about how “while it’s not nice we have to understand that women have choices” or “the deeply embedded culture of misogyny in Indian culture is due to colonialism”.

I saw a BBC documentary a few years ago about Morocco which mentioned Morocco had imported a million more sub-Saharan slaves than the entire trans-Atlantic slave trade. It was just stated matter-of-factly as background information, it wasn't the point of the show. I couldn't ever understand why this isn't something we ever talk about?! And that's just Morocco, when you start adding up all the people from everywhere who were enslaved and traded by Africans and Asians, it makes the Europeans look absolutely angelic. Especially when you consider they also abolished it - or at least tried to, it does of course continue at smaller scale in... you guessed it, Africa and Asia! I feel absolutely disgusted by the trans-Atlantic slave trade and Britain's role in it, but I can't see how or why we seem to get all the blame when we were such a tiny part of it globally. I think if we genuinely want to become a more united global community, we really need to start treating people the same - and I think that means condemning people equally as well as celebrating people equally.

Your last paragraph is very important - these people who think they're being 'anti-racist' by not interfering in people's cultural practices, even when they're causing harm. If we'd condemn a white man for beating his wife, or ordering her to wear certain clothes, or behave in a certain way (or be burnt alive), we should equally condemn it when a brown man does it, no matter how loudly he squeaks that it's his culture. If we allow non-white women to be abused when we would leap in and save white women, that seems to me to be quite a lot more racist than criticising someone's culture or religion.

Today if sutee was being practised some stupid woman claiming to be a feminist would definitely be talking about how “while it’s not nice we have to understand that women have choices” or “the deeply embedded culture of misogyny in Indian culture is due to colonialism”.

I agree but it wasn't just feminism, it was wooly liberal thinking and push back from the cultures affected. For example, FGM, so called honour based abuse and forced marriage wasn't tackled in the UK because it was 'their culture ' and should be respected. The proponents pushed back and said it was colonisation to interfere.

The result was years of women and girls being routinely abused because no one wanted to interfere for fear of offence. But also because brown and black women, were not very important.

A blinder has been pulled with Islam because you're accused of racism if you criticise it. So blatant mysogyny can't be criticised as it's racist or Islamaphobic to do so.

A difficult one.

For many feminists I'd say the answer should logically be yes, because the % of misogynistic Muslims is higher than the % of men that murder women and we consider the latter a national emergency.

Are you serious?
current interpretation of Islam is incredibly misogynistic.
Do you support what the Taliban are doing to girls in Afghanistan?

Why do you think the majority of Islamic countries are so mysogynist? How have they all interpreted Islam so wrong when they're all using the same texts?

All religious texts contain misogynistic statements,attitudes and practices ( our school minister gave us a talk quoting the bible as to why women should be home makers rather than follow a career), it’s whether or not those following a religion in modern times are still choosing to practise it as a medieval person would.

I've yet to read most of this thread but I'm always a bit perplexed when people post quotes from the Prophet Muhammed etc. I mean, go and check out Iran lol. It's not exactly a feminist utopia.

Quite.

From the Free Speech Union:

the APPG is the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims:
The APPG published a report in November 2018 which urged the government to adopt a legal definition of Islamophobia:

“Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”

Apologies for weird formatting. Full article (from Sep 5th 2024) here:

freespeechunion.org/is-the-labour-government-inching-closer-to-adopting-a-definition-of-islamophobia/

I remember reading that there are around 40 million slaves in the world today. How many were trafficked over the several hundred years of the transatlantic slave trade? I'm sure it was something like 12 million.

Both are terrible but it's odd that we fixate on the events of a few hundred years ago yet largely ignore what's happening today.

I think it's a bit of a taboo subject for westerners. I looked at the top 10 list for modern slavery and Russia was the only western country (if you can call it that) on the list and was in last place. 9/10 worst offending countries were majority non white, but a lot of people seem to struggle with the fact that oppressed people can still be oppressors - it doesn't really fit into the black/white thinking of modern identity politics.

There are plenty of men who control the women in their lives and its nothing to do with religion, how do you explain that?

"There is a difference between ACTUAL ISLAM and the interpretation that a minority have."

@koolkatxx what's ACTUAL ISLAM?

Entire countries of men? With legal systems and societal norms in place that restrict women’s rights? Which are supported by religious interpretations and institutionalised to systematically deny women’s equality? This isn’t just on an individual basis, as per your argument.

You said it yourself it's the men imposing the restrictions and they use their interpretation of religion to do that doesn't mean the the religion is bad its the people that are bad and by using the religion as a tool to do what they want they have made various religions look bad, when in fact they're not.
If its the fault of the religions why are the majority of people in any faith good people that live in peace with others?

Did you ChatGPT this?

This thing about Islam, is that its founder and the soldiers under his command, went about seizing territories and compelling people to convert. From the beginning it was used as a way to control people for political gain. Judaism was about setting a select group of people free, as was Christianity.