Questions about Islam (genuine). Potentially triggering.

[breathingslowly]

Before going on, I want to warn others that this post contains references to rape and child abuse. I'm sorry the post goes on forever. I didn't know what to leave out. If you aren't interested in Islam, I suggest you don't wade into it.

I'm not a regular on mumsnet and apologise if this post is offensive to anyone. I live in a very rural, traditional backwater of the UK and don't have the opportunity to ask about Islam in RL. My background is non-denominational Christian. I'm under no illusions that the Christian faith is free of contradictions, flaws or repressive elements.

I bought a book called 'Fragile Vessels' - a conservative guide to marriage in Islam. It advised that hitting women should be a last resort and only done with small stick. The writers advised that men were more suited to the public sphere and said women were more emotional so were less reliable witnesses in court. It indicated that the best place for a devout woman to be is at home with her family and she should not leave her home unnecessarily or speak to men. The book teaches that women should prioritise raising their children above earning money or watching tv. It stated that men have the right to divorce but women need a very good reason to divorce or they will face punishment afterwards. The book also quoted from a kind of sacred fable that described a special eternal punishment for women who didn't breastfeed their children. The idea that women own their own property was put forward as a great strike for social justice -
until I realised that everything a husband earns 'belongs' to him, even if a couple divorces. He is only obliged to give as he can (and he may have other wives to support), both during the marriage and afterwards. Divorcing women were urged to take an Islamic portion or face the consequences afterwards, even if a Western court awarded them more. Women also do not have the freedom to spend their own money without permission.

In Fragile Vessels, I read that Muhammad married his wife Aisha when she was six and consummated the marriage when she was nine. The writers stated that this was culturally acceptable, partly because women mature earlier in hot climates and Aisha was no ordinary child (despite playing with dolls). Apparently the Koran does not endorse rape or forced marriage, yet in sacred writings regarded as authentic, Aisha describes having no knowledge of what was going to happen to her on the morning of her wedding.

With supporting material from the Koran and Hadith, the writers of Fragile Vessels advocated that a woman should be available to give her husband sex whenever he wants it. Even if she is riding a camel, she should be in a state of permanent readiness. Apparently, husbands have such a right over women that even if a man was covered in pus filled blisters and his wife licked them all off, she would not have fulfilled his right to her. The book seemed to advocate complementary 'responsibilities' in marriage, yet it seemed that men have meet a great deal of their responsibilities by clothing and feeding their wives to a reasonable standard. Many contemporary Islamic teachers seem to deny that the Koran urges traditional roles on men and women, yet it is hard to see how it can be otherwise if only men are suited to the public sphere and women are unable to mix freely with the outside world.

Elsewhere, I have read that Muhammad sucked his 'wife' Aisha's tongue when he was fasting. There do seem to be a plethora of writings detailing his sanctioning of rape when the victims were the 'booty' of war - the women taken captive in battle. Provided they weren't pregnant, Muhammad then allowed his friends to sell the women as slaves afterwards. I also read in the Hadith that Muhammad, acting in accordance with a divine revelation, ordered an adulterous woman to stand in a chest-high pit and be stoned to death. He allowed her to give birth and wean her child first.

Then I bought a book called 'The Koran for Dummies' and listened to some modern Islamic teaching on the internet. It seems that Muhammad is an amazing man, the father of Islam and the greatest moral teacher in the world. I also randomly learned that he was born without an umbilical cord which surprised me because I had elsewhere read that Islam identifies itself as being scientifically advanced. Apparently Islam is a religion of peace, social justice and liberation for women. Anything else is a misconception. If I had been reading about the Koran as it was presented there, I would know nothing about the elements of Mohammad's life described above. I felt misled although I'm happy to agree that in much of the Koran, Muhammad sounds gentle.

Some of the contemporary Islamic teachers on Youtube are credible and impressive, especially when speaking about mercy and forgiveness. I have a great deal of respect for the grace they show towards others. I also acknowledge that the prophet Muhammad had much to say about men and women being equal in theory, even if this didn't translate into the way he structured his home life or behaved on the battle field. I recognise he thought it was better for men not to hit women.

But how does the 'Islam is a peace-loving religion of social justice and gender equality' square with the supposedly 'sealed' teachings of the divinely revealed Koran and the accompanying Hadith/the sunnah? As far as I can make out, Islam is not a religion that can evolve, particularly. It rests on Allah's words as revealed by Muhammad and Muhammad's life as an example of good Muslim living.

I have watched a few debates on Youtube. The answer to any unpalatable story about Muhammad seems to be 'that's not actually in the Koran'. This response seems a little disingenuous - a bit like a Christian saying 'well you're quoting from the book of James now, Jesus didn't actually say that...

I realise the Old Testament of the Bible is sometimes shocking. Without defending that, it is not regarded as 'sealed' in the Christian faith - the New Testament (not that it's perfect either) sets a new standard that Christians see as the final word. There is no talk of going to war, taking slaves, having multiple wives, hitting women, raping anyone. Compared to the early church depicted in the New Testament, the lifestyle of Muhammad and his prophets seems, in many ways, more brutal and repressive than the Old Testament. Given that Muhammad's words and life are regarded by Muslims as the definitive word from Allah, I don't know how to credit the claim that Islam has a remarkable track record in promoting women's rights. Yet it seems that many contemporary Muslims genuinely believe this.

Can anyone help me understand where contemporary Muslims are coming from? While I despise some of the things Muhammad seems to have done and advocated, I realise that Islam inspires many people to live charitably and well. I'd like to understand. If you can help, I'd be very grateful. If I've caused offence, I'm sorry.

It’s utter batshit like all religions.

Put it down and get s good PGWodehouse

In fact Judaism, Islam and Christianity share so much of their root texts and beliefs that you could argue they are still part of the same Abrahamic religion, if that helps to look at it that way?

As a Brutish Muslim I l'm very careful about what I read. some 'Muslim' scholars are very inflammatory about what they say & preach. They have one rule for them & one for us 'women'. I read the Quran & take my guidance from that & that only. Even then i dont agree with some of the teachings. You get contradictory advice all the time. I dont believe in the Ahmediya sect as he claimed he was a prophet of Allah & that goes against Islam but neither do i agree with the killing of them or anyone for that matter. As for the earnings of women, what she earns is hers to do with as she wishes, the husband has no right to that money. The first wife of Mohammed (pbuh) was a business woman in her own right. Before they married & she was the one who proposed marriage to him. Anyway what Im getting at is please be wary of the forums/books you read as they can be very misleading. pm me if you want to know anything

Look. There a muslims and there are muslimists. Muslims realise that the Islam presented in the Koran isn’t ok and the peacefully live their lives according to the Islamic traditions and verses within the Koran that they find acceptable. Some of them are out there looking for an official reformation of Islam but most are happy just distancing themselves from the official lines as spoken by Allah to Mohammed and written in the Koran as the final and absolute word of god. Then you have muslimists (this is a bit of an in joke that i’m letting you in on, this is the half joking half derogatory term that westernised muslims sometimes use to call their inbred, intellectually stunted, morally gullible ‘brothers’ who wrote publications like the marriage guide you found). These are the kinds of muslims who genuinely believe that everything written in the Koran is true and still relevant but fail to then make the next rational step that would be that any god who promoted such vile tosh was no god at all but something quite different. Most of these kinds of muslims don’t follow the teachings of the Koran 100% because that would be hard but they believe that as an ideal a good Muslim would adhere to Koranic teachings completely. Within this group there are various factions (resulting from slightly different interpretations of the text). These are the kinds of muslims who beat their wives ‘as a last resort’, attempt to convert or at least subject others to their world view, condone horrible things like marital rape and child marriage, lie brazenly about Islam being a ‘religion of peace’ (muslims are permitted by the Koran to lie to infidels) and, hate westernised muslims with the kind of hate one can only feel for a traitor.

Officially there is only one Islam and it is found word for word in the Koran. In practice, we’ll the world and the people in it are always much more complicated than you would first suspect.

Islam guides people and the word of God comes from the Koran

How people want to be guided is different some will pray five times a day some will never pray and do over things that are considered haram but still are good people and they themselves have their internal beliefs and practice is ways that they feel is right

Some will see the prophet as being perfect others will see him as a man if that time and life is very different but his message can still be taken and used in everyday life

It’s individual often influenced and manipulated by those on power how the religion is practised, political ideas, society and so on and in counties where people do have more freedom you are likely to see extremes and relaxed practices

I am not sure Islam will go though a renaissance in the same way as Christianity due to how the word of God and the message has been passed on but we as humans evolve societies change but ultimate message from the writings in the Koran won’t

Perhaps you could @ the twitter.com/Imamofpeace with this thread on twitter. He seems very helpful and keen to explain the basics of Islam.

Honestly barbarian it's not my intention to make an argument for Christianity. I have that sorted in my mind. It was suggested that I use my understanding of Christianity to work out where contemporary Muslims are coming from. Christians today use Christ as their touchstone and Muslims, as I understand, model their lives on Muhammad's teaching and example. I was making the comparison to explain why my own faith had only taken me so far in understanding Islam. I know there are Muslims with a more credible, charitable faith than many Christians have. I don't understand how they reconcile these issues internally, given what seems to be known about Mohammad and his companions, and I've been open about that starting position. I think :)

Thanks to those who have made helpful suggestions while I was responding to barbarian - will check all of these out.

upset, caMe and outy and others thank you for these insights. I really appreciate knowing this.

It was Amazon who suggested Fragile Vessels. The cover and blurb seem very balanced and I bought it on that basis - I would rather have spared my blood pressure to be honest. There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of accessible literature available to non-Muslims - perhaps I didn't know where to look. The 'dummies' guide is clearly written by a Muslim person who would feel the same way as many forward-thinking Christians on many issues. I was left wanting to say 'What about where it says this, though??' but it is a genuine question.

Someone asked why mumsnet - because it's known for being outspoken, articulate and I thought there might be Muslim women who wouldn't mind talking to me. Not sure I'd ask potentially contentious questions on a site specifically for Muslim people to have fellowship with each other, unless invited to do so.

in the quran it states his wife was a businesswoman, and she had a very active role in the community.
these sacred texts were written some hundred years after the quran and contradict what it says in there therefore many Muslims don't follow them.
There's many many different sects of Islam and to be honest even from family to family I've noticed how different the beliefs can be.

And yet the expression of this varies so greatly. Look at how Coptic Christians in Ethopia, Catholics, Evangelical Christians, Russian Orthodox Christians express their faith - how they dress, what they believe, how they worship. And all from one Christ and one Bible.

My understanding of Islam improved massively when I went on tours around local mosques. I've been to super conservative mosques where the Iman told a group of clergy that we were not proper Christians and didn't understand our Bibles. This made a refreshing change from conservative Christians telling us the same thing! I've been around a mosque where the sermon on Friday is in English as it was a town with Muslims from all over the world rather than just one town in wherever. That had a very different feel. Same religion, same practices but different in the way that a Strict Baptist chapel is different from a RC church.

There were interfaith walks around local places of worship in one town I worked in. They were fascinating and good places to ask questions.

breathing
As a Christian married to a Muslim I am always wary of these types of threads. There have been quite a few started over the years that are full of stereotyping and othering.

DH is a Mother tongue Arabic speaker from a country that is 90%+ Muslim. You know what... he is just a normal bloke. I am the higher earner, he was a SAHD when the DC were younger. He does his fair share of the housework. He also prays 5 times a day, eats Halal, doesn't drink and has been on Hajj.

chaz I don't know what othering is but I think we're all different. It surprises me that you feel the need to say your husband is a normal bloke. I didn't for one minute think he wouldn't be. My DH is also (quite) normal and devoutly religious in a different way. I'm also interested in how he believes what he does but he has got tired of answering my questions :)

barbarian Yes but I'm not sure what point you're making or in relation to what, specifically. I'm happy to know about all kinds of faith within Islam.

I'm happy to know about all kinds of faith within Islam

Well off the top of my head, there are Sunni and Shia. Shia have a religious hierarchy, whereas Sunni have no hierarchy, though they take guidance from their scholars.

Sunni covers a lot of different practices. One of which is wahabiism, a relatively new and extremely puritan practice originating in Saudi Arabia and followed by people like Al Qaeda. Other forms of Islam have great difficulty with their interpretation of the Quran.

OP criticising any religion and especially Islam isn’t on in MN world. It doesn’t happen.

It is a religion and therefore to be respected with zero critical questions asked

Calledyoulastnight

To be able to criticise something you need to know quite a lot about it, criticising anything from a place of ignorance says more about the critic than about the object of criticism

And so what?

We used to have a woman on here regularly doing so and she was for years a practising Muslim and she was absolutely slated for it.

If I wrote a book tomorrow promoting any of the issues discussed above, I would be hauled over the coals. But when we discuss “religion” we must suddenly respect these views

Calledyoulastnight
That poster wasn't slated for criticising Islam. She was criticised for extrapolating her negative experience of growing up in what appeared to be a very conservative Muslim family to "the vast majority Muslims believe xyz", "the vast majority of Muslims think xyz".

TakeMe2Insanity

This is exactly the kind of article that makes me want to buttonhole the journalist and say 'How is this the truth?'. Aisha's age is only one of the difficulties and none of the other contentious issues are mentioned.

There is a circular argument in saying that Muhammad is the living embodiment of Qu'ran so his life must reflect the Qu'ran (therefore anything unpalatable cannot be the truth).

The writer talks about a loving relationship between Muhammad and Aisha without referring to specific texts, possibly because many texts in which this is demonstrated also indicate Aisha's youth and Muhammad's pleasure at seeing his wives fight over him. The journalist doesn't talk about Aisha's lack of knowledge of her impending marriage or her first-person account of what she was doing, completely unsuspecting, on the morning of her marriage. She was playing with her friends on some swings. Even when her mother handed her over to other women, she still had no idea of what was to come. Surely, by any standards, there can be no egalitarian relationship between a man in his 40s or 50s and a girl still playing with dolls and winged horses, especially when the girl has no idea of the impending marriage? That's what I'd like to ask.

Off the top of my head (and from sources very complimentary to Muhammad), I can think of Aisha commenting in the Hadith that Muhammad was sensitive in understanding that his wife was young and liked to play with other girls and to watch children playing. He would make sure she had opportunities to do this and would allow her to show him her dolls and her winged horse. He liked to see her temper and encouraged her to lash out at other wives who were jealous of her. It tickled him. She describes that following her engagement to him, her hair fell out.

The journalist calls Aisha an exemplary scholar but doesn't mention that she was left a young widow, barren and forbidden to marry again. The nature of her 'scholarship' is also in doubt. In some accounts, she is the reason for the verse on stoning women to death being left out of the Qu'ran. She claimed that it had existed and was given to her. For safety, she kept it under her pillow, but a tame sheep ate it. (Consequently this verse is in the Hadith instead.)

The journalist makes no mention of the plethora of references to Muhammad sanctioning the rape and selling of women caught in battle and the ongoing rape of women who were caught in battle and kept afterwards as sexual slaves, or sold. In several accounts, Muhammad's advice is asked when his companions were thinking of raping some captives but pulling out early, because, as they explained, they wanted to be able to sell the women afterwards (and weren't allowed to do so if she was pregnant). Muhammad's response was that it would make no difference since Allah would decide if there was to be a pregnancy or not.

None of this sounds like the father of a religion that liberates women and promotes gender equality. Yet I read that many Muslims see their faith in that light. I don't understand how.

What I don't understand is the silence on these practices when Muhammad is being praised in the media and in the prayers of Islam. Given that Muhammad's life is seen as the embodiment of the faith, I don't really 'get' what faithful followers of Islam are thinking about him, when they think about him. As with other religions, modern day apologists for the faith seem to be cherry-picking Muhammad's views and life (understandably) in an effort to present Islam best face forward. But they must, in their heart of hearts, be aware of these issues and I wonder how they get around it and move forwards to a faith that in many instances I genuinely admire.

I am impressed that you seemed to have acquired such a detailed knowledge of Islam so quickly.

It's a miracle Father.

You need someone who,is familiar with the text and how it is used in the religion to help you out here. It is likely that there are differing viewpoints just as there are in Christianity. As soon as you start to ask what is truth you are in philosophical territory and that throws out as many questions as it answers.

It's a miracle Father

chaz I thought someone with a thought had responded, what a disappointment to find you sniping. I have an academic background and have a real interest in this. But I have only skimmed the surface and lack the knowledge to put this in context...anyone who knows much about Islam will probably see that. I do wish you'd go away though, unless you have a response...