by
lwtc247
@ 21. Jun 2007 - 18:24:55
There has been about 4 independent ways a recent topic has reached my ears lately, almost as though it's a calling for me to start to think about it even more.
The subject is apostasy, apostasy coupled with the Salman Rushdie lobbox. BTW: Salman is also an apostate.
An apostate is someone who renounces their religion. There may be many reasons why, as many reasons as there are people I suppose. The apostasy I would like to focus on concerns Islam. It's simply far more interesting than say 7th Day Adventist apostasy, and Islamic apostasy is the one that had been coming to my attention lately.
Actually, I was going to try and put ‘my view’ of apostasy and any punishment it bears, but it's very difficult to make good logical conclusions that one can feel confident with, coming up with 'the right answer' as it were. This is because of interpretation.
Do most Muslims know Islamic law? No. Guess what, either do I, but I am fairly sure the principles of Islam that I do know about serve me as a good guide.
In looking around the web for apostasy information, a deluge of anti-Islamic sites pop up, full of their complete and utter nonsense. For example, when they talk about jihad, the spin of hatred they have, is used to make it seem like jihad means killing all and sundry just because they are not Muslim.
You see, their hate and/or incomprehension of Islam blinds them to any rational examination of the subject. I see it time and time again. When I was a young lad, my very smart father told me that we always see things that reinforce our prejudices. After he said that to me, I realised he was right when I caught myself doing it. Now aware of it, I try not to fall foul of that. But these people who hate Islam go off on bizarre tangents of what Islam is, or is supposed to be, in order for them to arrive at conclusions which have the objective of trying to make other people hate Islam too.
Additionally, when parts of the Quran are presented, they are usually very poorly translated and bereft of context. One example is the old 'beat women' thing. There is a sequence of stepwise actions for the chastisement of women in the Quran in which men are allowed to beat their wives found in chapter 4, verse 34. HEY WAIT! Don’t jump to conclusions! Wait and read on first; you might want to examine what you understand or define as 'beat' means here! Islam haters will be visualising and telling others, that it means beating to a pulp, beating the living daylighs of of come woman. Those with less hate and more intellectual wisdom may envisage a slap on the shoulder or perhaps the face. Even here there is scope.
Now, after these Islam haters "show" such terrible things, from what they say is mentioned in the Quran,they then go on to say things like ‘This proves Islam is evil, blah blah blah’ BUT, it seems to me is that they take it out of context.
E.g. Lw's luwwy cookbook: "This next recepie will help kill your hunger" Aaaah. The book is evil becasue it talks about killing. Lw advocates killing. Lw is also evil.
Let’s look at this with the same beatings thing. The context of the beating is IF the husband believes his wife was going to ‘run off’ have sex with someone while or because the husband isn’t there. You simply won't find this conditional information presented on many of the ‘debunking Islam’ web pages. I’ve read bits of a few of them, that’s my qualification to say this. Look up a selection too and see what you think.
The Quran also has the warning not to make excuses to beat them. You see, there must be a realistic sign that the woman is going to so such a thing. And even then, the beating only comes (stepwise) after first admonishing, secondly by refusing to sleep with them. Only then after these two steps can the beating take place.
Now "Islam" isn’t perfect, not because what God instructed the people to do isn’t perfect, but because of the manipulations and misunderstandings of men isn't perfect. BTW: Since when did God state men have a greater insight into matters Islamic rather than women? I rather think God didn’t!, but it has come to be a bit of a custom within Islam that "what men says", goes.
To me, this is one reason why people don’t like Islam, because they see the rubbish that man has incorporated into religion, and believe that what they see, the rubbish, becomes the dominating perception of the religion. The beauty beneath of the best civil code one could ever hope for i.e. one the holder of infinite knowledge, simply passes them by.
Some apostates seem to have been the victim of some of these kinds of manipulation, and has left its impact upon them causing them to reject "Islam".
Update:
This raises an interesting question: How much blame do apostates carry if corruptions and innovations are presenting themself of "Islam"? Shouldn't everyone reject those things? Perhaps one could say that if the apostate actually studied the religion rather than just assess it from its public image {and here we have the Islam hostile MSM to consider}, then they would realise their perceptions were wrong, BUT there seems like many differing "scholarly" opinions and fatwas (some unsustainable in my opinion) so it may be difficult to get the true sense of the religion.
On the other hand, a very respectable Muslim I knew once said words to the effect of "If you {sincerely} interpret the Quran wrongly and implement it, you get one reward. If you interpret the Quran correctly and implement it, you get twice the reward". Now I don't know if this is true or not, for the reason I've been talking about so far - namely, it is what someone says i.e. I've not seen it in the Quran, so that too could be an innovation, but it makes good sense and seems to be exactly how Muslims operate.
There is another arguement that says there appears to be room for interpretation in Islam, perhaps becasue God allows us the full spectrum of opinions within a particular guideline. But the greater the flexability we have an any particular topic, one can imagine that it is easier for innovations and distortions to creep in.
Therefore IT IS VITALLY IMPORTANT to consider civil life and Islam as a whole when trying to decide upon a course of action within Quranic assessment of civic directives should the need for 'clarification' arise. I'd say these things are:
1) Stick to Gods instructions - don't let an attempt to make a decision on something contradict Quranic guidelines on different but overlapping issues.
2) Remember Islam means peace. Practice of Islam should and will create peace {within an Islamic structure/society}. This does not mean sit around passively while your being attacked!
3) Don't expect non-Muslims to be the same as you and realise you can't FORCE them to be that way
End update
Am I making excuses for Islam which ‘appears’ in some cases to be very physically harsh? Well first off, the apparent harshness of Islam is relative and subjective, but I’m not going to try and lie, there are strict punishments in the Quran, but rightly so. But remember to ask yourself, are the punishments you currently think you know of actually in the Quran or are they simply in your head having listened to out of context propaganda? Then, do you understand the pretexts and full circmstances to hose punishments?
Like it or lump it, every society has to have some rules. Some rules have to be harsh, like those for a serial rapist, paedophile, murderer. Some of the man innovated punishments are very cruel.
But the most crucial point of all is that of human arrogance.
How can a man (or woman), who perceives the universe through a tiny window of perception, by way of the 5 senses, and whose intellectual processing and comprehension ability taking place in the brain, a volume the size of a small melon, ever possibly hope to understand God / the universe / life. We can’t. So is it not preposterous to allow our arrogance and monumental self importance to bring us to question God?, especially when God tells us the religion has been given in its totality (some say this as being perfected). {Wait… don’t jump!} however, (and this is where the Islam haters fall down) how dare anyone NOT examine and speak out about the man made interpretation and accept a possible deviance of the religion that God has given us.
Apostates wallow in blindness and unjustly hate God for the hateful actions of man.
{edited to improve clarity}
