السلام عليكم ورحمة الله وبركاته،
I have two questions that have been weighing on my mind for many years now, and was hoping you could shed some light on my worries. My first question is about modern day concubinage. I was having a conversation with someone who said they would take on a slave, or a maid which would be the modern day equivalent, and would have intimate relations with her, and of course I said that’s haram, and can’t be done unless he marries her, to which he replied with by bringing up ayah 23:5-6. I was at a loss for words, as I obviously couldn’t go against the word of god. I told him that was a completely different era, and things were different back then, and he responded by saying that the Quran is applicable to our ummah regardless of the era, and again I couldn’t argue with that because that’s how it’s supposed to be. So my question is; how is the Quran supposedly applicable to all eras and their individual predicaments, but something like this is specifically and explicitly said in the Quran. If every word in the Quran is intentional and from Allah, wouldn’t that mean that concubinage is still permissible?
My next question is a slightly more uncomfortable one, and I apologize for my language in advance. If sodomy is absolutely haram, as we all know it to be; why is the male prostrate gland (pleasure point) in the the rectum? If Allah created the human body, male and female, with absolute attention to detail, why would he place something like that in a place he explicitly forbade for anything to go for a man?
(I wasn’t sure who I would actually get a response from, so I’ve sent this out to everyone who I thought would actually be able to answer

TL;DR: Apologists say 23:14 anticipated embryology because cartilage forms before muscle. But every classical tafsir understood ʿiẓām as bones, and no mufassir read it as cartilage. If the “cartilage” reading is true, then either the Prophet didn’t understand his own revelation or he let his Companions misunderstand it, and Allah chose a word He knew would mislead its audience for 1400 years.

1. THE CLAIM

ثُمَّ خَلَقْنَا ٱلنُّطْفَةَ عَلَقَةً فَخَلَقْنَا ٱلْعَلَقَةَ مُضْغَةً فَخَلَقْنَا ٱلْمُضْغَةَ عِظَٰمًا فَكَسَوْنَا ٱلْعِظَٰمَ لَحْمًا ثُمَّ أَنشَأْنَٰهُ خَلْقًا ءَاخَرَ

“Then We made the sperm-drop into a clinging clot (ʿalaqa), then made the clot into a chewed lump (muḍgha), then made the lump into bones (ʿiẓām), then clothed the bones with flesh (laḥm), then produced it as another creation.” (23:14)

The apologetic argument states that modern embryology shows the skeleton forms as a cartilage model, and muscle develops around it. So the verse is “scientifically accurate,” if we read ʿiẓām as cartilage or “early skeletal structure.” Some versions add that bone cells appear before muscle cells.

I’ll look at this in three steps: what the verse’s earliest interpreters said, what embryology actually shows, and what follows if the apologetic reading is adopted

2. WHAT THE CLASSICAL TAFSIRS SAY

I went through the major tafsirs on this verse (all available at quran.com). None of them says or implies cartilage

3 points:

1. No mufassir mentions cartilage. The closest thing is Ibn Masud’s “bone and sinew,” and sinew isn’t cartilage.
2. They all describe the same sequence. The mudgha becomes bones, and flesh then covers them. Ibn Ashur says explicitly that this is the formation of “the human skeleton of bone and flesh.”
3. The modern claim appears only in the modern tafsir. Tantawi (20th century) quotes “some scholars” saying bone cells appear first and flesh cells only after the skeleton. That is a modern claim added to the tafsir, not something from the earlier tradition.

The same word is used in 2:259 (“Look at the bones, how We assemble them and then clothe them with flesh”), 36:78 (“Who will give life to bones when they have decayed?”) and 17:49. In these verses ʿiẓām plainly means ordinary hard bones, including bones that have rotted.

3. WHAT EMBRYOLOGY ACTUALLY SHOWS

Roughly (timing varies by source and by how you count):

• Around weeks 3-4, somites form and begin giving rise to muscle precursors (myotomes).
• Around weeks 4-5, the limb buds appear and mesenchymal cells condense.
• Around weeks 5-6, cartilage models appear. Muscle precursors migrate into the limbs at roughly the same time.
• Around weeks 6-8, the first ossification (true bone) begins.

Two problems for the verse:

Muscle precursors appear at about the same time as cartilage, or before bone. So “bones are formed, then clothed with flesh” is not a clean match for the actual developmental order. Skeleton and muscle develop in parallel from related mesenchymal and somite tissue. There is no flesh-lump stage that turns into bones. The embryo isn’t an undifferentiated piece of meat from which a skeleton later emerges. So even the “scientific” reading needs the word stretched and the sequence loosened. (I’m not an embryologist, so correct me if I have any timing wrong.)

4. "CAN IT POSSIBLY MEAN CARTILAGE?"

The verse uses ʿiẓām, the ordinary word for bone, which everywhere else in the Quran means hard bone (36:78, 17:49, 19:4). The claim that Arabic had no word for cartilage fails: ghuḍrūf is defined in the classical lexicons as “every soft bone” (Ibn ʿAbbād, al-Muḥīṭ fī l-Lugha), and it appears in a report describing the Prophet’s body (the Seal was “at the place of the ghuḍrūf of the shoulder”), so the language of his time already had a more precise term for exactly this tissue.

Even granting this, that definition makes cartilage a kind of ʿaẓm, so the word can stretch that far. But “can” is not “does,” and if Allah meant cartilage He chose the general word, knowing the Prophet, the Companions and every classical scholar would read it as hard bone, when a precise term existed and was in use. That is the real problem, and it leads into the dilemma of what the Prophet knew.

5. THE DILEMMA: WHAT DID THE PROPHET KNOW?

If the intended meaning of 23:14 is “cartilage,” then at the time of revelation:

A. The Prophet didn’t know. Then he recited, taught and passed on a verse whose intended meaning he didn’t grasp. By his own understanding, it meant bones.

B. The Prophet knew and said nothing. Then he knowingly left his Companions with a false understanding, despite 16:44 (“so that you may explain to the people what was revealed to them”).

If the Prophet’s understanding of revelation can diverge from its intended meaning, his explanations become unverifiable. Every tafsir that relies on his explanation rests on the assumption that what he understood is what God meant. Once you grant that this can fail, you can’t say where it stops. How do we know his explanation of any other verse isn’t another “bones, but really something else”?

The same goes for the Companions. Ibn Abbas is called the “interpreter of the Quran,” and he is quoted in the tafsirs on this very verse. If he and every classical mufassir missed the real meaning, on what basis do we trust their reading of the verses on law, theology, or the afterlife?

6. WHAT THIS MEANS FOR ALLAH’S CHOICES

Ibn Kathir, commenting on 26:195 (“in a clear Arabic language”), explains that God revealed the Quran “in perfect and eloquent Arabic, so that it may be quite clear, leaving no room for excuses and establishing clear proof, showing the straight path.” Take that at face value:

1. The Quran presents itself as clear to its first audience, in their language.
2. So the meaning the original audience understood is the meaning God intended. Clarity means the intended meaning is the one communicated.
3. The Prophet, the Companions and the classical scholars understood ʿiẓām as bones, a word the Quran uses for ordinary hard bone everywhere else.
4. Therefore the intended meaning is bones.

The apologist can only escape by saying God’s intended meaning was not what the audience understood, which contradicts 26:195 directly

Hi everyone,

I'm thinking about Daur e Jahiliyyah where we're taught that people used to worship idols and harm their daughters.

If that's true, then there were women in leadership positions back then too.

So, the main issue was really just the idol worship, right?

I am curious to know what were the problems back then ?

To illustrate this problem, the fact that Muslim women in the West (Canada) still cover their hair in 2026... More recently, I’ve seen women have their whole faces covered, like in the style of a burqa.

I have nothing against Muslims as individuals. There are good and bad people of every religion.

As for the noticeable spread of Islam, to give an example, my old school is now almost empty during Islamic religious holidays. It was never like this before. I’ve had friends move away because they felt isolated in their previous neighborhoods.

I can’t back this up by statistics, but I believe they’re the culture with a relatively high fertility rate. My neighbour has 6 children. His wife stays home and doesn’t work.

I don’t want my future society to be dominated by a culture where women can’t even show their face/hair.

Why do people stay in faith and prefer to believe even when they have so many doubts ?

1 Search for Meaning

Religion offers a packaged deal of beliefs and provides a story of our lives that make it easy to relate and feel better when our lives are bad. We know that there is an epic drama of creation myths, miracles, apocalyptic high stakes etc happening in the world which ends with us reaching perfect bliss in heaven. And I remember this when i believed. I enjoyed doing tafsir and trying to decipher Gods message feeling this spiritual connection. Its very hard to leave this behind even when we encounter problems in the beliefs. Religion offers us this fuzzy feeling of awe that our problems matter, that there is a higher purpose to pain and that we are part of a grand story in life that has a glorious destiny in the afterlife. Without this meaning people succumb to nihilism and depression.

2 Premeditated Ignorance

This is a concept where we purposely gaslight ourselves into believing something because the alternative is very scary. And so people dont want to know the truth. They dont want to know whether religion is true or false, whether Allah is real etc. Its a comfort blanket of not knowing. This is just human psychology at play. We try to belong with society even when we don't fit in. We gaslight ourselves to like something even when we don't because society says it's good. It's like a subconscious shield that makes us shut down things that go against the comfort zone of belief we were conditioned with. We may not even be trying to lie or deceive yet we still avoid truth seeking because it leads to pain.

3 Cultural Identity

Religion often forms part of people's cultural identity. For example an American white atheist who starts believing in God is most likely to choose christianity. And likewise most muslims are born into brown cultures, Arab-indo-pak cultures where choosing another faith is the same as hating your own race/culture. And so muslims see peoples disbelief as hating brown people, copying white people, wanting to be a westerner, a secular puppet etc. Religion here is not a set of truth claims but a culture and way of life to live. Cultural conditioning primes our minds to feel that we are being prejudice to our own ethnic group/culture by disagreeing with the religous tenets.

4 Peer Pressure & Social Conditioning

We are trained since birth to subconsciously associate everything with the religious flavour we are taught. We must call god Allah/Jesus and it sticks to peoples brains that even atheists cant have a neutral attitude to the word. In many cases we find that people dont really believe but they simply have a belief in belief. They believe because that's what everybody around them believes and its socially acceptable. Its simply going with the flow as an NPC in a game would do. We dont want to be outcast. We want to belong and be normal. So we discard any doubts or we dont get doubts at all. The illusory truth effect primes us to believe even when we do have doubts because its continuously told to us from childhood that x is the case.

5 Aesthetic Appeal & Emotional Investment

A very common factor is the appeal of the aesthetics behind a religion. The majestic feeling in a cathedral or the beauty of arabesque and geometric architecture, the sound and calligraphy of Arabic or other symbols in the mythical stories or cultural practises. Then theres the emotional investment where one has put in alot of time and energy into a faith, has alot of good memories or emotional connections to faith be it through childhood, family, community, learning and practicing. Particularly for the older generations to suddenly have to leave or be told it's not what you thought it was would be like calling them insane. They would not have the tools to handle such shock and would have to be in denial of something they took seriously for so long.

Maybe you should repent and ask Allah to guide you. It would lead you to the truth better than posting things to anger Allah. Allah misguides those who are arrogant and disobey him.

Surah An-Nahl Ayat 93

And if Allāh had willed, He could have made you [of] one religion, but He sends astray whom He wills and guides whom He wills.1 And you will surely be questioned about what you used to do.

Surah Al Alaq

1: Read in the name of your Lord who created (Iqra' bismi rabbika allathee khalaq).

• 2: Created man from a clinging clot (Khalaqal-insāna min ʻalaq).
• 3: Read, and your Lord is the Most Generous (Iqra' wa rabbukal-akram).
• 4: Who taught by the pen (Alladhī ʻallama bil-qalam).
• 5: Taught man that which he knew not (ʻAllamal-insāna mā lam yaʻlam).
• 6: No! [Indeed] man transgresses
• 7: Because he sees himself self-sufficient.
• 8: Indeed, to your Lord is the return.
• 9: Have you seen the one who forbids
• 10: A servant when he prays?
• 11: Have you seen if he is upon guidance
• 12: Or enjoins righteousness?
• 13: Have you seen if he denies and turns away?
• 14: Does he not know that Allah sees?
• 15: No! If he does not desist, We will surely drag him by the forelock—
• 16: A lying, sinning forelock.
• 17: Then let him call his associates;
• 18: We will call the angels of Hell.
• 19: No! Do not obey him. But prostrate and draw near to Allah

It just absolutely blows my mind. I’ve read a lot of the Quran and Hadiths, and every social aspect of left wing ideology is completely the opposite of Islam. And a lot of aspects of what the left wants (especially lgbt and women) are actually harshly punishable offenses in Islam. The left is extremely vocal about SA done by men (rightfully so), but they are fine with a religion who’s “perfect man with perfect morals” gave permission to his soldiers to “pull out” of their captive sex slaves, and if they got pregnant “god willed” it - Sahih Muslim (Book of Marriage 1438c).
So fine with it in fact they’ll say they think Islam is “beautiful”. It’s mind bending for me as I feel like I’m alone over here.

I get that there’s stuff like that in the old testament of the Bible too, but I’m not Christian so I’m looking at this objectively with no religious motive or double standard.

What bothers me, even though im not religious, is the left always talks about how Christians get in the way of their political goals. It’s like they don’t know if we lived in a Muslim majority country and they spoke up like this towards Islam, they’d get killed or jailed minus a couple of the 52 countries. Yet I hear them say “Islam is beautiful” and if people are criticizing Islam then they automatically get lumped in with “Islamophobes” but they love talking sh** about Christians.

Makes ZERO sense.

Hello everyone! To get straight to the point: I would like to convert to Islam, but I need to clear up some doubts so I don't fall into fideism—thanks!

The Substitution Theory and the Cross (Surah An-Nisa, 4:157)—this is what makes me most skeptical about Islam. When I read it, it seems like a cheap excuse to deny the crucifixion—almost a form of fideism—and there aren't many logical explanations. Even if we accept the premise of this theory, why would God allow an innocent person to suffer a brutal and unjust death in Jesus's place just to spare the Prophet? Furthermore, if God knew that this illusion of the crucifixion would lead to "Christian heresy" (since the apostles and the Jews would look and see Jesus there), why did He allow it? Another point is that if God is logically infinite, an offense against Him and a breach of communion with Him results in an infinite penalty (I am referring to Adam and Eve); therefore, logically, the price to be paid for humanity's redemptive salvation must also be of infinite value—and who is infinite if not God? That is why I view the Cross as something logical.

When you compare the Quran and The Bible, especially the New Testament, a person reading it from an outside, out of context and uninformed perspective might conclude that New Testament is very passifist and positive book.

The Quran does contain some vivid descriptions of hellfire that give Dante and revalations a run for their money, but even so, most of it is made up extra-Biblical commentary, and stories that seem to be commenting on biblical literature.

However, looking at the tradition, it's very hard to understand how such levels of bigotry can be justified using the religion, again, from an outside perspective, it's unjustifiable.

Take Slavery for example, Slavery is permitted in Islamic jurisprudence, and it shows in the history book. This includes sexual slavery and other forms of brutal slavery. A person reading the new testament from the outside will find it difficult to believe that book was once used to defend some disturbing atrosities in the past.

In other words, it should be easy to say no to slavery using the New Testament (and that eventually did happen, in fact, the earliest universal abolitionist I'm history was a Christian bishop) than it is with Islam. And yet when you look at the history of Slavery, yes, Arabs enslaved more than Europeans, and yet even then, when reading the context of how slaves were treated in the east compared to the west, especially in the Americas, the stuff in there is way more disturbing than what we see in Islam, it's almost barbaric.

The worst we see of Islam is Castration and sexual assault. There's records of european cutting forcing slaves to defecate on each other for entertainment. Something that has never happened in Islam.

Point is, it's easier to use the bible to fight against slavery as its more ambiguous in context than it is with Islam, which unequivocally endorses it. And yet both are equally guilty, with Christian treatment of slavery being even more disturbing.

In regards to Racism, racism obviously also exists on both worlds, and yet one thing about racism in Islam is that you will never find a Muslim group that uses the Quran or Islam to defend racism. In fact, most of the racism is attributed to personal beliefs of tradition outside the religion, or a socio-economic history. No racist Muslim uses Islam as an excuse to justify that racism. The racism in the Muslim world is even more extreme at times as there is no secular progressive model to manage it like there is in the west.

However, I'm the west, even today, even though the racism population wise is no longer widespread, you'll still find extreme pockets of it in certain regions, and in almost every pocket, the christian religion is used as the central justification for the racism. In fact, in the muslim regions where you find racism, the racist terms used are borrowed from the west

How is this possible? How is christian jurisdiction, which arguably seems to be more pacifist in its text, able to allow for the same or greater levels of disturbing slavery than even Islam, which informs it directly, and how is also able to be used as a direct defense of racism, whereas Islam on the other hand has not.

Core Concepts in Galen's Embryology

• Active vs. Material Roles: Galen taught that the male semen is the active, formative force, while the menstrual blood serves as the passive matter or nourishment that the semen draws in and assimilates. [1, 2]
• The "Two-Seed" Theory: Unlike Aristotle—who believed only the male produced true seed and the female contributed only passive menstrual blood—Galen (combining Hippocratic and dual-seed ideas) believed that females also produced their own "female semen" (vaginal/uterine secretions or fluid) alongside menstrual blood. [1, 2, 3]
• Assimilation of Blood: In works like On the Natural Faculties, Galen described the semen as drawing in menstrual fluid like dew, dominating it, and converting it into the substance and bulk of the growing fetus. [1, 2]
• Hereditary Transmission: Both male and female contributions played a role in shaping the child's traits and physical resemblance to both parents. [1, 2]

Islam

Penetrative vaginal intercourse during a woman's menstrual period is strictly prohibited (haram) and considered a major sin in Islam based on Quran [2:222] and prophetic traditions. [1]

not ragebaiting, not condoning any bad faith dialogue either. only asking in earnest.

my mother listens to a lot of lectures by farhat hashmi and the like, and almost all of them are about sex/sexuality/marital relations/clothing/zina.

why? is there not more to islam than all of that? why is this all they seem to talk about?

How do you guys cope with the overwhelming fear of punishment in grave and Jahannam and this lingering fear that what if Islam might be true despite having these contradictions ands issues. What if this is part of God's infinite plan? Make a religion look fallible then see who's still following it.

yea

My boyfriend is Muslim and I am not. Going into this relationship 3 years ago knowing this, I wondered what the future would look like. It ended up transcribing into a lot of back and fourth.
At first I did not need to convert to Islam as long as I agreed our kids would be raised Muslim. Now I have to convert.
The bigger problem I’m facing is that I’m not sure my boyfriend even looks at me as an individual person. He expects to be obeyed, me be hospitable, and convert.
The bigger picture is that these were never things discussed when the relationship was getting serious. He finally cracked and laid out his honesty with me. He grew up programmed to believe he will find someone with the same views, marry and have a family. There was no emotionality involved. Fast forward to me- he fell in love for the first time ever. He never knew what love felt like nor did he think it was real. I grew up knowing love, care, affection, loyalty, compromise, etc. were the core foundational actions/feelings to have a successful marriage.
So now that we’re here, I’ve broken down and we’ve separated mostly because of our disagreements but also because I found out he was partaking in infedility while we were together.
Fun facts: I’ve never met 2/6 of his siblings (his eldest sisters) or his mother (father has passed), he holds me to a standard that he can not upkeep for himself (for ex. Partying, drinking, cheating), he has finally admitted he has never fully let me into his life because of his hesitancies regarding his religion (obviously our relationship is haram) and he says he “wants to feel like I will always listen, take Islam serious, etc.”
I’m kind of lost to be honest. Hypothetically speaking, if I met all of his “standards” I’m not sure he would ever stop the things that are deteriorating our relationship. Because of religion, he believes men and women are not equal and men are given unlimited forgiveness while women are not. To me, that sounds like he is allowed to live whatever type of life he’d like including lying, betrayal, etc. Which if this is the case, I cannot agree. I was not raised to allow a man to get away with anything, to treat his wife as a caretaker, child birther and house maid. I was raised to know a marriage consists of compromise and two people doing what it takes to please the other.
I’ve tried to explain to him that his “religion” excuses are poor and his “culture” may be the real problem. I have learned enough to know that yes, Islam can be taken negatively but can also be appreciated and respected. Cultures are what tear apart the beauty in Islam and pick the things from the quaran to benefit (usually) the men.
I also know well enough that Americanized Muslim men tend to get off on abusing their morals with non-Muslim women. They like to date, hook up, and leave them because they know there is no future with them.
At this point, I think I need to speak with a sheik to get the questions I have answered.

Did classical scholars believe the moon splitting was a literal miracle of Muhammad that actually literally happened and not just in a metaphoric sense, like muslim apologist argue?

Can anyone provide links to scholars supporting the literalist view?

If they did than thats a pretty big knock against islam as NASA scientist brad bailey said the moon was never split!

https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.328Y6DA

"NASA responded to the claim here when a social media user flagged it in 2010.

"No current scientific evidence reports that the Moon was split into two (or more) parts and then reassembled at any point in the past," said Brad Bailey, a staff scientist from the NASA Lunar Science Institute.

Professor Paul Groot, an astronomer at Radboud University in the Netherlands, said: "The 'split' indicated in the bottom picture [in the misleading image] is present on the Moon, but it definitely does not extend around the Moon."

"It is a feature that is most likely connected to the impact that created Tycho crater, which is located to the bottom right of the feature in the orientation on the picture," he told AFP via email."

I think this is the strongest argument against classical theism but let's apply it to islam.

If God is omnipotent and omniscient, he can lie to us and change our reality. So how can we know if everything said in islam (Charia, Paradise for believers) is true?

Let's say, for the sake of argyment, that Islam is true in the sense that a well-defined Allah sent a revelation and laws to Muhammad. What guarantee do I have that I will go to Paradise after following Islam?

Allah could send atheists to Paradise and Muslims to Hell,
Christians to Paradise and others to Hell,
500 pagans to Paradise, 200 Zoroastrians to Hell, and billions into infinite reincarnation. (Why not?)

Or perhaps he created Hell but has never actually sent anyone there. There are infinitely many logical possibilities that contradict your creed like this.

You cannot refute this by saying,

"If everything in our religion is true, then everything will happen as written in our text."

Because your God could modify every aspect of reality, our minds, or even your texts without us ever noticing it. Your creed would have no power against a God capable of doing such things.

So we don't have any rational reason to believe in islam even if islam is true !

Once you realize this, it becomes absurd to submit your life to a God who can do whatever he wants, regardless of what you believe or do.

Three years ago, these question would have sounded blasphemous to me. I put the disclaimer in the title so it does not cause unnecessary hurt sentiments, so if you're like that please don't proceed.

I find that the only way to truly accept Allah and the religion is when you erase the YOU. There are no questions, no doubts, no nothing. Islam is very clear on the subject of servant and god.

I find islam, the religion used in the worst possible ways. I'm aware, the religion itself has little to do with it. But I find the evilness, among me and my fellow men, to be extremely irritable. We as humans are something of a terrible species, individually and more so collectively.

Now, of course, god created me to worship him. Why? I am to enter heaven only by his mercy? I am, as I said before, nothing. And Nature, and life in its way, drills the lessons of helplessness, and misery, and fear into us mortals. It pushes us to our kness, which makes me question.

Do I only believe in Allah, because I'm hopeful a judgement day? A day where everything shall be weighed? Every action? Every sentiment? I barely accept god of my own accord? It seems pretty cruel to me that a world of good and evil and suffering. A test and a consciousness that screams rebillion, and a life and death and the exam. It seems to me, that god only exists becaue I want it to. Is that enough evidence for him to be there?

I've been told to not ask questions, I'm aware I have little intellect and rationality, and the questions can't be tackled in the way, I am going about it. But I have been gifted with life. I have to live and supposedly am a part of this test. And aupposedly have no say.

I find god to be cruel. I find god to be aloof.

I do not think there is a superior way of life than islam. I do not believe that the religion is archaic. I am not of the opinion that human intellect is the one and only source of truth or capable of every answer.

But I find myself a useless cog in a machine, nothing of my choice, and I feel used and abused in a system far bigger than anything, I feel forced and persecuted. I feel lost and angry, and sad, depressive.

I never quieten the questions. Quietning them is wrong to me. Because I would arrive at truth only by seeking not abstaining.

I want to believe. Perhaps I will.

TLDR;

WHAT MAKES YOU BELIEVE IN ALLAH? THE CORE ARGUMENT THAT YOU FALL BACK TO WHEN YOU HAVE DOUBTS.

I have been watching youtube shorts of both christian and muslim apologist. They always post videos trying to convert each other and hurling insult on each other. Don't they know half of the world doesn't follow christianity or islam. What is the need for sowing hate.

It has additional hadiths with non-sahih chains under chapter names. And it has the isnads in the regular hadiths - the isnads should be translated too. Aren't the isnads supposed to be the most important?

And we need a critical edition that looks at the surviving manuscripts and tells us about the variants. This should have been done a long time ago. We're debating Sahih al-Bukhari for so long and it wasn't even fully translated until this day.

This is why saying things like “Islam is a religion of peace,” “this is not real Islam,” or “these are just bad people using Islam to do bad things” is largely unpersuasive to many non-Muslims in the West.

The reason is that many of them are not judging Islam primarily by its theology or by what Muslims say Islam ought to be. They look at the societies of Muslim-majority countries and at the outcomes they associate with them: levels of prosperity, individual freedom, women’s rights, LGBT rights, education, democracy, and so on.

From that, some draw a fairly simple conclusion: they would not want to live in, or see their families live in, societies with those characteristics.

That is not a rigorous way to determine what Islam itself causes. Muslim-majority countries differ enormously, and their outcomes are shaped by history, institutions, politics, economics, conflict, and many other factors. It is ultimately a crude and unreliable heuristic.

But perceptions matter. If Muslim-majority societies consistently performed much better across measures of human development, freedom, equality, and quality of life, I suspect arguments about Islam would encounter considerably less skepticism and hostility in the West.

I am a Muslim from Kazakhstan, born and raised in the West. I consider myself fairly religious and I'm married to a Pakistani Muslim man.

However I was raised by parents who discussed religion, not just Islam, very openly and were very open to questions and critique. I was raised to believe Islam and the Quran are up for interpretation and I don't follow any Hadith or tend to listen to scholars. I have opinions and there are things that I openly disagree with within our religion.

However, I don't consider myself fully westernised and since becoming active on reddit only this year I found some acceptance within muslim communities here, mostly among women. I'm not white enough for the whites and not muslim enough for the muslims.

But I wonder is what I see on reddit genuinely a good representation of the thoughts in our communities? Some of the posts I'm seeing are so extreme, I have made a few myself, asking simple questions wanting the perspective of non western people thinking there'd be more understanding of the nuances of being raised within Islam. But instead my comments and most replies to any comments I make are filled with attacks on my whole character, how I'm going to hell, or normalising sin by simply living in a way that doesn't align with their views. Theres a lot of that 'holier than though' attitudes coming through as if the people commenting have never sinned in their life. Everyone sins, and everyone has a different level of what they consider a sin they would never commit. There's millions of tik toks out there joking about this exactly, how a muslim will commit every sin imaginable but will look at you like you're satan himself for offering them bacon. They're jokes yeah but that's how many muslims around me live. Being a strict muslim is not realistic imo, south asians are often the exception. My husband grew up in the west but within a much stricter religious home, and this is what I see amongst many Pakistanis.

I don't see an issue with that, you can be religious but I don't understand the hate for muslims who choose not to be, or who decide to question. This was a source of a lot of our arguments within our marriage at the beginning due to the fact that I thought my husbands lack of comprehending his own religion, his lack of questioning anything just showed he was willing to blindly follow something he doesn't understand or even knows if he agrees with it or not.

Like I said before, I believe all religions are up for interpretation and therefore I don't stick to all the rules that are seen amongst many muslims as black and white, but having this opinion apparently isn't allowed, because there's nothing 'personal' about Islam according to them.

I'd love to see the perspective of muslims here who see themselves as having a moderate haram/halal ratio, what do you think about this. But also from non muslim perspective, I know most of you aren't active in muslim subs but have you noticed this?

I hope you all heard about Cornell frat university raping incident where 7 disgusting men drugged and raped a girl at a fraternity house. So i have multiple things to say :

Baqarah 286: God does not burden any soul beyond its capacity. How can a human being support this kind of « thing »? Nobody can bear it like i wouldnt too, tell me if you could bear it pls.

And after all this, you go back to prayer and say alhamdulillah. and imagine that woman is not muslim, she will die and go to hell because she didnt believe in god i dont know if i have a low iman but how can a human not be angry towards allah. astaghfirullah. allah gave free will but come on bro what is this. allah gives the hardest challenges to his favorite creations but come on im a little sad and angry.

i couldnt post this anywhere else, i dont have enough karma i think. pls dont be mean in the comments

Key Differences in Terminology and Stages

• The Leech-Like Stage (Alaqah):
  • Qur’an: Describes the second stage as an alaqah (Surah 23:14), a term that carries multiple simultaneous meanings in Arabic: something that clings/suspends, and a leech-like entity. At 23–24 days, the human embryo implants into the uterine wall and visually resembles a leech.
  • Galen: Did not describe the embryo as leech-like. He framed this phase around the coagulation of menstrual blood mixed with semen.
• Menstrual Blood vs. Female Secretions:
  • Qur’an: Does not state that a woman's menstrual blood is a structural raw material required for the formation of the baby.
  • Galen: Centralized the role of menstrual blood coagulating with semen as a core pillar of his reproductive and embryological theory.
• Order of Development (Bones and Flesh):
  • Qur’an: Mentions forming the mudghah (lump of flesh), then forming the izam (bones), and then clothing the bones with lahm (flesh/muscle) (Surah 23:14).
  • Galen: Outlined anatomical changes from semen to undifferentiated form, bone formation, and subsequent flesh development, though critics and scholars debate the exact overlap with how modern histology views simultaneous mesodermal differentiation.

When it comes to looking at hardline Tafsirs of the most controversial Quranic verses and analysis of the Hadith which have become infamous the last 20 years, one of the issues of discussion is the extent to which these Tafsirs and analysis are truly inflexible such that Muslim nations and communities are irreversibly bound towards them.

For example, anti theist, counter jihad and similar movements would make claims, or at least implications, that when looking at nations such as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Somalia, Sudan and others, child marriage rates and domestic violence rates are uniquely high even relative to developing nations where Christians, animists, polytheists and others are a majority. And that Muslim nations that have moved towards more Islamic nature have unanimously seen support for child marriage and domestic violence spike upwards.

It would seem that the extent to which this is true for nations such as Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sudan, Somalia and other Muslim developing nations relative to other developing nations would provide substantially more information and insight. If reliable studies and analysis point to the conclusion that numerous other factors dwarf how Islamic a nation and/or community is, when it comes to support for child marriage and domestic violence, that could in theory fundamentally change the discussion.

Even more so in the event it turns out these kinds of studies have been repressed for various possible reasons.