I'm guessing it's like Christianity where there are leftist Christians who follow Jesus' more progressive messages such as giving to the less fortunate and healing the sick, and then there are the scary Christian evangelicals that want A Handmaids Tale and conversion therapy. Logically, Islam probably isn't a monolith in a similar way other religions aren't.
However, I have never heard about what those of the Islamic faith actually believe outside of the hysterical post 9/11 Islamophobia I've been indoctrinated with as a child.
I want to know what the truth is and hear the other sides story. To me it's obvious that Islamophobia is wrong, however when Islamophobes make wild claims about it, I can't really refute them confidently because I'm simply ignorant of the facts. Please educate my dumb, white ass.
https://lemmy.ml/post/20955835/14091348
https://lemmy.ml/post/20955835/14091503
Main thing is: remember there are a billion Muslims and have been for ~1400 years. There's been a lot of diversity within that.
I live in majority muslim nation and yeah theres plenty of conservative muslim, just like how nearly every nation has many conservatives. However racists westerners pretend homophobia and sexism is uniquely exotic to muslim and use it to deflect that the west still has prevalent sexism and homophobia attitudes.
Edward Said best describes this phenomenonen in his book about Orientalism.
Damn, guys. Please debate the validity of religion as a whole in a different post, would you? It's getting way too off topic. I'm not religious, but I'm also aware that in hell world we need our opiates or we'll go crazy.
It is too late comrade you have opened the religion debate floodgates by mentioning the existence of religion lmao
Sorry I'm a little bit dumb are you misunderstanding me or just venting about the state of the thread lol
Because I was very much making fun of people derailing this thread for the thirty millionth discussion about the merits of religion as a whole
said i would comment and here we are. seeing some pretty reductive and dangerous rhetoric and i fear that the majority of this site that has little to no experience in the topic will regurgitate something they heard here without crit.
i grew up muslim and queer, used to go to quran and sunday school and the masjid every friday. i myself have a complicated relationship with islam but though i have left the faith many times and no longer practice in a mass, i still consider myself muslim but also mix other faiths and my personal practices in.
of course there IS misogyny and homophobia. just like when i go to school or work in a christian majority area, and hear the most insane out of pocket misogyny and homophobia and transphobia with the most casual of energy.
to single out muslims as morbidly and uniquely intense or cruel compared to christians, jews, and even atheists is reductive thinking and heavily prejudiced. to not even mention the passing, casual, but incredibly charged and hateful crimes of the real majority reveals indoctrination of anglo supremacy.
did you know islam has a long history of LGBT playing important and positive roles in society before colonial interference in my home country? what about sufiism? did you know the muslim world has had women leader!s! before the christian/atheist dominated west? there are also many progressive muslim scholars, just like there are progressive jewish or christian or atheist scholars.
wahhabiism, the extreme and most bigoted/hateful school of islam that we often associate with extremism and hate, was only made popular in the last 100 years, still a minority of the overarching religion, and guess who funded and encouraged these groups to the platform they have now?
i'm not dismissing anyone's lived experience. i have suffered at the hands of bigoted muslims of course. and i have suffered at the hands of bigoted everything else with no religious motivation even more. that bigotry and hate comes from a personal or cultural level and it gets wrapped and disguised in islam by those with an agenda. i have also been the most radically and deeply accepted by some muslim peers. the cultural habits of a group of people doesn't reflect on a religion. even the experience of arabs =/= the experience of all muslims. when i see arabs borderline enslaving people from my homeland and branding them with second class citizenship and taking away their ability to leave, people that look like me, would it be fair of me to claim for all others that have never experienced it that arabs specifically promote slavery and a tiered society?
we just cannot make sweeping generalizations where we apply what we've experience behind closed doors in one household to entire populations of people and shove those bigoted harmful actions under the brand of islam, and not even consider the closed-door practices of nonmuslims.
this entire thread has made me deeply deeply uncomfortable to engage on this site. i'm not fully stepping away but i will proceed with extreme caution moving forward
Thank you for honestly answering, and yes some of the comments have been disappointing. I don't think it represents the majority of Hexbear users though (I hope). I will say that some of the responses are very uncharacteristic, and Islamophobia is not usually tolerated here.
to single out muslims as morbidly and uniquely intense or cruel compared to christians, jews, and even atheists is reductive thinking and heavily prejudiced. to not even mention the passing, casual, but incredibly charged and hateful crimes of the real majority reveals indoctrination of anglo supremacy.
This is always my main take away as well. Just a reminder the number one ad trump is running is "I hate Trans people. Vote for me."
Not only that, wahhabiism was also directly spread by Saudi Arabia with assistance from the
so it didn't grow organically eitherAlso I remember reading that the founder of wahhabiism was actually a euro playing at being Laurence of Arabia but I don't know how accurate that part is
Yeah, plus we're seeing them attempt to do that in real time with how
has been targeting lead negotiators and more moderate leaders who are open to making deals
not qualified to comment on the particulars but i think it's worth remembering
and its vassals have propped up the worst most reactionary franchises of islam because of cold war shitif liberals are trying to say shit about internal social repression in palestine recently, iirc hamas rose to prominence because of external influence and because there's just something about islamists that the settlers and imperialists prefer over more cosmopolitan/secular/socialist groups, they can shut up. islam could be exactly what they accuse it of and it wouldn't justify genocide.
As others have pointed out, there are many “sub genres” of Islam. I am not an expert and am not Muslim or religious myself, but from what I gather the extreme ones like Wahhabism in Saudi is of course exceedingly socially conservative, but there are of course others. From what I understand, despite what the z!onists say, The form of Islam that Hamas represents is way more moderate especially regarding things such as the veil (I can’t recall ever seeing Bisan wearing one) and I’ve read anecdotal stories of openly gay tourists visiting Gaza (before the holocaust obviously) and having zero problems.
Any Muslim comrades with more knowledge please feel free to correct me where I am wrong here or expand.
Also fuck new atheists and big ups to all my Muslim comrades, free Palestine inshallah 🇵🇸
I'm glad you responded because that is a damn good comment
If we are to believe that gender and sexuality are socially situated within a specific cultural and time dependent context, then why do we assume that terms derived from such contexts like “homophobia” and “misogyny” are universally applicable and can be compared across different regions and areas of the globe?
because eurochristians exported that bullshit and imposed it upon most of the world?
implying muslim cultures aren't predominantly heteropatriarchal is probably some kind of orientalism
One of them Muslim cultures:
(WARNING: heteropatriarchal)
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got a long way to go before we invalidate my "predominantly" qualifier. there are feminists who don't reject christianity for whatever reason too, it doesn't change my baseline expectations of reactionary or "moderate" christians.
I don't see how there's anything necessarily bad inherent in Christianity. That Jesus guy seems like a pretty cool dude. kind of a revolutionary figure.
He was big on pacifism, and the guys that killed him co-opted his name and went on killing in his name. Kinda messed up to conclude that his ideas are responsible for the killing.
This has happened with countless groups over the centuries. Those truly following the teachings of Christ won't murder at the behest of empire? Exterminate those heretics and replace them with ones that will follow orders and pay lip service.
In modern times, any Muslim state that tries to do anything remotely good will be decimated by the US, who will then support the most violent reactionaries in the region.
Are all the oppressive reactionary Muslim states to be blamed on the nature of Islam?
Personally, I see religion as a versatile tool. People get so many different things out of it.
you are not the authority of "true" christianity. worshiping a genocidal entity is bad, full stop.
you are not the authority of "true" christianity.
I'm not the authority of Christianity, that would be Christ. Christianity is the teachings of Christ, yes?
I don't think any of the above is controversial, so I hope we can agree on this basic definition.
And yes, the teachings of Christ include what one could argue is the "worship of a genocidal entity".
But do you not feel utterly ridiculous?
Like your immediate response to the sermon on the mount is "fuck you you worship a genocidal entity"?
Your immediate response to John Brown is "bro you worship a genocidal entity"?
Your immediate response to Malcolm X is "you worship a genocidal entity (and in the worst way bc Islam)"?
Can you so casually dismiss every religious person who has fought, struggled and died for a just cause? Because they believed in the Abrahamic god, while you're here smugly patting yourself on the back for having the correct opinions?
Can you so casually dismiss every religious person who has fought, struggled and died for a just cause? Because they believed in the Abrahamic god, while you're here smugly patting yourself on the back for having the correct opinions?
there were or are religious people on the other side of all of those conflict. john brown was good because of the side he was on but venerating religious fanaticism is fucking dangerous because he could've read a different part of the book and been pro-slavery based on the literal instructions on who and how the israelites were instructed to keep slaves.
jesus never wrote anything down, the supposed gospels were written decades later and canonized centuries later. there's no basis for you or anyone else to say what version of the religion is "correct" or "authentic".
this is wildly off-topic from OP's question.
implying muslim cultures aren't predominantly heteropatriarchal is probably some kind of orientalism
what the fuck am I reading
Something something Muslims are the real racists.
It's actually racist to deny that Muslim cultures are inherently misogynistic.
Show
I will never stop Hoxha-posting.
Americans (and their simps) will literally devastate a Muslim country, install the most psychotic fundamentalists in power, and then have the audacity to say shit like
"I'm a leftist but why is it that despite being 20% of the population, Muslims commit 90% of the misogyny and homophobia? Must just be characteristic of the Islamic brainpan."
Fun fact: The word "Hoxha" means
Noun
hoxhë m (plural hoxhë, definite hoxha, definite plural hoxhët) imam
The man from a family of Islamic teachers led the majority Muslim country through the most extensive improvement of women's rights in history. Women went from being essentially chattel property and rarely getting rudimentary schooling, to being almost half the government, scientists, doctors, engineers in a few decades.
The sheer audacity of westerners to make such presumptions about "Muslim cultures" is mind-boggling. A Muslim country hit the communism button and completely rebuilt the social order, uplifting women to a position better than that of any in the west, and how does the west respond?
By trying, tooth and nail, to destroy it. And after they've destroyed it, western so-called leftists will opine that Muslim cultures just be misogynistic like that.
Something something Muslims are the real racists.
It's actually racist to deny that Muslim cultures are inherently misogynistic.
no, i mean that saying they're so wildly different from the patriarchal homophobic west that we shouldn't use terms like "patriarchy" would also be orientalist.
the progressivism of now-fallen socialist governments does not outweigh the majority of current societies. east and west are both predominantly patriarchal, largely but not exclusively because of european christian exports and imperialism
the progressivism of now-fallen socialist governments does not outweigh the majority of current societies. east and west are both predominantly patriarchal, largely but not exclusively because of european christian exports and imperialism
Fair enough. I guess after they've fallen to the American Empire, they're not even really a Muslim culture anymore. Capitalist vassal states first and foremost.
Like, what happened to usury being haram?
There is Islam and there are muslims. Muslims can be homophobic and sexist. Islam is their belief, religion being used to justify ones bigotry is nothing new.
A lot of the times westerners have this view of Islam as if it's a dogma like calvinism. But it's a whole religion, it's a lot more cultural, it's very unique to the individual and what they make of it. There are very dogmatic views of Islam for sure, but if people are talking about "Is Islam X" or "Does Islam teach Y" there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what religion is. Look at how different orthodox christianity, catholicism and protestants are. If you try to pin-point "what does christianity teach?" you will end up with a set of very broad universally-agreed truths "Love thy neighbour etc." and the bare-minimum of christian lore "Jesus was the messiah and died on a cross for our sins and rose again 3 days later from the grave". Other than that everything open. Was Mary a virgin her whole life? Is it ok to pray to idols? Is the bible sent by god? What books should be in the bible?
Pretty much the same for Islam. There as many perspectives to Islam as to Christianity. A historical, an individual, a theological (which depends on the school), a cultural and probably a couple more I'm currently not thinking of. If someone is talking about Islam as if it was a tangible thing there are deeper brainworms at play.
Islam teaches nothing. Mohammed has taught. Allah teaches. A hoca, imam, your mom and dad might teach you what it is to be a muslim. And what they teach you might be completely different from what another muslim is taught.
One difference about Islam is that it appeared all at once, instead of emerging out of a cultural milieu over multiple centuries like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism did. You have the Quran and you have Muhammad recognized as its author and the final prophet and the founder of the religion, there's not a whole lot of room for debate about what the Quran says.
Not sure I understand your point, the Bible is as central to Christianity as the Quran to Islam. There is a definitive and large intersection of books that every christian bible contains, so you can point to a lot things in the bible that almost every christian will agree is in the bible. And the rest is as wide and varied as which Hadiths are accepted and which aren't.
My point was that Islam, as Christianity, is more than the book. A lot of muslims dont read the Quran. A lot of muslims that read the Quran don't understand arabic. A lot of muslims live Islam by picking and choosing what "sounds right" from what the people around them are saying, fitting it into their worldview, molding it into something unique to them. My experience of Islam was that it was a lot more oral tradition and open to superstitions than my experience of christianity. Muslim friends would trade religious views by saying their mom said this and then the other couldn't really go against what his mom said, because she's his mom and if it's that important to him, fine. Whereas in my experience of christianity people would immediately whip out the bible and start throwing verses back and forth sometimes even breaking out some ancient greek dictionary. So people might say that according to Islam whoever does not accept the prophet goes to hell, then point to this verse or that hadith, but a lot of muslims I met said that it doesn't matter as long as we all believe in the same God. And that's what these people of "Islamic faith", to quote OP, believe.
I had a teacher who said pork wasn't haram, Allah just said it was because back in the Prophets time people didn't know about proper food hygiene but they do now. There was a huge trend in my school with a very specific ritual involving bread that fell on the floor because wasting bread was seen as a sin. Some kids were uneasy with my infidel ass going to the mosque to drink water. There was a lot of superstition and tradition inextricably linked to Islam depending on the local culture which invariable affects how the Quran is interpreted or whether people just choose to live with certain contradictions in their belief system. And saying that "Islam is X" is almost always wrong as it would have to describe something common to every muslim there is.
There is no objectively true Islam, it's nothing material. Islam is not something that exists but it describes a wide and varied collection of different beliefs, rituals, expressions and so on. Even if you point at something in the Quran and say "See Islam teaches this, it's in the Quran" there will be so many different interpretations of that thing that you will not be able to find a intersection contained in all.
In 610 there is no Quran, no Islam, no Muslims. Muhammad dictates the Quran later in his life, and by 640 there is the Quran in the form we know it today, and Islam, and Muslims, all at once. It emerged very discretely and with relative unity.
For Christianity, there is a historical record of Christians as early as Nero's reign, but the earliest books in what is now the New Testament don't get written until the end of the 1st century AD, and as far as we can tell are not written by anyone who witnessed the life of Jesus on Earth. And then the canon isn't formalized until almost 3 centuries after the Crucifixion; meanwhile, there have been lots of parallel and related religious movements going on that get sorted out by councils of elders/bishops long after the fact. The Old Testament/Tanakh was written by dozens or even hundreds of authors, over a period of at least 700 years.
There might be historical and cultural revisionism going on, as you'd see anywhere, but Islam emerges clearly in a moment, as opposed to Christianity which is the product of much longer and more blurry processes. This makes for much less ambiguity over what Islam does or does not look like.
My experience of Islam largely comes from roommates who had the Quran very thoroughly taught in schools. I got the impression that there's a lot less picking and choosing; it's a package deal that you either wholly embrace or don't.
Ex-muslim here!
While there are obviously a lot of different interpretations and sects of Islam that have different feelings on these matters, the short and most correct answer would be basically, yes, Islam is one of the most homophobic and misogynistic religions out there.
Most Muslims are extremely conservative in their beliefs when it comes to these topics. I'd say it's honestly safe to assume that most every Muslim you come across is likely going to be a raging homophobe and/or misogynist.
All religions are pretty shitty in my opinion but Islam has been the worst offender and is the most cultish in my experience. There's a site I linked below that goes in depth on things like this, so you might wanna check it out.
Edit: Firstly, this should go without saying, but I don't support the genocide of the Palestinian territories by the IDF. I don't necessarily support the religion but I sure as hell do not support a genocide against innocent people. I don't think my comment suggested I do, but clearing this up just in case before more of yall come into my inbox being all butthurt. Secondly, after reading more responses on this thread, I'm going to leave this here: I'm not and will never be an islamophobe, and I respect all Muslims (even the ones who are queer and/or women and muslim, I will never understand how you could do that though) but, I am extremely critical of the religion, and I think it's not a very healthy one. It isn't up for debate on whether or not Islam is homophobic and misogynistic based on my personal experience growing up as a queer male Muslim who had to hear how even my normally-very-accepting-of-other-people family wanted to "kill all the homos". And I mean, they even say shit like women are intellectually deficient and that you should stone Queer people for... existing. It isn't "IsLAmoPHobic" to be critical of these aspects of the religion, it's 'Islamophobic' to demonize all Muslims for the actions of a few (a.k.a Al-Qaeda, ISIS, or Hamas) or make those weird 9/11 'jokes', but alas, I suppose Lemmy isn't really ready to have this discussion.
Ex muslim too and there was a period where I saw islam as being uniquely homophobic/mysogynist/etc, but these days I feel like that's just due to the damage imperialism/colonialism has done / is doing to muslim countries, not giving them the opportunity to start making social progress.
And as other comments have pointed out, the imperial core tends to prop up and fund the most reactionary islamic groups.
Calling islam uniquely bad can lead to some pretty fascist shit, like this popular ex-muslim youtuber whose content has now just devolved into zionist propaganda
I don’t agree with this view. Islam is not uniquely more homophobic or misogynistic than the other abrahamic religions
I’m falling asleep as I type this but I feel the need to write a bigger response in the morning
Huh. Personally, I've witnessed Islam really be on a whole other level with the misogyny and homophobia, but maybe that's just me.
Religion is always trash. No way around that and even as open mind leftists or wannabe leftists we have to recognize that. However the worst elements of religion tend to moderate with development something the Muslim world has been denied by the great Satan
the specter of Sam Harris style "not Islamophobic,
"I hate people like this, so, so much.
Feel free to square that circle and explain how religion and Marxism are able to go hand in hand. Marxism is a material analysis of the world. Religion is not and quite the opposite.
actually not interested in a debate reddit atheist, just wanted to let you know your take sucks!
Religion is literally used to maintain dominance over people and prevent condition from improving
"Hah, fine, I'll read Marx"
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.
"
and that's why i left the Left"
Ok I just thought about it some more, although I somewhat agree with your sentiment and think you have good intentions, I think it is quite unfair to say "religion is always trash" and vehemently disagree with that belief. We have users here who are Palestinian muslims currently facing a genocide *in no small part because of their faith, which gives people the will to continue in the face of unspeakable horrors, is definetely not "trash". We in the west have to remember that just because our own governments are insane genocidal christian/jewish extremists doesn't mean we can solipsisticly apply this judgement to everyone else, including the people who they are genociding. We should always remember to think of others and be considerate.
. We have users here who are Palestinian muslims currently facing a genocide because of their faith,
don't erase palestinian jews, christians, atheists, and whatever else. there's a fuckload of islamophobia in the zionist rhetoric but muslims are not the sole victims of this genocide and they can't get out of the genocide by changing religion.
this is parallel to nazi extermination of ethnic groups besides jews, whatever difference of proportion
oh yes absolutely I shouldve specified so it doesn't become a normative statement since I was mostly talking within the context of this thread and the comment, the pissraelis did make sure to ethnically cleanse and physically destroy some of the oldest Palestinian Jewish neighborhoods when they first settled
Fair enough. Trash isn't the best word to use when discussing a sensitive topic.
Agreed, also wouldn't say its a discrete abstract "sensitive topic", its moreso an acknowledgement of the sheer gravity of the current ongoing situation, the reality of the horrific genocide that our governments are bankrolling right at this very moment, the mass death and suffering that the west has failed to prevent. Even as we speak there are innocent people murdered and tortured by the enemy, whose loved ones may be posting here as well. We in the west need to discard condescending attitudes, come down from the ivory tower and return to reality so we can stop this genocide.
The OG Zionists were atheist Jews who opportunistically used a religious text revealed by a God they don't even believe in to claim Palestine as their own. If anything, it was the more religiously observant Jews who resisted Zionism because they saw the bunk pushed by those particular atheist Jews as the bunk that it was. And while secular Bundism is no more, anti-Zionist Hasidic communities still exist.
And? So many of the current Israeli are religious fundamentalists. Jews are an ethno religious group and making Israel a country for Jews (literally their law) is both an ethno nationalist and religio nationalist project.
ACKSHULLY their religion is the sole source of their suffering and how they're
Your words not mine
Is religion a progressive force or not? I'm just here to point out it's not. Dressing up my stance with your imagined motivations is a you problem. And I actually think that religion and capitalism are so tied up together at this point that a post capitalist world will have to come hand in hand with a post religious world.
I'm curious how he'd explain countries like China being so anti-religion, in practice if not in rhetoric?
China is not remotely anti-religion in practice.
Not American. Not white. I really don't know what image you've cooked up in your head
Gotcha. Anyway I'm probably getting banned so feel free to keep this going
Actually you know what, in the spirit of making this site a better place to use for everyone and since you didn't really say anything bad I am sorry for aggressively responding to your original post and wrongly insulting your intelligence, very bad behaviour on my part. Next time it would have been better for me to start a productive discussion about the relationship between religious thought and the superstructure of class society. Unironically hope you have a good day.
As others have said, Islam is not a monolith, there are many interpretations of Islam across the world. Some are more progressive, some less. The culture I am from has a creative interpretation of what homosexuality is, at least partially stemming from the relatively high degree of misogyny there.
So from my experience with a less mainstream Islamic culture, it's less homophobic but about as misogynist
