Monks and Robots

These are monks, who are depicted as the incarnation of peace and love; yet they have recently been massacring Rohingya minority in Myanmar… All dogmas, be it religious or nationalistic, are dangerous for humanity. Dogmas turn individuals into robots. Today’s good robot could easily be transformed into monsters by a push of button.

The Qur’anists

Stories relating the words and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad, known as Hadith in Arabic, have long been esteemed by the vast majority of Muslims as a source of law and guidance second only to the Qur’an in authority. In recent years, an increasingly vocal Muslim opposition to Hadith insists that the Qur’an alone should be the sole source of religious law and guidance in Islam. Rashad Khalifa, Kassim Ahmad, Edip Yuksel, and Ahmad Subhy Mansour are among the most important rejecters of the Hadith, whose arguments influence a wide variety of groups popularly labeled Ahl al-Qur’an, Qur’niyyun or Qur’anists.

Listen to your argument with the Sunnis!

The questions are now for us, community of submitters and followers of Quran alone:
Are we actually reflecting on our very own argument with the Sunnis?
Can we use it as a righteous scale to determine our very own deviation?
Can’t we see that sometimes we fall into the deception that we are above the rules, that we got it all and we are not candidates for that same Satanic trap?

A New ‘Leadership Generation’ of Muslim Americans

A recent Gallup poll has indicated that most Muslim Americans do not feel they are represented by existing Muslim organizations in America. The highest approval rating any one of these organizations received was only 12%. While we must assert that all of these existing organizations do extremely valuable work, we also understand that there exists a huge gap between the sociopolitical aspirations of Muslim Americans and the previous achievements of Muslim American organizations. In order to address these issues, we must consider the following:

Best and Worst Places for Women

Newsweek/The Daily Beasty evaluated 165 countries according to their rights and quality of life in 5 categories: justice, health, education, economics and politics. According to the Survey, the top 20 countries are: Iceland, Sweden, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland, Norway, United States, Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, France, Luxemburg, Portugal, Macedonia, Moldova, Philippines, Belgium, United Kingdom, and Romania.

Muslim Enlightenment: How do we know when it happens?

Muslim Enlightenment: How do we know when it happens? Fereydoun Taslimi www.19.org This paper is an expanded version of a presentation by the author at International Conference of Critical Thinkers for Islamic Reform, Oxford University June-11-13, 2010 Every once in a while a new study surfaces in the United States or some other western country, …

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You would probably Lynch Socrates, Crucify Jesus and Evict Muhammad

Yesterday in one of my Philosophy classes, we discussed Plato’s The Apology, the trial and defense of Socrates… One of my favorite books!. To demonstrate the feelings of Athenians against Socrates, I asked the class a provocative question. I asked them about their position against flag burning.

Why Trash All the Hadiths?

When followers of hadith and sunna cannot defend the nonsensical and contradictory hadiths (narrations) abundant in their so-called authentic hadith books, they suggest picking and choosing those hadiths that are not contradictory to the Quran. The following brief argument with a Sunnite shows how deceptive and meaningless this apparently innocent suggestion. We call these people compromisers, or Selective Sunnis. Let’s now follow a debate between a Selective Sunni and a Monotheist Muslim:

Arab Conspiracies

In short, in Aidid’s Wonderland, place of worships (masaajid) vanishes to submissions (yes, plural!); timely prayers transform to timely commitments; the Sacred House Ka’ba mutates into “the ‘ankles’ the sanctioned in the system” (the ankles are literally the ankles of deer and goats!); verbs and adverbs are ignored whenever they do not conspire with Aidid against Arab Conspiracies; nouns and verbs act the same in a “fundamental” way where the meanings are freshly assigned by Aidid to justify his bizarre theories.

Eternal Hell and the Merciful God?

Suffering in an eternal Hell creates a contradiction between this divine justice, since eternity can not be equal to an evil committed during the limited life span of a human. However, eternal punishment in a life time of a non eternal Hell avoids such a contradiction. After receiving an equivalent punishment, the chief evil-doers like those referred in verse4:48, will be eliminated from existence. They will end up in Hell and Hell will end up in oblivion, eternally.

Divine Will and Human Freedom

Divine Will and Human Freedom Abdur Rab Shakespeare writes: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” This pretty much sums up the role of the three groups of factors that shape human destiny: heredity, human effort, and environment. This also echoes what Scriptures would tell us. Influenced by …

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Destroying the Commons: On Shredding the Magna Carta

Meanwhile, power concentrations are charging in the opposite direction, led by the richest and most powerful country in world history. Congressional Republicans are dismantling the limited environmental protections initiated by Richard Nixon, who would be something of a dangerous radical in today’s political scene. The major business lobbies openly announce their propaganda campaigns to convince the public that there is no need for undue concern — with some effect, as polls show.