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Criticism of religion |
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Criticism of Islam has existed since its formative stages. Early written disapproval came from Jews [1] [2] [3] [4] and Christians, [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] before the ninth century, many of whom viewed Islam as a radical Christian heresy, [6] [7] [8] [9] as well as by some former Muslim atheists and agnostics, such as Ibn al-Rawandi. [5] The September 11 attacks and other terrorist attacks in the early 21st century, reignited suspicion and criticism of all of Islam, with calls for moderates to condemn the terrorism of the fundamnatalists and help prevent radicilsation and islamophobia. [10]
Objects of criticism include the morality and authenticity of the Quran and the Hadiths, [11] along with the life of Muhammad, both in his public and personal life. [12] [13] Other criticism concerns many aspects of human rights in the Islamic world (in both historical and present-day societies), including slavery, [14] [15] [16] [17] treatment of women, LGBT groups, and religious and ethnic minorities in Islamic law and practice. [18] [19] The issues when debating and questioning Islam are incredibly complex with each side having a different view on the morality, meaning, interpretation, and authenticity of each topic.
There are also outspoken former Muslims who believe that Islam is the primary cause of what they see as the mistreatment of minority groups in Muslim countries and communities. Almost all of them now live in the West, many under assumed names as they have had death threats made against them by Islamic groups and individuals.[ citation needed ]
This subsection does not include converts to Christianity from Islam, who are instead listed in the subsection "Former Muslims". There is a large diaspora of Middle Eastern Christians in the West, some of whom have fled persecution in their homelands. In fact, most Middle Easterners in the United States come from Christian families. [75] Most belong to specific ethnoreligious—rather than simply religious—groups, as religion and ethnicity are largely intertwined in the Middle East.
Indian religions, also known as the Dharmic religions, include Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. This subsection does not include converts from Islam, who are instead listed in the subsection "Former Muslims". See also the List of converts to Hinduism from Islam.
For irreligious former Muslims, see the above subsection "Former Muslims".
The Traditional African religions are the traditional beliefs and practices of the African people. Some of these traditional beliefs includes the various ethnic religions of Africa.
The term Moor is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim populations of the Maghreb, al-Andalus, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a single, distinct or self-defined people. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica observed that the term had "no real ethnological value." Europeans of the Middle Ages and the early modern period variously applied the name to Arabs, Berbers, and Muslim Europeans.
Islamic–Jewish relations comprise the human and diplomatic relations between Jewish people and Muslims in the Arabian Peninsula, Northern Africa, the Middle East, and their surrounding regions. Jewish–Islamic relations may also refer to the shared and disputed ideals between Judaism and Islam, which began roughly in the 7th century CE with the origin and spread of Islam in the Arabian peninsula. The two religions share similar values, guidelines, and principles. Islam also incorporates Jewish history as a part of its own. Muslims regard the Children of Israel as an important religious concept in Islam. Moses, the most important prophet of Judaism, is also considered a prophet and messenger in Islam. Moses is mentioned in the Quran more than any other individual, and his life is narrated and recounted more than that of any other prophet. There are approximately 43 references to the Israelites in the Quran, and many in the Hadith. Later rabbinic authorities and Jewish scholars such as Maimonides discussed the relationship between Islam and Jewish law. Maimonides himself, it has been argued, was influenced by Islamic legal thought.
Ibn Warraq is the pen name of an anonymous author critical of Islam. He is the founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society and used to be a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, focusing on Quranic criticism. Warraq is the vice-president of the World Encounter Institute.
In Islam, a ḥanīf, meaning "renunciate", is someone who maintains the pure monotheism of the patriarch Abraham. More specifically, in Islamic thought, renunciates were the people who, during the pre-Islamic period or Jahiliyyah, were seen to have renounced idolatry and retained some or all of the tenets of the religion of Abraham, which was submission to God in its purest form. The word is found twelve times in the Quran and Islamic tradition tells of a number of individuals who were ḥanīfs. According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad himself was a ḥanīf and a descendant of Ishmael, son of Abraham.
Apostasy in Islam is commonly defined as the abandonment of Islam by a Muslim, in thought, word, or through deed. It includes not only explicit renunciations of the Islamic faith by converting to another religion or abandoning religion, but also blasphemy or heresy by those who consider themselves Muslims, through any action or utterance which implies unbelief, including those who deny a "fundamental tenet or creed" of Islam,. An apostate from Islam is known as a murtadd (مرتدّ).
Why I Am Not a Muslim, a book written by Ibn Warraq, is a critique of Islam and the Qur'an. It was first published by Prometheus Books in the United States in 1995. The title of the book is a homage to Bertrand Russell's essay, Why I Am Not a Christian, in which Russell criticizes the religion in which he was raised.
Leaving Islam: Apostates Speak Out is a 2003 book, authored and edited by ex-Muslim and secularist Ibn Warraq, that researches and documents cases of apostasy in Islam. It also contains a collection of essays by ex-Muslims recounting their own experience in leaving the Islamic religion.
Mark A. Gabriel is an Egyptian-American lecturer and writer on Islam who lives in the United States. He is the author of five books critical of salafi Islam, including Islam and Terrorism, Islam and the Jews, and Journey into the Mind of an Islamic Terrorist.
Criticism of Islam is questioning or challenging the beliefs, practices, and doctrines of Islam. Criticism of Islam can take many forms, including academic critiques, political criticism, religious criticism, and personal opinions.
Forced conversion is the adoption of a religion or irreligion under duress. Someone who has been forced to convert to a different religion or irreligion may continue, covertly, to adhere to the beliefs and practices which were originally held, while outwardly behaving as a convert. Crypto-Jews, Crypto-Christians, Crypto-Muslims and Crypto-Pagans are historical examples of the latter.
The first to criticize the Islamic prophet Muhammad were his non-Muslim Arab contemporaries, who decried him for preaching monotheism, and the Jewish tribes of Arabia, for what they claimed were unwarranted appropriation of Biblical narratives and figures and vituperation of the Jewish faith. For these reasons, medieval Jewish writers commonly referred to him by the derogatory nickname ha-Meshuggah.
The historicity of Muhammad refers to the study of Muhammad as a historical figure and critical examination of sources upon which traditional accounts are based.
Abu Isa al-Warraq, full name Abū ʿĪsā Muḥammad ibn Hārūn al-Warrāq, was a 9th-century Arab skeptic scholar and critic of Islam and religion in general. He was a mentor and friend of scholar Ibn al-Rawandi in whose work The Book of the Emerald he appears. A modern critic of Islam, Ibn Warraq, derives his pseudonym from al-Warraq.
Uthman ibn al-Huwayrith was an Arab of the Quraysh who was one of the four major hanifs during the time of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and converted to Christianity. After revolting against idol worship in Mecca in favor of monotheism during the late 6th century, he sought assistance from the Byzantine Empire in 590 in a ploy to install himself as king of Mecca. While in Byzantium, he converted to Christianity. He is also known for having compiled poetic works.
This is a bibliography of literature treating the topic of criticism of Islam, sorted by source publication and the author's last name.
Ex-Muslims are people who were raised as Muslims or converted to Islam and later left the religion of Islam. Challenges come from the conditions and history of Islam, Islamic culture and jurisprudence, and sometimes local Muslim culture. This has led to increasingly organized literary and social activism by ex-Muslims, and the development of mutual support networks and organizations to meet the challenges of abandoning the beliefs and practices of Islam and to raise awareness of human rights abuses suffered by ex-Muslims.
The situation for apostates from Islam varies markedly between Muslim-minority and Muslim-majority regions. In Muslim-minority countries, "any violence against those who abandon Islam is already illegal". But in some Muslim-majority countries, religious violence is "institutionalised", and "hundreds and thousands of closet apostates" live in fear of violence and are compelled to live lives of "extreme duplicity and mental stress."
The Jews [...] could not let pass unchallenged the way in which the Koran appropriated Biblical accounts and personages; for instance, its making Abraham an Arab and the founder of the Ka'bah at Mecca. The prophet, who looked upon every evident correction of his gospel as an attack upon his own reputation, brooked no contradiction, and unhesitatingly threw down the gauntlet to the Jews. Numerous passages in the Koran show how he gradually went from slight thrusts to malicious vituperations and brutal attacks on the customs and beliefs of the Jews. When they justified themselves by referring to the Bible, Mohammed, who had taken nothing therefrom at first hand, accused them of intentionally concealing its true meaning or of entirely misunderstanding it, and taunted them with being "asses who carry books" (sura lxii. 5). The increasing bitterness of this vituperation, which was similarly directed against the less numerous Christians of Medina, indicated that in time Mohammed would not hesitate to proceed to actual hostilities. The outbreak of the latter was deferred by the fact that the hatred of the prophet was turned more forcibly in another direction, namely, against the people of Mecca, whose earlier refusal of Islam and whose attitude toward the community appeared to him at Medina as a personal insult which constituted a sufficient cause for war.
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: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)Even before accepting the religion of the Arabs, the Turks were a great nation. After accepting the religion of the Arabs, this religion, didn't effect to combine the Arabs, the Persians and Egyptians with the Turks to constitute a nation. (This religion) rather, loosened the national nexus of Turkish nation, got national excitement numb. This was very natural. Because the purpose of the religion founded by Muhammad, over all nations, was to drag to an including Arab national politics. (Afet İnan, Medenî Bilgiler ve M. Kemal Atatürk'ün El Yazıları, Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1998, p. 364.)
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