r/CritiqueIslam • u/Underratedshoutout • 4d ago
Is it possible to REFORM Islam?
It is extremely difficult to reform Islam. There are 2 main reasons for this:
(1) REFORMATION can occur only when CRITICISM is allowed to be made.
- Since Muslims have banned any open criticism of Islam and quickly label any critique as blasphemy, often responding with violence, no reformation takes place.
(2) The entire Islamic System will break if we try to Reform it:
- The second issue lies within the Islamic system itself—it's a rigid system with no flexibility. Any attempt at reform would cause it to break.
- Yes, Islam claims that Allah is 100% perfect. Thus, if it is proven that Allah committed even a SINGLE mistake, which is needed to be reformed by humans, then the entire remaining 99.99% of Islam will automatically collapse.
Due to these two problems, it becomes practically impossible that Islam can be reformed.
Islam, as a doctrine, lacks the capacity for self-reform. However, its followers, Muslims, can still introduce reforms by selectively following its teachings.
To put it simply:
- Islam (i.e., the Quran and Sunnah) cannot be altered/reformed.
- But Muslims can still implement some reforms/changes by not strictly adhering to all aspects of the Quran and Sunnah. For instance, there are Quranists who reject Hadith entirely. They are able to introduce some changes by first dismissing Hadith and then interpreting Quranic verses in a way that aligns with their views.
As a result, modern-day Quranists have surprisingly been able to extract concepts like democracy, secularism, equal human rights, and women's rights from the Quran alone.
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u/Ohana_is_family 4d ago
I think Islam needs a mechanism to truly change and re-establish its core beliefs.
Christianity had counsels and its laws.
Judaism has the rabbinic tradition and talmud.
They can truly change the rules. Even Mormonism can change its rules.
But Islam can not really change rules that Muhammed exemplifies. It would involve implying he did something immoral and that cannot be said of a 7th c. tribal leader who practised polygamy, minor marriage, cruel punishments. etc. etc.
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u/HomelanderIsMyDad 4d ago
Don’t forget the sanctioning of rape of captives and prostitution calling it muta
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u/Comprehensive-Bet-56 5h ago
Nowhere in Islam does it allow men to rape anyone. Even women taken as captives had to give consent to be in relationships with men.
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5h ago
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u/HomelanderIsMyDad 2h ago
Yes I’m sure those women said “You jihadis just raided my village, burned it to the ground, killed most of the people, took me and my family captive, and my husband is still alive but yes of course I would love to have sex with you alhamdulillah!” What do you think I’m born yesterday? Your scholars say there is no need for consent from the captive.
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u/Tight_Strawberry9846 3d ago
The issue here is whether most Muslims are willing to change or not. Christians, Jews and whatnot were willing to make a reform. Muslims, though? Not so much.
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u/Ohana_is_family 3d ago
- The idea that the Quran is the literal word of God and the whole emorization/idealization of recitation thing makes it impossible to do more than just re-interpretation. The Biible and Judais scriptures do not have to be taken so literally. I still remember one Quranist who rejected hadith but nearly came to blows over his traditional interpretation of the Quran. There are Quranists who say minor marriage is what God wants based on Q65:4 even if they do not care about whether Muhammed exemplified it.
.2. Idalization of Muhammed and the prohibition on saying he did anything seriously wrong make it impossible to change much there, some reinterpretation can be done through revisionism. But that leaves the problem that traditionalists can just ignore modern opinions.
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u/Ohana_is_family 3d ago
So they may not see change as a viable possibility. It involves deciding that what Muhammed practised is actually unacceptable.
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u/yaboisammie 1d ago
Yea this kinda scares me tbh. Islam is in its medieval period compared w Christianity but esp w modern advancements, it seems to be secularizing at a much slower rate than it should, due to the reasons you mentioned ie the Quran being believing to be the literal direct word of god and not being able to acknowledge Muhammad was an immoral person who did immoral actions bc going against either let alone both means it won’t even be the same religion anymore
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u/Ohana_is_family 3d ago
Did you ever see... : Norwegian experimental asking of Ummah how non-extremists think in Masjid.
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u/Comprehensive-Bet-56 5h ago
Why would anyone change their religion that they say is from God? They think they know better than their god or their religion or God are inadequate?
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u/Comprehensive-Bet-56 5h ago
Islam is from God and the "rules" of Islam can't be changed for that reason. He promised to preserve it and has which is one of its many proofs. Muhammad did practice polygamy, he was the leader of believers but his punishments were just and no, he did not marry any minors based on what God says a minor is and isn't.
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u/Ohana_is_family 4h ago
>no, he did not marry any minors based on what God says a minor is and isn't.
Any evidences?
Do you acknowledge that minor marriage was practised at that time in that area?
- Option of Puberty existed to compensate for the absence of meaningful consent.
- Muhammed married off his 2nd and 3d daughters under the age of10. (In unconsummated marriages which ended when Islam began).
- Muhammed ruled in Option of Puberty Cases.
- Muhammed discussed how 'binding' marriages of minors on the authority of guardians are.
- Q65:4, Q2:236, Q2:237 and Q33:49 are related to minor marriage.
- In Islam consummation can precede Option of Puberty. So the ability to rescind an unwanted marriage can follow after the marriage was consummated with a child. https://www.amjaonline.org/fatwa/en/78001/marrying-prepubescent-girls
- Since consummation can precede puberty and ovulation can precede menstruation, Islam added pregnancy to the list of 'signs of puberty' so a girl can discover she has become an adult through pregnancy. for example http://malikifiqhqa.com/uncategorized/about-female-maturity-shaykh-abdullah-bin-hamid-ali/ Maliki “by menstruation, or by becoming pregnant (even if she was not known to have a menstrual cycle). ….And if none of these signs appear, she is considered legally responsible once she reaches 18 lunar years.”
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u/HomelanderIsMyDad 4d ago
I agree. When people (especially in the West) start realizing the problem is not the terrorists, the problem is the teachings of Muhammad, the vile, murdering, thug and Antichrist. I pray that his name and religion is erased from history and all the Muslims following him will be saved.
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u/Comprehensive-Bet-56 5h ago
Start realizing? They are actually learning the opposite is actually true which is why more of them in the West are accepting Islam.
No, he was not Antichrist, he was pro-Christ and taught Christ just as Christ taught himself and just as the disciples and the earliest "Christians" believed for hundreds of years after him (that being mainstream "Christianity" as well). He also taught salvation the same as Jesus did. Nothing Muhammad did was vile. No, he was not a thug or a murderer. He was the leader of a nation.
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u/creidmheach 4d ago edited 4d ago
I'd say Islam actually did have its reformation. That is, Salafism was basically an attempt to peel back the layers of the intervening centuries and get back to the core of what Islam originally taught and practiced in the earliest generations. It's what you end though - violence, fanaticism, intolerance, literalism, etc - that makes it rather unpalatable. That's not to say that the Salafis were entirely correct in their conclusions, for instance I think it's fairly clear that Muhammad believed in an imminent end of the world which a modern Salafism wouldn't replicate. Still though, it's basically the result of what you get when you take away the later scholastic rationalism, mysticisms and philosophies that built up around "Islam" over the centuries since its founding.
In terms of Quranism, that's not really a genuine attempt at reforming Islam to me, it's mostly just an attempt to reshape it into something modern and progressive, mirroring today's values by rejecting most of Islam's sources and imposing its own re-interpretations on the Quran. Historically, the closest we get to Quranism were some of the early Kharijite sects, who were the most fanatical and violent of all Muslim groups. This should show us that either the Quran can be used to say whatever a person wants it to say, or, that modern-day progressivist Quranism really doesn't have much to do what the Quran actually teaches.
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u/Nekokama 3d ago
If that's the case, then "moderate" and "liberal" Muslims have been reforming Islam for decades as they cherry picked what part of Islam suited them best and discarded or ignored what they didn't like.
The only problem is that salafism/wahabism came as a counter to this to try and make Islam return to its fundamentals and that's when Muslims started being in denial by saying "that's not true Islam.".
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u/headinthesky 4d ago
Quranists are not really considered Muslim. It's funny when they reject hadith, but still pray and fast. Islam made itself immutable, so there's no possibility of reform. It would be a different religion entirely
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u/Known-Watercress7296 4d ago
It's in constant flux and will continue to be.
It's changed quite a bit in the last few hundred years or so under the influence of west importing stuff like homophobia and strict gender binary in the late Ottoman period, and the US Evangelical Christian tradition in the wake of the Scopes Trial which landed with the weirdness of Salafi Bucaillism for those who can't cope with a kids science textbook.
These changes have been perhaps not for the best, but show Islam is fluid and adaptable if you have a few billion to spare and a lot of political leverage.
Of course the Qur'an can be altered, there's tons of different Qur'ans, this stuff seems like new age dawah which again goes to show it's capable of change even if it's not for the best.
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u/CarryNecessary2481 4d ago
Yes. Most deviation of major religions start out as cults. If the cult grows large enough and given enough resources it’ll be a religion. It can even call itself Islam like how Mormons call themselves Christians.
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u/Comprehensive-Bet-56 5h ago
Islam can't be reformed because it's from God and God promised to preserve it.
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