Abdullah Sameer

أَلَا يَعْلَمُ مَنْ خَلَقَ وَهُوَ اللَّطِيفُ الْخَبِيرُ Does He who created not know, while He is the Subtle, the Acquainted? (67:14)

Goodbye to the ExMuslim Identity (Guest post)

The struggles of losing faith in a family of faith. Bittersweet. She is going to remain a closet atheist forever. She doesn’t want to take away faith from her parents.  So she will hide her atheism forever.

“And so, there will be some elements of my double life which I will always lead – but over the years, I have managed to introduce more and more of my life to my parents, and keep only the most necessary facts to myself – the main one being, of course, my atheism…

Nor can I rip apart the only thing which keeps them going in life – their religion. As first generation, working class immigrants, they have never had much in life, and they have struggled. I have seen them bowing their heads and prostrating in prayer during their darkest hours, and I have seen the strength their faith gives them. Despite my dislike of their religion, I cannot find it within me to begrudge the comfort and strength it gives them.”

Goodbye to the Ex Muslim Identity

 

Hadith

Is the Saheeh Hadith Canon reliable?  Is it truly possible that the words of Muhammad were memorized from generation to generation and passed intact?  Is it possible that the exact words were remembered between the time that Prophet Muhammad died until the point the first hadith narrators started recording them?  Early Muslims were hesitant to write down the sayings of Muhammad because he forbade them to do so.  How long was it between the time he actually said it and it was recorded?  How do we know that the people who said it were not mistaken, reliable and so on?  Scholars came up with an approach to try to distinguish who was truthful and had a good memory and actually met who they said they did and so on.  But is there really any guarantee?  If someone that was “truthful” decided to lie, would we ever know if Muhammad really said it or not?

(more…)