(Part 2) Top products from r/exmuslim

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We found 42 product mentions on r/exmuslim. We ranked the 270 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the products ranked 21-40. You can also go back to the previous section.

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Top comments that mention products on r/exmuslim:

u/not_stoned · 5 pointsr/exmuslim

>How did Islam spread so wide so quickly?

It didn't. This is a huge myth. I'll elaborate on this further down.

>There must be a significant number of early adopters of Islam that genuinely believe in Mo's message.
How did Mo convince them? If it was coercion, I doubt it will last. I am surprised that after his death, only a handful of apostate tribes rebelled. I would expect the whole of arabia would return to their pre-Islamic days, if indeed most of the conversions were half-hearted. But as you can see, that motley crew in medina grew to become 1.7 billion.

Muhammad preached Islam for 13 years in Mecca. Do you know how many followers he got? 150. This is supposedly the best version of Islam too, the most tolerant as much of it wasn't abrogated by later actions in Medina.

Muhammad conquered Arabia by force, and he converted tribes by force. You say only a handful of tribes rebelled, but that's false: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridda_wars

Majority rebelled, except those around Mecca & Medina. We can see Islam was not as popular with Arabs as the PR claims.

>It's the youngest abrahamic religion and yet had the fastest growth. No other major religions come close.

>We could probably dismiss the whole of sirah as a fabrication, but they are substantiated by hadiths, and as u know, hadiths are kinda hard to fake, unless a grand conspiracy is going on, but that would take the entire first and second generation muslims to agree to it. FYI, I'm more inclined towards this explanation, even though it's highly unlikely. It's still possible.

You've answered the question yourself. Much of Islamic history we know was written hundreds of years after Muhammad. Nothing is verifiable, Hadith are faked all the time. Even a few Muslims believe the Hadith compilations like Bukhari, Muslim etc were canonized for political reasons.

You can read Fred M. Donner's Muhammad and the Believers if you want to get an idea of how the actual Muhammad might have been (Donner is one of the most foremost Western scholars of Islam). https://www.amazon.com/Muhammad-Believers-At-Origins-Islam/dp/0674064143

It posits that Islam wasn't even defined as a religion until much later than originally thought. Many similar theories exist too, some saying Islam was only formalized by the early empire for legitimacy reasons (as neighbor empires like Persians and Romans had their own state religions). There is heaps of evidence for this.

He even says the early Muslim armies were multiethnic and mutlireligious, with Christians and Jews among them.

>So what is Islam's secret? There must be some proper explanation other than "divine intervention". Something far sinister perhaps?

It's way more mundane than you think. It boils down to Islam coming along in the right place at the right time. Let me list some factors and facts:

  1. Arabian kingdoms were nothing new, Muhammad was the first to unite Arabia proper though. Similar happened to the Mongols under Genghis Khan - there's actually a lot of parallels with Genghis Khan and Muhammad but that's another topic. The point is that it was inevitable that someone would come along and do this. Both Mongolia and Arabia were ripe for this to happen when it did.

  2. Persia and Rome had fought each other for 1000 years constantly and were exhausted. This made them easy pickings for the newly united, fanatical Muslim Arabs. Conquering Persia is what truly set Islamdom on the map to being relevant.


  3. Muslims allowed conquered peoples to mostly do their own thing, but gave them second class status which made converting to Islam a huge incentive. That's not to say they didn't oppress anyone though, because they did. Zoroastrians for instance were treated horribly. But MANY people, maybe even the majority, converted for economic reasons.

  4. Islam spread quickly because the Muslim armies spread quickly, mostly thanks to the above mentioned reason #2. However, that doesn't mean everyone converted to Islam. Look at Turkey for example, it very, very slowly converted to Islam. It took hundreds of years. This is the case everywhere - in the "Golden Age of Islam" I would say in many areas Muslims were 50/50 with local Christians & Jews & others rather than at the 90% population numbers you see today. It's controversial, but you can directly correlate the rise of the Muslim population through conversions and birth to the stagnation of the region as a whole - take that with a grain of salt though.

  5. Christianity spread pretty slowly until Rome adopted it when it kicked into overdrive. So you can see how influential an empire with a state religion is in converting people. Muslims just happened to have a state religion for their empire from almost the very beginning, unlike Rome who fought against Christianity & tried to suppress it for a long time.

    There's nothing really miraculous about this stuff.

    Now, you want to see an example of a religion that really was impressive in how it spread? Look at Manichaeism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism

    This faith started in Iran and ended up spreading as far away as China and Britain - all without military conquest but purely through trade.

    Now that's a fucking miracle! It even rivaled Christianity at one point, and in an alternate history could have easily replaced it had some things gone differently.

    Shame it was persecuted heavily by pretty much everyone, from Zoroastrians to Muslims.

u/hl_lost · 1 pointr/exmuslim

I think you are on the right track. There is no need to be nervous but its always best to be as sincere and open as you can when investigating something of this nature.

When I was at a similar point in my life, I was looking at all sorts of Islamophobic materials and it was a complete waste of time. I would go back and forth between the Islamic sites and the phobic ones and invariably there would be a perfectly logical argument against the scientific basis for the factoid in question which could not rule out the 'miraculous' part. The mention of fingerprint in Quran comes to mind.

Ultimately what will decide it for you is your own experience with the source material, i.e. the Quran. 100% of all the material bashing down the Quran is based on less than 0.001% of the book. Forget scholars, forget the hadith, forget anything else and just try and go through the book for yourself. If at the end of it, you dont feel anything and have no use for Islam, I am pretty sure you will be A-Okay. Whats the point of believing in a Just God if He will call you to task in spite of your best efforts?

For me, while I still have doubts over the classical interpretation of some parts, I am convinced of its divine nature.

Read https://www.amazon.com/Losing-My-Religion-Call-Help/dp/1590080270/ for one guy's journey which started and continues with the Quran. He also answers all the common objections.

Also the following two will give good insight in to the nature of early islam and why you should take all the traditional islamic narrative with a grain of salt.

https://www.amazon.com/Misquoting-Muhammad-Challenge-Interpreting-Prophets/dp/1780747829
https://www.amazon.com/Destiny-Disrupted-History-Through-Islamic/dp/1586488139/

In any case, be brave and feel confident that whichever way it turns for you, your sincerity guarantees your well being.

u/[deleted] · 1 pointr/exmuslim

Indeed, my friend. I've started using the term quite frequently ever since I read this awesome book http://amzn.to/NpBd1u which was brilliant. Also, I'm a DRM-stripper and can give you the .mobi file if you'd like a free read.

u/Far00q · 2 pointsr/exmuslim

There is great new book out called "Did Muhammad Exist" by Robert Price which brings the existence of a historical Muhammad into serious doubt. I highly recommend it.

http://www.amazon.com/Did-Muhammad-Exist-Inquiry-Obscure/dp/161017061X

The Author D M Murdock (pen name: Acharya S) has specialised much of her life in research and writings on the mythical and astrological origins of religions and religious figures such as Jesus and Abraham. Her books are excellent and provide a substantial mountain of evidence that Jesus was indeed not a historical figure. A second revised edition of her first book "The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold" is due out sometime this year.

Reading her work is what led me to my Agnosticism.

This is her website which includes many discussions on similar topics - http://freethoughtnation.com/

u/ferengiprophet · 3 pointsr/exmuslim

Read The Hidden Origins of Islam. It's a tough read (in the sense that the language used in it is very academic) but it's very fascinating as well. If you don't want to buy it, PM me and I can send you the PDF.

u/Notfororange · 1 pointr/exmuslim

I am sure that there are local resources to get counseling and help with anxiety. How about at your school? Also, check out books at your library or online. For example this one. I am also sure there are plenty of online resources about overcoming anxiety. Just reach out, don't give up and work on it. Things will get better.

u/godill · 6 pointsr/exmuslim

An Illusion of Harmony: Science And Religion in Islam by Taner Edis is a fantastic read and might be what you're looking for.

u/leviathanawakes · 0 pointsr/exmuslim

So basically, you accept Quran, but anything more than that such as certain hadith, have to be taken with a pinch of salt and seen if it is really authentic. The way I go about it is,

  1. If a hadith talks about the world and clearly contradicts empirical evidence, such as ones against evolution, I don't accept it.
  2. If a hadith talks about actions etc , I'll look at if it has multiple reliable chains of transmission. (Mutawattir). If it doesn't, then you cant really enforce it.

    Most of the controversial issues regarding Islam stems from hadiths that are single-chain narration. That means only ONE person reported hearing it from the prophet pbuh, and ONE student from him, and so on. Sahih Muslim and Bukhari unfortunately do accept a lot of single-chain narrations.

    ​

    I personally am wary of accepting a single-chain narration.

    ​

    There's this good book that talks about all of these issues with hadiths etc by Jonathan Brown. Misquoting Muhammed
u/DiscoverAl-Isra · 0 pointsr/exmuslim

I believe that is Abraham your neighbor who you are referring to. Be nice please >.> why not suggest him to read this book instead; https://www.amazon.com/Psycho-Cybernetics-Deluxe-Original-Classic-Guide/dp/0143111884/

u/Allah-Of-Reddit · 2 pointsr/exmuslim

Most youtubers use these mics

http://www.amazon.com/Blue-Microphones-Yeti-USB-Microphone/dp/B002VA464S

They work with pretty much anything with a USB, they would work fine on your laptop.

u/twenty-two · 3 pointsr/exmuslim

A Simple Koran

It is rearranged so that the sura are in chronological order for reading straight through and has inserted narrative information to give context.

An Abriged Koran is another version which has less repetition, so it's even easier to read.

u/Pufflemuff · 2 pointsr/exmuslim

Questioning Islam by Richard Townsend is the closest to a critical account that does a fair job of staying impartial (that I've found anyway). The premise is not the history of Islam, but almost every observation is supported by references from the Quran and Hadith. It's not perfect, and I don't agree with everything he says, but it is a good read nonetheless.

u/Awkward_Arab · 3 pointsr/exmuslim

Just noted this part of your reply.

>it's his claim that compared with Jesus, the amount of genuine scholarship on the historicity of Mohammed is woefully lacking.

What are you talking about? There are scholars for the revisionist theory, albeit outdated. John Wansbrough, Patricia Crone, Joseph Schacht, Michael Cook. The ones that I'm fond of and they all have impeccable credentials (the number of degrees, and where you obtained them from actually do matter) Fred Donner, Harald Motzki, Jonathon Brown, and Andreas Goerke.

I usually recommend these two books to anyone that's interested in the history of Muhammad and Islam, they're critical of the traditional narrative among others.

Muhammad And The believers: At The Origins of Islam by Fred Donner

Muhammad: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathon Brown

u/liquid_solidus · 1 pointr/exmuslim

The 'Simple Quran' is a book which has ordered the Quran chronologically. I highly recommend it.

u/ohamid234 · -1 pointsr/exmuslim

>When people were collecting ahadith, what would keep just about anyone from fabricating something and making up a solid chain of transmission?

>There really wouldn't be any way to verify any of the links in a chain of oral transmission, would there?

The first time I took a science class that included a lab in college, I remember the TA (teaching assistant) and Professors telling everyone point blank, "Don't falsify data we always know". And they do, I saw many people getting caught for it. The scholars who know Hadith know when a Hadith has been fabricated. I would recommend the book by Mulla Ali al Qari which was recently translated by a Muhhadith, Shaykh Gibril Fouad Haddad: Encyclopedia of Hadith Forgeries: Sayings Misattributed to the Prophet Muhammad. Historically speaking, in Iraq, people began forging Hadith's to backup their political affiliations, but once the science of Hadith came into its own, people were able to know, the book linked above is a fruition of that.

u/The_Sammich · 1 pointr/exmuslim

I recommend this book for further reading - Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science by Jim Al-Khalili


http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pathfinders-Golden-Age-Arabic-Science/dp/0141038365

u/winstonsmithwatson · 1 pointr/exmuslim

I dont expect you to become Hirsi Ali overnight, you finally came out for the first time, however I'm not sure how you expect things to change if you are not willing to discuss your beliefs in front of everyone. That is exactly what should happen or at least what should be allowed to happen. I am reading a book at the moment called 40 days and 40 nights, its the documentation of an American courtcase regarding teaching evolution at schools. You got to understand that people like you had to make a stand for science or their kids would end up being taught the same bullshit. Is your teacher not asking you if you could perhaps help teach these other students some other perspectives? The (Age of) Enlightenment only happened because people stood up for their beliefs and shared them to the world, especially in universities.

u/LifeIsW0nderful · 9 pointsr/exmuslim

Although I am not a huge supporter of all of his views, Robert Spencer's book
'Did Muhammad Exist'
http://www.amazon.com/Did-Muhammad-Exist-Inquiry-Obscure/dp/161017061X
gives a detailed and well researched analysis of the circumstances surrounding the origin of Islam, comparing and citing both Islamic and non-islamic sources. It is a top read.

u/MsExmusThrowAway · 3 pointsr/exmuslim

This text has some decent info form what I've heard.

u/Saxobeat321 · 2 pointsr/exmuslim

"Seeing Islam as Others Saw It: A Survey and Evaluation of Christian, Jewish and Zoroastrian Writings on Early Islam (Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam Book 13)"

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seeing-Islam-Others-Saw-Zoroastrian/dp/0878501258

u/Byzantium · 3 pointsr/exmuslim

> The book above is a testament to that fact.

You mean this one that you linked and then edited out of your post?

Edit: No he didn't delete the link. I looked in the wrong place.

u/Birden96 · 32 pointsr/exmuslim

" Of course, while the rising rates of professed secularity in the Arab-Muslim world are new, the roots of such secularism run deep. Very deep. Many centuries deep. Despite the fact that many people erroneously associate Islam with nothing but religious fundamentalism, the historical fact is that skepticism, rationalism, and humanism have been long-entrenched within Arabic-Muslim history. "

​

If there was no punishment for apostasy, secularism would have taken over the Arab world by now.