Are the (western) Muslims beginning their stage of enlightenment...

>What you're saying already exists in 2-3rd generation Muslims born and raised in western countries.
Interesting. Why then is it so often the 2-3rd generation, rather than 1st generation Western Muslims that are getting attracted to fundamentalist groups abroad these days? Is that a different reaction to the same influences, or an unrelated reaction to their lack of sense of belonging in the west?

From personal experience? Because lack of education. They are left to learn themselves and everything on Google talks about how ISIS is pure Islam from Christian hate blogs ironically. Not even joking, I've heard of 2 guys from my community that left because of that.

But generally, I have no idea. People are told that ISIS is bad and Saudi is bad, etc. but they never really educate them on why. So they do their own research and read the opposite, and feel lied to. I went to Islamic school. What they taught me about Islamic History was accurate, but the teachings of religion was way off. We aren't allowed any books that are written by Wahabbists and certain countries or our school would be shut down. What we are taught is a very ignorant apologist form of Islam, with many questions unanswered. We're taught maybe 10% of what Islam is. The rest of left up to our families at home, which most ignore. Hence why you have your basic Tariq and Bushra running around not giving a shit, and then the other extremists who try learning online from Islamic hate blogs and then reach out to people from Syria, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq, etc through social media.

>thread about Islam entering an era of enlightenment
>one muslim who replies to this thread is mad that his school wasn't allowed to teach wahabist doctrine
Q: can you make this shit up?
A: you can't

Fair enough. But if ignorance/lack of education is the problem, how do we address that? As you've said Islamic schools are restricted in what they can cover, meanwhile western societies don't really like the idea of segregating students based on religion anyway.

Without wanting to sound fedora increasing general education levels has made it hard for other religions (e.g. Christianity) to remain relevant. Is that going to be a problem for Islam too? Is it possible to improve the average believer's understanding of the religion without risking too many people deciding it's not for them? Obviously it can work in individuals but what about at a larger scale?

My first thought is maybe it isn't possible, if Islam wasn't under threat from moderates and liberalism then we wouldn't have so many extremists clerics encouraging violence as a means of maintaining their influence. Then again, it obviously is possible, moderate Islam has existed for centuries and still does in many parts of the world.

I'm stating that Wahhabism isn't Islamic, and sadly all books from Wahhabist countries are banned whether they are Wahabbist or not, which limits the books we can teach from.

Exactly my concern. Muslims will be westernized before they make any major reform. The further you look in the future the more religion will be diluted.

I guess there's a slight irony that fundamentalism, Wahhabism etc. (sorry breh I don't know the specific terminology), in its efforts to protect Islam is really just accelerating its demise.

I think learning about the extremist parts of an ideology does actually have some value. Teaching about something doesn't necessarily mean teaching that something as right or just. Modern day westerners can't even go through public school without hearing about all the bad things european christians have done throughout history by using their religion as justification. Learning about all sides of a subject provides a more well rounded result. If muslim youths were to be exposed to Wahhabism first in a controlled learning environment, perhaps they wouldn't be so easily riled than if their first experience with it was some /pol/ tier ISIS forum.

South African here. Not Muslim, but I have plenty of Muslim friends and there is a large Muslim population here. Some of the Muslims I know are very intellectual about their faith and have done extensive research, but many simply abandon it. I mean the one girl I know, I met her near the start of first year university, she'd drunk a bit before but never kissed a guy. She's still a virgin AFAIK but she regularly gets drunk and makes out with the first guy she sees.

However, you also get people of my generation which my Muslim friends call "ISIS lite." Girls who dress up in hijab and guys who wear robes, which is in itself fine (one of my professors wears a robe to lectures and he's a very cool guy), but then they also sneer at anyone who interacts with non-Muslims.

The extreme influence, I'd say, is the parents more than anything. I mean, that girl that I mentioned, the one that likes to party a bit more than a Muslim perhaps should; her parents don't know anything except that she drinks occasionally, but her mother quite literally disowned her. The Muslim culture here is still far too gossipy for individuals to be able to easily break out of traditions.

Of course, this is all an outsider's perspective, so take it with a pinch of salt.

People living in war torn third world nations can't temper their faith with rationality because that would make it into a weaker coping mechanism. Reality is shitting on them and the only thing that can shore up their egos, and therefore prevent them from wallowing in indiscriminately destructive behavior, is faith. Faith is weakened by rationality. So Muslims that immigrate to first world nations and actually thrive will lose more and more of the intensity of their faith because they no longer need that crutch. The more social, political, and economic security a demographic has, the less religious they become. Faith can and will be held by a certain percentage of the population as their problems abate, but it won't be the same faith. It won't be central to the lives of as many people.

asharisassemble.com/2016/09/27/the-apostasy-survival-kit/

asharisassemble.com/2016/04/13/what-would-good-islamic-reform-look-like/

While I might not agree with every thing that these guys say on their site(I like them), this will give you an insight on the problem and what needs to be done. We have some bright scholars nowadays, but due to the Muslim world making certain mistakes in the past, the community went in a wrong direction. I am pretty certain most of Veeky Forums would want Muslims to become like Maajid Nawaz, ultra liberal and progressive and basically be fedora-tier when it comes to religion. On the other hand we have people with money and certain agendas they want to push on young Muslims in the west for ideological or political reasons. There can't be advancement as long as people like pic related are seen as scholars and "guardians of the religion". I remember watching a video of a scholar who when asked if Muslims could go to beach answered with "only in February and with closed eyes" or something like that. I would want us to find a path in the middle. Between Mutazila and Ashari. That is what is needed.

You're looking at this the wrong way. What needs to happen is for more muslims to adopt Western and East Asian style of lukewarm religiousness and jaded secularism, which means they just need to ignore their religion. If they try to dig deeper into it, they just run the risk of catching the fundamentalist virus.

lesswrong.com/lw/18b/reason_as_memetic_immune_disorder/

You may have noticed that people who convert to religion after the age of 20 or so are generally more zealous than people who grew up with the same religion. People who grow up with a religion learn how to cope with its more inconvenient parts by partitioning them off, rationalizing them away, or forgetting about them. Religious communities actually protect their members from religion in one sense - they develop an unspoken consensus on which parts of their religion members can legitimately ignore. New converts sometimes try to actually do what their religion tells them to do.

I remember many times growing up when missionaries described the crazy things their new converts in remote areas did on reading the Bible for the first time - they refused to be taught by female missionaries; they insisted on following Old Testament commandments; they decided that everyone in the village had to confess all of their sins against everyone else in the village; they prayed to God and assumed He would do what they asked; they believed the Christian God would cure their diseases. We would always laugh a little at the naivete of these new converts; I could barely hear the tiny voice in my head saying "but they're just believing that the Bible means what it says..."

>When are Muslims going to grow up, if ever?
Never. Islam never learnt to bend, and so it will break. Western culture is unstoppable.

No, western muslims who migrated to the west will more and more become irreligious or atheist. Islam will become a cultural background for those people and eventually they will more or less lose contact with it and be like everyone else.

It's not possible for islam to go through an enlightenment phase now, because it is surrounded by modern scientific atheism. Muslims in western countries will go straight from their traditional culture to irreligion and atheism.

It's because like everyone else in the west they lack an identity, so they latch onto their historical roots which are muslim and pakistani/arab etc... same as white Catholic/pagan LARPers

The entire concept of the French Enlightenment is predicated upon a misconception, so no, they're not.

The problem with Islam is that most converts aren't actually doing it for Islam. At least in my area. They're either just hipsters going through a phase or people converting for marriage. Very few converts I see in the mosque that continue coming back after a few months. They must have started falling for the Religion of Peace blog propaganda and left or didn't like the way they were treated. Every time we have a male convert, most of us just assume he's converting only because he wants some fantasy virgin submissive wife, and most people ignore him or give him a hard time. And when women convert, they just assume they won't last long and don't even bother with them.

>scientific
>atheism

Atheism contradicts science and has forever. It's just a recent phase that atheism has been considered scientific and will soon go back to being laughed at by both science and religion

>most people ignore him or give him a hard time.

And you wonder why they don't come back?

>Atheism contradicts science and has forever. It's just a recent phase that atheism has been considered scientific and will soon go back to being laughed at by both science and religion

You don't know much about 'science' do you?

It is based on rationalism, materialism and empiricism which if taken to their logical conclusions lead directly to atheism

>They're either just hipsters going through a phase or people converting for marriage.
That's not much of a problem, is it?

Convert here, for 13 years. The reason converts stop coming are more than just "they weren't doing it for islam." It's because going to the mosque and doing all these rituals isn't part of their upbringing and culture, so they just don't have the foundation to keep going with it... Either they leave or continue believing in private but since they don't have the foundation or support you do, they don't succeed.

There are many things you take for granted as being brought up muslim that they didn't have the advantage of. Basically all this isn't part of 'who they are' due to cultural barriers and numerous other factors... its a monumental task to really become a proper Muslim for some one like that.

For most people they'd be better off staying Christians.

>lesswrong.com

In science, we can't affirmatively know or assert something until we've empirically proven it. Just because a scientist says they are atheists doesn't mean that atheism is scientific. They are just stating their own dogmatic belief.

Absent an experiment that shows that God does not exist or a proof that concludes that the universe has no purpose, we can not scientifically accept those assertions; thus for a scientist to embrace atheism is not only intellectually dishonest, but also logically inconsistent. The real scientific stand on God would be "I know that I don't know".

Now all of sudden you have edgy atheists on Reddit and Veeky Forums claiming this scientific theory proves God doesn't exist or that one even though that wasn't even the purpose of the theory and doesn't disprove anything and even the author of those theories were religious or agnostic.

There's nothing wrong with being atheist, but it isn't scientifically consistent.

>Love Live

Again you don't know what you are talking about.

If materialism, empiricism and rationalism are taken as true, then there is no possibility for God or the supernatural to exist.

But they aren't. A theory can't both be rational and empirical.

I dont know about that, but western countries need to nudge them in that direction - that doesn't happen by banning wearing cloth at specific areas of the body.

1. invest in a program that trains WOMEN and natives(read white european volunteers) to be imams as well as minority muslims, vet all of these very well

2. reduce immigration to only very educated individuals

3. gently push the notion that people born in europe are european and are part of the nation they were born in, instead of calling them "others" or attempting multiculturalism, just assimilate gently

4. stop messing with their countries of origin, because we make it worse for anyone, let them sort it out over there

As far as scientists are concerned, those intellectual frameworks are truth-determining and the rest is nonsense.

So what you say makes no difference.

>gently push the notion that people born in europe are european
are you out of your fucking mind?

why do you want to destroy European identity for a Muslim's benefit?

I hate anti whites so god damn much

both the "muslim" and the "convert" in this thread are meming so hard i can't even

i am an arab christian AMA guys xDXDXD

what do you mean

>multiculturalism doesn't work
>but we shouldn't assimilate either

Atheist here. Atheism has nothing to do with science. It's just a belief and you people need to calm down. There's no proof God does or doesn't exist. Pick a side and shut up.

>Is God rational?
Yes he is. This universe is rational and logical. Science proves that. If God was the creator, then he is rational.

>Does God comply with materialism. Yes. In the belief of God and that God created this universe and everything in it, everything you touch, see, smell, or hear, is proof of God.

>Is God empirical?
Empirical science cannot prove or disprove God. The empirical scientist has the right to say, "I have found such- and-such," or "I have not found such-and-such." He does not have the right to say, "Such-and-such a thing does not exist." This would no longer be empirical science.

they're larping

If empiricism is the case, we can have no knowledge of a possible god.

If rationalism is the case, 'supra rationalist' beliefs as those found in religions are untenable, hence religion collapses.

If materialism is the case, there is nothing supernatural.

What is left?

how

atheism
ˈeJθJJz(ə)m/Submit
noun
disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods.

>disbelief or lack of belief

Atheism and Agnostic Deism are the only scientific positions.

The way religious people try to drag atheism down to their level is pathetic, and it says a lot that the worst they can say about it is "you're a bit like us"

These will all work to drastically reduce popularity of Islam by "subverting" it.

The natural course intermarrying will also work to push the tendency in the general direction.

This is my opinion as an agnostic/apatheist Muslim American immigrant.

The idea that Islam needs a Reformation/Enlightenment is I think a gross misunderstanding of both by modern neoliberal thinkers who seem to have this idea that Christianity was secularized and made palatable with modern norms by them, and that somehow these events were themselves the product of modern liberalism or at least its stepping stones.

The problem there is that it turns the concept of reform and enlightenment into a weapon indistinguishable from colonialism, which over the past century has been heavily criticized in African and Asian Muslim societies to the point where it's a mess of impenetrable memes that shut down conversation. Into the gap sown by this ideological conflict comes a whole slew of political Islamist thought and fundamentalist Islamic revivalism that gains power and momentum from its opposition to Western liberalism in the Muslim world.

On top of all this Middle Eastern popular history is stuck between two outdated paradigms going back to the 19th and early 20th century which was too useful for Arab nationalists and now Islamists to consider changing. Think about your average fanatical Eastern European nationalist history based on Victorian research, but with religion involved, and you get the idea.

Finally, all is certainly not well with Western Muslims who like many other Westerners have their own socio-economic problems which neurotically manifests as gang culture and radicalism.

>I'm not saying Islam should change the word of God to satisfy more modern sensitive moral and ethic codes, but how come they have never looked at their religious texts, and asked why?

They did actually, to the point where there were whole decades in Islamic history full of riots and revolts about it. The problem is much of Islamic theology comes down to us from the period right after these conflicts, and the ad hoc legal precepts, compromises, and popular culture of that time ended up becoming dogma almost by accident, becoming increasingly more sacred and sacrosanct over time as successive scholars tried to outdo one another with appeal after appeal to the authority of tradition and hearsay from that period.

And for a long time that was fine. For a long time, the archaic theology and sophism of Islamic fiqh was something that took a relative back seat in Muslim society, more guidelines on proper morality and even fantasy than practical application at times, with brief moments where it becomes more seriously applied only to slip back into the background.