What are some good books for learning about Islam?

Read the Quran.
The Sunna should be disregarded as it is nothing more than a collection of "reported claims" invented by peasants who were paid by the Caliphate.

أرواح هندسية by Salim Barakat.

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Sharia Law for Non-muslims

>(Reza Aslan)

terrible

'How i fucked your mother' by rapemeister #learningaboutabrahamism

The Vision of Islam by William Chittick and Sachiko Murata

1. Conspiracy theory.
2. OP isn't a Muslim and neither are most of us. It's not relevant whether the "Sunna" was made up after Muhammad or not, since Muslims believe in it and any descriptive account of their religion has to take it into consideration.

Said no one ever until recently by Muslims who are ashamed of the content of the mental prison they can't escape.

Ma alim fi al Tariq ('Milestones') by Sayid Qutb

Abdul is all Done with Goats: Islam and the Migration to Europe

Islam is better understood as a juridic system and not as a religion. Read some Sharia textbooks.

>Conspiracy theory
>A simple reminder of historical facts
Pick one.
>until recently
Oh you actually think Quranism is a new trend and not the oldest islamic movement? Maybe you should read about it instead of talking out of your ass.

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I like you.

This, great book. Made me appreciate Islam.

Just open up a newspaper, there's literally a new terror attack every day now.

What is the stuff you learn that the average westerner doesn't understand about Islam?

I don't want to and won't read any of these because I think any and all evidence that Islam should be burned from the planet, and by me spending my time reading any of those I'd feel like I was giving it some form of legitimacy which it doesn't deserve..

Learn how to communicate in English before posting on this board.

How's this one?

my diary desu desu ne

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*that islam existed

happy?

there is a system to judge whether a hadeeth is authentic, acceptable, or plain made up. you check the sanad which is the line of narrators. some of them are known to have fragile memories and so scholars catrgorize the hadeeths they narrate.

i will seriously pray for all of (you) because i love you :)

categorize the hadeeths they narrate as weak***

>why do I need to know more than the average western person
Because the average western person is an ignorant retard who gets their pop history from social media.
>the more I know the more legitimate it will feel
The exact opposite is true.

You do realize that it is circular, right? A system catagorizing these "reported claims" don't make these claims any more valid or historically accurate.

The hadiths turned the Prophet into a barbarian idol.

>I come to Veeky Forums for serious discussion and academic rigor.

>I come to Veeky Forums to find threads were try to have serious discussions and tell them they r wrong

Sharia means Law. You just said Law law.

>The exact opposite is true.
This. Islam as a political system, and it is a political system and more, is anathema to western civilisation. The more you read about it and the more you apply what you read, the more apparent this becomes.

Well he was a barbarian warlord, wasn't he? Possibly the greatest warrior to ever live, considering that the war he started is still effectively waged in his name, but a barbarian warrior nonetheless.

>supporting western degeneracy
>wanting judaic rule to continue for eternity
Islam is the ultimate redpill

>projecting this hard

Is this a good list?

Also, any books about Wahhabism

This is some truly acrobatic apologetics or straight taqiyya. Nasr is pretty good for a cultural and philosophical primer, though, and I have only praise for Islamic Art and Architecture.

Alright thanks. I'll check out Nasr, do you have any recs?

Depends. Do you want literature, philosophy, religious studies, politics? Tell me what you're interested in and I'll make some recs.

philosophy, religious studies, politics please.

Appreciate it.

Obviously you want a Quran, a biography of Muhammad, and a good selection of hadith.

Rodwell's translation is good, if you don't mind complex and somewhat archaic language. Generally I'd stick to earlier translations, with Arberry's being the 'scholarly standard'.

For the life of Muhammad, Maurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes' "Mahomet" is solid, and Muhammad Hamidullah wrote four books on the subject, all of which are well researched and grounded.

For the hadith, the entirety of Bukhari's collection, which is the most 'reputable' one in islamic tradition, is available in numerous renditions online for free. Have a list and compare three or four translations when you're reading. This will be the most gruelling part of it all.

>politics
For a historical context I recommend Hourani's "A History of the Arab Peoples", Cleveland's "A History of the Modern Middle East" as well as that goddamn brick, The Cambridge History of Islam..

For modern stuff, Sharia Law for Non-Muslims by Bill Warner is a good, quick introduction focused on the parts of sharia that concerns the kafir. There's a political agenda to it, but it's clear, concise, and bullshit-free.

Servier's "Islam and the Psychology of the Muslim" is a solid overview as well, though you'll do well to get the original, rather than the edited reprint.
More to come, I need a moment to dig shit up from the library and find out what all those books are called in English. Not to mention remembering which ones are good.

Thanks man, appreciate it.

Right-o.
Since we mentioned shariah, you probably want a Reliance of the Traveller. Keller's works.
Grab Allen's An Introduction to Arabic Literature as well, it has a good bibliography.
The two books concerning the dhimmi by Bat, Islam and Dhimmitude and From Jihad to Dhimmitude are also a solid read if you're interested in how Islam interacts with non-muslims.
Speaking of jihad, there's an interesting writeup by Pipes, Slave Soldiers and Islam, and Malik's The Quranic Concept of War will give you a nice, concise summary of the... well, concept.

That should give you a leg-up on the politics and the interactions without diving into the modern morass of bullshit.
So let's read something more pleasant. Sufism. Grab yourself The Essential Rumi as translated by Barks, the Garden of Truth by Nasr, Al-Ghazali on the Remembrance of Death and the Afterlife as translated by Murad, and the Meccan Revelations (iirc there's one Enlish version, in which Chodkiewicz was involved.).

More?

All you need to know about Islam is how to purge these pedos and murderers off the earth.

>remove the only people standing up for morals and decency in the twenty-first century
wow, you must have a lot of love for gay sex and drug addiction

That should be enough for now, thanks friend.

I kind of oppose being denied my humanity on the basis of a difference in belief.

Not a problem. In general try to keep to the older stuff, anything pre-1980s is usually written either with a harmless academic agenda or an easily discernible political one in mind, making it easy to sift out the bullshit.

Reza Aslan is fucking garbage

Read the qur'an and the hadiths (the strong ones mostly) and cross-reference them between the most popular scolars, and the most popular scolars near the time of Mohammed, to get a real understanding of what they believed at that time, seeing as some things have changed.

That should suffice to turn you off from Islam as any sort of source of truth.

Fucking read the books you idiot. It has fundamentalist literature written by the actual founders of modern Jihad, al-Qaeda etc.

Straight from the horse's mouth

Natana DeLong Baas, "Wahhabi Islam" is listed in the pic.

Wahhabism is not anywhere near as front and center to contemporary issues as people seem to think. It's something of a back-water Salafist movement specific to Saudi Arabia, and has played a minimal role in the development of jihadism.

>Her book Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad received a positive review in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.[8] It was also criticized by some academics including Khaled Abou El Fadl, Professor of law at UCLA who stated that:

>"I'm sad this piece of scholarly trash was published by Oxford. This doesn't qualify as scholarship - it falls within the general phenomenon of Saudi apologetics."[9]

>and Professor Michael Sells of the University of Chicago who stated that

>"DeLong-Bas never challenges the propriety of Abd al-Wahhab’s claim to absolute authority — the authority to declare the believer and the unbeliever (authority God reserves to himself in the Koran) and to impose the most severe sanctions on those he disagrees with."[9]

>Author Steven Schwartz, questioned her connections with Saudi Arabia,[4] calling her an "apologist" for Wahabbism and Zubair Qamar[10] stated that she received her funding from pro-Wahhabi organisations. Further, the Novelist Michael J. Ybarra complained that DeLong-Bas "doesn't say ... where on earth" the tolerant form of Wahhabism described by DeLong-Bas ever existed"

>Wanting me to read a Saudi apologist

It has a few of those, like the Al-Quaeda Reader, but the 'politics and sharia' section is absolute drivel, and Rahman can go bugger the major themes of a goat.

Don't read the Quran like all of the amateurs in this thread are saying. Muslims don't read the Quran. It is a document that isn't organized well, because it's not meant to be read. It's meant to be experienced because Islamic mystics believe that God transcends word. You have to have grown up in a society where Islamic symbolism is everywhere to comprehend anything, and you have to have gone to a mosque with an incredibly educated Imam. You should much less read a translation. Versions of the Quran in Arabic are translations themselves in a sense, as Old Arabic did not have dots and lines, only bare skeleton text. The dots and lines are absolutely essential, as they change the meaning of an immense amount of words.

If you're still itching to read it I'd look up only a few of the famous Suras and call it quits. Be sure to read annotated versions for the love of Allah.

You would probably find Sachedina surprisingly conservative. In any case his work as a scholar is excellent, certainly not something one could label "drivel" and by no means a cheap exercise in apologetics.

There is a lot of really bad apologetics on Islam out there (which probably does more to undermine Islam than anything), but the Sachedina books are not among them.

He does probably the best academic work on the relationship between the liberal government tradition of the west and Shariah, and comes from a place of impressive learning.

I don't know anything about Rahman.

There's reading a book review and then there's reading a book.

At the very least her bibliography is a gold mine of additional reading, assuming you're serious about learning which you probably aren't.

Depends what you mean by "serious" I very much want to read about Islam and plan on reading all of but I don't intend to be a scholar or anything.

I will look at what else she has written.

Why Islam?

kek

Nah, he used to be a Christian and then he became a Muslim.

I would disregard the Sunna in general. It was never intended by Muhammed to even be in existence, the Quran was supposed to be all you need by Muhammed's own words.
The Sunna ended up being used as justification for a whole bunch of extra practices with precedent in Muhammed's actions even though he was not really supposed to be a model citizen either

Curiosity. It's an important subject these days and I know very little about it. That region of the world interests me historically as well (egypt to india lets say)

Going to be reading more about Hinduism as well.

the actual religion or the people that follow it?

Muhammad regularly engaged in shuts and consultation with the Islamic community giving them advice and things they should do. I don't know why you would disregard the primary source to understand how the original muslims, including Muhammad, were actually practicing their religion. The Quran itself is even extremely referential to events elaborated on in Hadith, you can't even fully analyze the Quran without consulting Hadith.

>shuts
*shura

Okay cool, good on ya. Klaus Klaustermeir has a one volume introduction to Hinduism (Survey of Hinduism) which is fantastic; good for the general reader but with footnotes too.

Final exit.

Why does she have green eyes

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have you heard of persians?

You seem to have a good grasp on the Islamic tradition but Rodwell is NOT a good translator. His work is outdated and riddled with serious errors. Yusuf Ali or Marmaduke Pickthall are far better choices.

I hope you're trolling.

You do realize that many Muslims learn the entire Qur'an off by heart, and that there are annual competitions for this purpose in most Muslim communities? You do realize that Muslims are required to recite different passages of the Qur'an while praying?

It's the other way around. The Hadiths are referential to events elaborated in the Quran and most of these references contradict its teaching. Ever heard of the Sunni hadith claiming that an animal ate a verse of the Quran? Or the one that claims that the Prophet slept with a child, which is now used to discredit Islam? Or the ones that advocate for stoning and various types of torture? Or the one saying that drawing and painting is the worst sin when it is stated in the Quran that the worst sin is association?

Ever heard of Persians, Syrians or North Africans?
I'm Algerian and several members of my family have green or blue eyes. I've been gifted with shitty brown eyes, though.

Should I read the Islam Quintet by Tariq Ali?

suicide for dummies

Sure, some of them are strict orthodox. Just like any religion.

Kill yourself by Muhammed
youtube.com/watch?v=3sKTMev7duY&index=2&list=FLXXpDMpVsSFCWaTjgrwi51A

>Oh you actually think Quranism is a new trend and not the oldest islamic movement?
How many people is that?
And it's not the oldest islamic movement, when the Prophet was alive, everyone was following his example, there are numerous verses saying that obeying the Prophet is the same as obeying Allah, Abou Bakr spoke many times about how he is reluctant to do things that the Prophet never did, and Sunnis as well as Shias agree that the Prophet was an example, they just don't agree on the content of the books supposedly compiling his deeds.

Quranism is certainly not older than the Prophet, his companions, Abou Bakr, Aicha, Omar, Abdullah ibn Omar, Al-Abbas, Hassan Al-Basri, and the Four Madhhab.

The Quran, muhammed loves slavery and killing infidels.

Is there any *good* historical fic in an islamic setting?

By who's account?

You get what I'm trying to say?

The Prophet's words cannot be above or at the same level as God's words. A lot of the "reported claims" contradict clearly the Quran. Also, there's a difference : his companions actually observed his manners and knew him. Muslims are left with a collection of "claims" reported more than a century after his death. Absolutely ridiculous.

>Islam
>Morals
>Decency

Bit an Arab once.

Tasted like Pork.

No go tell that to a large group of, say, well motivated british sunnis and post the result.

>Absolutely ridiculous.
It is, and yet the collection of reported claims about the life and times of a barbarian warlord forms one of the bases of a religion that claims to be moral and peaceful. Mostly to the outside, of course, but still.
Islam may well be salvageable, and it has produced fantastic works and authors. Mostly within sufism and quranism. As it stands, however, the most popular doctrines and interpretations of it are fucking evil and there's no nice way to say this.

Is that an argument?
Why should I tell that to a large group of people who've been brain-washed since their childhood? A group of people who worship the Prophet and are okay with the "fact" that he may have been a pedophile?
Anyway, see

did that really seem like a clever joke in your head?

Aquinas and Cusa

The Birds, The Frogs, & The Mosquitoes.

The main character (Farid Licheli) is a Muslim.

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