I understand what you are saying here, but I’m not sure that is actually the case. For the most part, I’m not sure your average Muslim is faced with the reality of some of the nastier parts of Islam on a regular basis. Unless you are intimately familiar with Islamic texts and their contexts (asbab an-nuzul, etc.), or unless you happen to find yourself in an environment where psychopaths are combing through the text in order to bring out the most barbaric practices and bring them back to life, then you simply are not confronted with those things in a real way.
For your average, decent Muslim, there is plenty of “good stuff” in the Qur’an and sunnah, enough to make the nasty stuff irrelevant. Beheadings, slavery, amputations. Even when you read about those things as an average, decent Muslim, they don’t stand out as real in a way that needs confronting. They are confined to the pages of old books. The Islam that you actually live really is all about praying, feeding the poor, being truthful, and being good to your neighbor (and lots of self-repression). The other stuff sounds completely foreign.
In fact, just the other day, I was thinking of some of your writings regarding God, Hassan, and the thought crossed my mind that many sunni scholars would probably just dismiss you as a modern day jahmi. Then, I began thinking of the refutations of Jahm ibn Safwan, and how his teacher, Ja’d ibn Dirham, was BEHEADED for his views. “Oh people, commence your sacrifice, may Allah accept it from you. I am sacrificing Ja’d ibn Dirham, because he says that Allah did not (actually) take Ibrahim as a friend and did not (actually) speak to Musa with words.”
The thing is, I had read that story numerous times, but I only saw in it a refutation of the doctrine that denied God’s attributes. Never did it click in my mind that I was actually studying and upholding the ideology of people who beheaded a man for expressing rather reasonable views! But if you were to have shown me videos of ISIS at that time, I would likely have accused them of being “extremists” who had “nothing to do” with Islam. And that was with my level of exposure, which was probably more than your average “decent” Muslim.
Ultimately, I think there are several different camps at play. The first are the good intentioned, ignorant Muslims who, through barriers of language or their own naivety, simply don’t know enough about Islamic sources to paint the full picture for themselves. They are the ones who believe that Muhammad really was all about emancipating slaves and empowering women. They cite the same extracted examples that we’ve all heard: Bilal ibn Rabah calling the athan above the Ka’bah, or Muhammad’s wife Um Salama giving him the profound advice of enacting his own commands before expecting his followers to follow suit in Hudaybiyyah. These “prove” the status of freed slaves and women in Islam. And it’s enough. You never have to discuss the capture of Safiyyah bint Huyay or the torture of Ka’b. For them, Muhammad’s battles were all in self-defense. His interactions with others were always benevolent and peaceful. “Slaughter a sheep and distribute its meat. Start with our Jewish neighbor.” And so on. Honestly, that is the Muhammad I was taught about growing up. A Mercy for all the Worlds.
The second camp are those who know the full picture but have a vested interest in keeping up the façade. Either their jobs as preachers depend on it, or they have fooled themselves into thinking that they can be the gatekeepers of knowledge, only letting the nice bits seep out in order to “guide” the community. These are the ones I think you are referring to, Hassan. I agree with you that they are at best highly selective and at worst downright dishonest. And they are.
The last camp are the ones like you who know the full picture and all its implications – and are honest about it all. They will be faced, if they have a shred of decency, with an inevitable crisis of faith. That is a very difficult position for most to be vocal about because I think they know that Islam in general is just a house of cards built just across from an open window. There really is nothing to it, so it makes such grand claims for itself. Doubt and disbelief in the miraculous infallibility of this house of cards, then, becomes paramount.
The impressive part is that this also demonstrates the true power of faith (call it conviction, if you will.) People believe this entire system called Islam that has been built literally on nothing but words. It’s remarkable. And it is remarkable what can happen so long as people don’t lose faith.
I’ll digress just a bit here in my rambling, but I’ll try to tie it all back in to my final point. Think about this. Muhammad never had a single miracle, but people still believe in him as a prophet of God. He never came up with a single original story, but people still believe in him as a prophet of God. He behaved essentially like any other desert chieftain in the 7th century, but his legacy lived on because people believed he was a prophet of God. He got entangled in multiple sex scandals, ones that would usually ruin the career of your average religious leader, but he was able to pull through because people believed he was a prophet of God.
So, the thing that you are asking them to do by admitting that the Qur’an is not divine is essentially to lose faith in the one thing that makes the house of cards stand on its own. It’s essentially kufr from everyone’s perspective, the one thing that cannot be forgiven. And people are scared shitless to approach it because they know very well what it actually means.
Though, I think if people did go there with you, they would find that Islam does not simply melt away once you admit you don’t actually believe that it is entirely and divinely true. They’d find the freedom to admire the beauty, comfort, and guidance that centuries of Islamic thought can give them without having to force themselves into ignorant or dishonest positions.
They’d find that even Muhammad himself becomes a much more impressive character, a much more understandable character, a much more complex character, when you admit that he was nothing more than a remarkable, and remarkably flawed human being. Because what the unlettered prophet was able to give to the Arabs, and even to all of us here still talking about him, was nothing short of amazing.
They’d find that Islam could take its place amongst all great religious traditions that humanity has developed, not as God’s way of reaching down to us, but instead as our way of coming together and reaching up to God – whatever God may or may not be.
But it’s a radical shift and most people will not be comfortable with it.
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