I hate to sound mean or anything but its because religions do not give you any skills in critical thinking. When I was talking about violence done in the Sira (I should point out that the old testament is worse despite what right wing christians assert.) to my brother. He had no problem with any of it because the ones I had showed him were of the prophet killing jews. In one of the cases, He expels the Nadir jews from Yathrib (Medina). He then has a few transgressors from that tribe like K'ab bin Assad, Huayy bin Akhtab, and Kinana bin Al Rabi. He later condemns a whole jewish tribe to death by beheading (except very young boys who had not grown pubic hair) for having these few trangressors fight against him in the battle at the trench. Later on he tortures the last of one them (Kinana) to tell him where treasure is and beheads him. To top it all off he takes his wife Saffiya bint Huayy and marries her. Just for the sake of people saying "we don't know her thoughts on the matter". Well we do know that a companion of his (Abu Ayub) was circling his tent with a sword because he was afraid for muhammad and that until recently she was in unbelief. He also just killed her Father and her husband. I mean he pulled a david from the old testament (2nd Samuel 11). The person I was talking to believes bad things like terrorism happen only because of people are reacting to the west (I don't necessarily disagree with this), but he can't see Muhammad did the wrong to the Nadir Jews. He was the instigator. So it just goes to show that some bloody stuff like beheading 600-900 people is all ok as long as they are jews. I mean the critical thinking faculties of my brother are not the best as you can see. Sorry for the really long post. But I needed to say the whole story.
PS
My favorite part was when he asked me "why do you have all this knowledge?" I replied "I actually care about what I believe unlike most".
Anyway thank you to anyone that read this whole thing
No worries! You don't sound mean to me!
To be honest, as I'm going through this deconversion process, I've been finding it very interesting how different the Islam I was taught to the one that is shown in the Quran and hadith is. In the six + years I'd gone to my school, never have I heard of an instance where the prophet was purposely cruel. Did we learn about the battles? Sure. But they were always taught as a "Yeah, he killed people, but only out of necessity!" kind of thing. In fact, I am beginning to see that even if there were "bad" things (i.e. Aisha's age/hands cut off for stealing/stoning for adultery/whippings for sex) were all brushed over.
You are right about critical thinking. If you keep being told over and over and over again that a man is perfect and he is your only gateway to eternal paradise, it's hard to get yourself to question him. I'm still not comfortable discussing this stuff out loud with my friends/family. Every time I begin to say something like how wrong it is that women have to submit to their husbands, I feel uneasy. Like I have shown myself to be a terrible person (in their eyes) or something.
Then again, there's the more troubling moments, like when my female friends just don't care that women have to submit to their husband. But that's another topic altogether.
Topic: Shit Muslims Say To Ex-Muslims