Nah, it's not uniquely American. My sister is very much like that. She believes homosexuality is haram but we shouldn't be mean to them, for example, she even has a gay friend
I'm sure she thinks Mo wouldn't approve of meanness
Lol, I was like that, too. I believed homosexuality was haram but even so, we should just
treat them as normal human beings. Same with non-Muslims. 'They might convert or change their ways some day and then we'll regret being mean to them.'
She's very serious about faith, prayer, fasting, etc but when it comes to the real-life application of shari'ah, she dismisses most of the harsh stuff as extremist and un-Islamic without even opening the Quran or a Hadith collection. Killing apostates? Yeah, Al-Alethia, that sounds nuts, nobody but Al-Qaeda believes that, why are you so anti-Muslim, why are you obsessed with the bad stuff, blah, blah, blah. Women don't have to obey their husbands, WTF? Islam is fair and equal. You know I'm a feminist, right?
I don't even know if she's for amputation and stoning because when these things come up, she'll just accuse me of being obsessed with making Islam look bad and say I'm misinformed or lying. She won't bother to look anything up, she just "knows" Islam is good and anything unsavoury is extremist BS.
I have a cousin who is pretty devout. No music, wears abaya, is learning tajweed, doesn't listen to music, doesn't go to wedding where they play music etc. She pulled something like the above the other day. My other cousin was telling us about how her newly wed life was and how she and her husband divide the choirs at home. She said: 'It's a completely other story with a neighbour of me. She does EVERYTHING for her husband. The other day, he asked her to make one specific dish. She didn't have all the ingredients so she decided to make something else. He came home, didn't find what he wanted and he started screaming and calling her names. He demanded from her to make that dish he wanted.'
My religious cousin reacted with: 'OMG, NO! What?! She is not his maid. I would never do everything my husband says. That's not normal.' She was really appalled!
And I was like...
You ignore something that's written in the Quran, and dissmiss it as not normal, while you do obey some vague hadith about music instruments not being allowed?
The two of them also told us about some 'revert brother'. The newly wed one said: He is really handsome. The religious one reacted: 'Handsome? He is DI-VINE.' And we were like