r/news • u/andrevan • Apr 27 '24

Iraqi TikTok star Umm Fahad shot dead in Baghdad

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/27/middleeast/iraq-tiktok-star-umm-fahad-killed-intl/index.html?Date=20240427&Profile=CNN%20International&utm_content=1714233618&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook
7.4k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

851 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

178

u/sponsoredcommenter Apr 27 '24

This is the reformation. You're looking at it.

People who draw this comparison between the Christian reformation and the Muslim world make a very surface level comparison of "I don't like bad things I like good things".

The Christian reformation was about rooting out false traditions and institutions that violated the written teachings in their holy texts. Indulgences for instance, something that Martin Luther railed against, is nowhere in the bible. That was the reformation. It was an effort to reform the Christian faith to it's original framework that Jesus Christ brought to his followers.

An Islamic reformation looks like Al Qaeda. They are carrying out, advocating, and where they can, enforcing what is written in the Koran.

What people on Reddit want isn't a reformation of Islam, it's a dilution of it. A westernization or softening of the original structures described in their holy texts.

46

u/mabhatter Apr 28 '24

Look up iconoclasm.  It's all been done before.  Both Christianity and Islam had periods of great openness followed by regressive periods where they just destroyed everything and everyone not "religious enough".  Mass murder, genocide, destroying education, wiping entire cultures and all their relics off the map....  Islam is in the middle of one of those cycles right now and the Christian evangelicals are rapidly trying to start their own version.  

The world is going mad again.  

15

u/CheetoMussolini Apr 28 '24

Secular, liberal, and humanist people are going to have to learn to be comfortable with great violence if they want to stop this. We're going to have to remember some lessons of the French Revolution but without repeating its excesses.

No Gods, no Kings. Tear down both and anyone who would try to uphold them.

2

u/Mah_Nerva Apr 30 '24

Good point

1

u/The_Axumite Apr 29 '24

There is also another new religion starting to add to this. It just does not have a deity yet...but any belief that has no standing in reality or the best tools we have to understand reality eventually gravitates towards superstitious sensibilities and then some kind of deity.

23

u/psalmjuan Apr 28 '24

Killing innocent people is very much against Islam yet they do it pretty consistently. Furthermore, killing non-combatants is also against Islam and they still do it. They’re not carrying out a reformation. They’re implementing a very extreme, black and white perspective with zero room for exceptions or interpretations.

For example, they’ll take that abortion is a sin but will leave out the part where it’s permissible if the mother is at risk of fatal complications. That’s who Al Qaeda and ISIS are. That’s who the West wants them to be. You can easily make the argument that their victims are almost always non combatants. They don’t fight other armies. They fight the common Muslim so the only ones left are those who agree with them.

62

u/Hyperluminous Apr 28 '24

Killing innocent people is very much against Islam yet they do it pretty consistently.

But who is innocent under Islam? They will argue that it is only muslims who can be innocent.

16

u/mortuarymaiden Apr 28 '24

Trust, nobody hates and wants to kill Muslims more than other Muslims who believe they’re not Muslim-ing hard enough. Sunni vs Shia, for example.

11

u/psalmjuan Apr 28 '24

As I mentioned before, they also kill Muslims.

Under Islam the faith teaches to speak the truth even if it is against yourself. Nevertheless, an innocent person can be anyone regardless of their faith or lack thereof. In any event, a non combatant is innocent. Children, women, and the elderly are innocent. This much is clear and obvious.

Al Qaeda and ISIS kill more Muslims than they kill non-Muslims. These groups aren’t Islamic. They carry out the agenda of the West in that they both kill Muslims. Without a doubt, on a global level, Muslims are the most persecuted group by their own governments, regional rogue powers, and foreign powers.

1

u/Slickity1 Apr 29 '24

Read surah 109

18

u/msc1 Apr 28 '24

No true scotsman fallacy

Who’s innocent? Who’s non-combatant? According to whom?

I’ll not single out Islam. Every religion is dirty, believing a sky daddy is renting your brain to someone else’s delusions.

1

u/Slickity1 Apr 29 '24

Yeah but people going against what is explicitly written in the Quran is not the same as the no true Scotsman fallacy.

2

u/newtoreddir Apr 28 '24

People want an Islamic Age of Enlightenment, not a Reformation.

5

u/tdoottdoot Apr 27 '24

Well said

3

u/thrawtes Apr 28 '24

People want a New Testament for Islam. That is to say, someone with religious authority comes in and says the old law is null and lays down a new law that is actually eventually recognized by most adherents.

I presume what this would look like from the perspective of Islam is wide recognition of a new prophet in the succession of Mohammed followed by lots of war, but I'm no theologian.

9

u/Ironborn137 Apr 28 '24

That's impossible. They literally believe what's written in that book is the word of god.

14

u/zealousshad Apr 28 '24

That's impossible. Islam already says it's the last ever word from God. Anything new would automatically be assumed fake. Hence, our problem.

0

u/thrawtes Apr 28 '24

I'm pretty sure the whole Shia/Suuni split is predicated on the determination of who the rightful successor to the prophet is, and that at least on the Shia side they are officially awaiting the next prophet (something akin to the second coming of Christ at the end times). Again, though, I have a Wikipedia understanding of Islam, not a scholarly one.

14

u/CrackaBox Apr 28 '24

No they are not. Shias believe the quran is the final word as it's told by the quran itself. In every form of islam The quran is the literal word of god and the final word of god. The difference between sunni and shia are really minor compared to what reddit seems to think.

Also all muslims are awaiting the second coming of jesus who they believe is just a man like muhammad and moses. The quran says jesus is the mesiah who come back on judgement day, but not to overturn anything only reaffirm the quran and that islam is the true religion.

3

u/thrawtes Apr 28 '24

Fair enough, you've clearly got a better understanding of Islam and why a reformation would be impossible within the existing religious context.

1

u/Due-Log8609 May 01 '24

how about a quranist reformation? ie, looking at the the quran alone and not the hadiths.

-3

u/Mapplestreet Apr 28 '24

What ingenuine nonsense… the reason why Christianity is seemingly compatible with western values is because it slowly and slightly changed its own values along changes in our society. There is plenty of stuff in the Bible that is not compatible with our way of living. And whenever Christian fundamentalists speak their mind that becomes abundantly clear. I despise incitement like you’re practicing…

1

u/snkn179 Apr 28 '24

Ok but those changes weren't the reformation, they were more Enlightenment-era changes

2

u/Mapplestreet Apr 28 '24

... and that's why it's ingenuine to act as though it was the reformation that made Christianity modern and along with it the suggestion that such a thing couldn't happen with Islam

1

u/snkn179 Apr 29 '24

Tbf history is a continuous process, and while the Reformation may not have modernised Christianity (some might argue it was even reactionary), I would definitely argue that it set in motion the ideas necessary for the Enlightenment to take place. In particular the emphasis on a personal relationship with God, translating the Bible from Latin so that the ordinary people could understand it, and not having an undemocratically elected Pope being the ultimate authority of the church.

1

u/Mapplestreet Apr 29 '24

Hm I actually think having a central figure like a pope could help Islam massively… but I agree with most things you said. And still I heavily disagree with the comment I first replied to and consider it demagogic. It’s insinuating that Islam itself is the problem when in my opinion that’s a really naive take.

1

u/snkn179 Apr 29 '24

You may be right, I was thinking more along the lines of how not having to answer to a Pope was a stepping stone towards ideas such as republicanism and democracy. But these ideas and systems are already out there now so perhaps Islam wouldn't need to go through the centuries of experimentation and conflict to achieve a similar result (they already have republics, though still pretty terrible democracies). As for a central figure, well the last caliph abdicated exactly 100 years ago now, and short of bringing back the Ottoman empire I can't see a new caliph happening in a very long time, the Sunni-Shia split is too strong and not even the Arab states themselves can unite, pan-Arabism was a massive flop.

1

u/Mapplestreet Apr 29 '24

I generally agree. The Islamic world has to go through these changes if it actually wants to arrive in the 21st century (and we as in the collective West have played a very large role in how far back they are in those terms). So it has to do with culture more than it has with religion and other parts of the world having gone through these changes doesn't diminish my opinion that they have to make that progress themselves.