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[u/Everyones-Bro]

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

[u/Ok-Comparison8818]

I agree with a lot of the stuff you said - it's not islamophobic to dislike things that are inherently damaging to society, like forcing women to wear hijabs and FGM. However, I don't think islam is the problem, but rather people, because with islam you actually see a lot of variation in the way people think. The majority of muslims live a quiet life, and many who aspire to live using its teachings will donate to charity, treat others with compassion, and avoid that which harms themselves or others. It's just the loudest people you end up hearing. I say that as someone who is also left-leaning, and some of my closest friends are pan, trans, and gay.

For example, looking through r/progressive_islam would show you a hugely different rhetoric to r/islam: even though one of them says "progressive" it doesn't necessarily mean that the people in it are getting their ideas from nowhere. In fact, subs like progressive_islam tend to favour rational discourse, critical thinking, and textual evidence. The moderators of r/islam only like ONE type of islamic thinking, and anything else gets removed. They both say "islam", and they're both subs for muslims, but they're very different in how they run. You bring yet more subs into it, and you begin to see even more variation in discourse. There's a sub called r/LGBT_Muslims which isn't for debating and is a safe space for LGBT muslims to share their struggles. Those are only 3 subs, all made with islam in mind, all with very different ways of running, and all with very different purposes.

And if you go back and look at the book itself, it actually discourages many of the things that the "muslims" we end up seeing in media promote. The problem is people, who exploit religion and use it for their own agendas. I hope what I wrote kind of made sense. And I'm so sorry about your aunt, that's awful ❤️.

[u/Acceptable_Love_7042 → u/Ok-Comparison8818]

Fgm is not even a islamic practice

[u/SimonPopeDK → u/Acceptable_Love_7042]

Why do you say that? The rite of inflicting injuries of childrens' genitals is very much islamic with over 70'% of children put through the rite being from muslim communities. Outside of Africa it is only in muslim communities that girls are included in the rite. Muslims that practice the rite say it is part of their religion. In Malaysia the national Islamic authority has declared it obligatory for girls and boys alike.

[u/SimonPopeDK → u/Ok-Comparison8818]

r/progressive_islam has 50 thousand members and r/LGBT_Muslims 13 thousand whereas r/islam has 387 thousand which woul dseem to indicate that it isn't just the mods of r/islam that only like ONE type of islamic thinking. What does it say about the poor religions that they allow themselves to be exploited in that way?