To the Muslims on HN, Eid Mubarak! And to everyone else, Eid Mubarak!
For those who don't know. Eid is a day of celebration after the month of Ramadan, in which Muslims fasted for 30 days from sunrise to sunset with no food or water. It's something 2B people around the world celebrate to today or tomorrow (moon sighting permitted).
A note on Ramadan. To those interested in intermittent fasting, longevity, and coming back to a more human experience not drowning in technology, food and consumerism I would say check it out! After over 20 years of doing it I'm still learning something new every year, or I should say, unlearning bad habits we've created for ourselves as a society through abundance.
Hope you all have a great day!
As the Quran says: "Oh, you who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, that you may learn piety and righteousness" [Quran 2:183]
For anyone currently in Berlin who wants to try the moroccan Eid experience, hit me up! And make sure you’re ready for an exquisite sweetness rush :)
> no food or water
But really no water? That doesn’t sound healthy. Of course you can easily make it through a day without fluids but…
> its purpose being to cleanse the soul by freeing it from harmful impurities. Muslims believe that Ramadan teaches them to practice self-discipline, self-control,[65] sacrifice, and empathy for those who are less fortunate, thus encouraging actions of generosity and compulsory charity (zakat).[66]
Present in spirit, if not in flesh, mate! Cheers.
Today, sunrise was about 6:30am and sunset will be about 7:30pm. That's only 11 hours with no food or water.
Happy Eid.
[1] https://www-lepoint-fr.translate.goog/monde/algerie-2-ans-de...
The guys with the buckets have been out on most main roads all through the month - respectfully offering the chance to donate - no 'compulsion' in evidence. People are generous round here. I pop my coins in and others are putting in fivers and tenners.
Definitely party time here at the moment. Excited children and huge amounts of food being cooked.
https://www.inverse.com/mind-body/fasting-gut-health-science
By the time Eid comes, I feel my "hunger hormones" have gone back to normal, allowing me to get full with just the amount I need. No more, no less.
Also, Moon is relevant in Islam, as a calendar and timekeeping, nothing to be worshipped.
Also, All Monotheistic Religions have had fasting (the 3 big ones that survived so far) but again, the worst enemy of the people is their own selves and not the devil, and thus they modified what was given to them.
It resonates with the feeling of holding your anger even when you have the rights to be angry. Holding your arrogance when faced against someone who had less money, fame, etc, than you.
And Ramadan fasting is more than just not eating and drinking. You are not allowed to lie, to be angry, to speaks foul/dirty.
Eid Mubarak! Taqabalallah!
Also, you don't rotate numbers either, right? As in, if you were to embed 12345 in a sentence it would look like: This sentence talks about 54321, which is a number just under 00002.
Similarly, living in a Mulsim country, I have not observed the virtues that supposedly stem from religious fasting.
The human body is quite capable of more than we give it.
"Enforced by law"...if you want to eat in the privacy of your home that's between yourself and Allah.
And besides...lockdowns were also enforced by law, but the law will never have enough men to police all the population, it would require a 1:1 ratio or thereabout.
That's why the physical world is important as opposed to the virtual world where the ratio can be reduced drastically, that's also why I never understood the fixation with the 2nd amendment beyond a certain treshold more stuff and provisions are only a waste of money.
Intermittent fasting can be fasting Monday to Friday and only eating in the weekends like how I think one HN-er described his 5/2 diet.
It can be OMAD (one meal a day) or something else. The main thing is you fast and stop fasting repeatedly.
None-intermittent fasting is when you just skip food for a day like I did last week or for a few days like I did as a teenager.
I barely know them they’re new, but want them to feel welcome, think they might be the only Muslim neighbors
We'd also use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Arabic_numerals instead of the confusingly named (western) Arabic numbers 0123456789...
I also think some others, among them Christians, fast completely.
Personally I am Christian but when I fast, the vast majority of the times it has been because I was bored or needed to focus, and I didn't punish myself by breaking fast once a day but just went without food a day or two or three until I became bored of that too or family demanded I ate.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20171211105140/http://freethough...
We know for a fact that this is false. For example, the Egyptians were building the pyramids and worshipping their gods at least a thousand year before any known monotheistic religion. The native people of Australia have even older polytheistic religions.
Not convinced that not drinking water during the day is a good idea, especially in hot countries
I am saying this as a former believer (and holding no grudge), definitely aware of the fine line between sharing and pushing cultural items, and balancing the two rather equally in a diverse team.
EDIT: actually, it's a topic in itself in a matter of company/team management. I saw a similar concern grow in one of my older team in a previous job, because the company "inclusion and diversity" department held a _very_ unbalanced and awkward take in this regard, talking a lot about some religious/cultural items, and ignoring quite a few others (from different equally present countries of origin and faiths), actually resulting in a fracture in the self-perceived image of the team. That's really a delicate matter.
But people don't realize that fasting is important to your body... We store fat to use during that time... That's the whole point of storing fat. Energy and that while you don't have it.
12 hours a day is absolute cake-walk for our bodies.
1. Is the practioner supposed to abstain from "bad" things in the evening after breaking the fast or is it just during the day? What's the hardline, "accepted", and commonly practices answer to this? 2. Is the big dinner party thing on the last day of fasting or the subsequent day? 3. Do people get gifts, when?
"O you who believe, fasting is prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, that you may develop God-consciousness." https://quran.com/2/183
And that type of personality usually also aggregates in groups.
You are essentially able to escape from them as long as you are in the physical world, but in the virtual world everything can be policed much more easily.
> Breakfast is the first meal of the day usually eaten in the morning. The word in English refers to breaking the fasting period of the previous night.
Edit: sun will never set/living in 24 hour sunlight. The fasting time is during daylight hours.
What evidence there is specifically in this case suggests that the monotheistic middle eastern religions were derived from the evolution of a polytheistic belief system into a monotheistic one via a stopping-off point that acknowledged multiple deities, but consistently only worshipped one of them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israelites and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh are worth a read, and there are several references to multiple gods in the Old Testament, often in the PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE OTHER GODS BEHIND THE CURTAIN sense rather than as direct callouts, as you'd expect.
So unless we might mean that the sidetracking happened before the archaeological record of Canaanite polytheism starts, it's not really tenable as a suggestion.
I do not say this to devalue or challenge anyone's beliefs today; just that ignoring facts has a tendency not to go well. The moral and personal value of religious belief need not, to my mind, lean on historical record for its validity.
I know in Space astronauts are told to follow the timezone of where they are from
"Eid Mubarak" is fine as is.
2- Big dinners are everyday at sunset. Some people/cultures have several meals before dawn, some other prefer to have just one or two.
3- Nobody get gifts. Usually, it's kids who get new clothes during Eid and they also get money gifted to them (usually small change and can range between $1 and $20 depending where you are). During Eid its required to visit family and friend in their home.
The occasional celebratory post is fine on HN. If it were to become repetitive, it would get tedious quickly and we would downweight such posts in keeping with standard practice (see [1] and [2] about that).
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
2. Dinner party is a cultural thing, because we didn’t eat during the day and we have the same time to break fast, it became a party because everyone do it at the same time and usually at the same place. But the day of breaking fast (the Eid Iftar), you are supposed to eat in the morning to declare that Ramadan has ended and you can continue eat at day.
3. Another cultural things. Here, it happens few days before the end of Ramadan. The government mandates company to pay bonus during religious celebrations (christmas for christians, eid iftar for moslem, chinese new year for chinese, etc).
I find it interesting that , somehow, preparing for Lent, a time to eat simply and consider the elevation of your soul, became Mardi Gras, an excuse to let it all rip.
The same that its our choices whether to hold our anger and resolve things peacefully and objectively (someone messed up at work, we have the power to blame and fire them).
Ramadan fasting is just a part of islamic practice, just doing Ramadan fasting might not give any virtues. But Islam also teaches to treat everyone objectively, be patient, hold anger, etc.
A rabbit or a fruit isn't going to appreciate your understanding of its worldly struggles while you eat them, so why does it even matter?
As a non-religious gay I probably wasn't invited anyway. But this kind of thinking is what leads conservatives to so much repression and hate. The idea that the wants and needs of your body are something which the mind must actively fight. That the scratchy, ill-fitting wool sweater of your culture is something that you must keep on at all costs. And it leads to resentment of people who are not under such self-imposed restrictions.
There is a reason in queer culture that 'shadiness' is a bigger sin than anger. Shadiness is what happens when someone represses their true feelings. Those feelings don't go away though, they just resurface in other unexpected and non-adaptive ways.
Don't know if that is possible of course. I think the HN readership would welcome a way to use a post to explore cultural aspects, ask respectful questions, etc, but dont need a slurry of one line celebrations.
Even if you want to burn down my house and murder me because I wronged you or slighted your family, that's not morally correct. We have secular law to codify what we see as morally right and I think it makes sense that before states really existed or unified people through national myths, that function was served by Gods
Distance makes the heart grow fonder
Repressing desires to stay on the couch and going for a run instead gives me freedom to experience the world without being out of breath or stopping halfway on the hike.
Repressing desires to keep all of my money for myself leads me to be more charitable, which is better for others.
So yeah, self-control is a great thing to cultivate because the presence of a desire does not mean that the desire is good. And even if it's not bad, then it's something that can hinder a greater good.
> One in four adults skip breakfast most days, says survey
And for the curious: the proper response to an "Eid Mubarak!" is "Khair Mubarak!"
If you ask a heroin addict what their true feelings are, the wants and needs of their bodies, it's probably just "get high".
If you ask a 16 year old kid with a porn addiction, it's probably just "get off".
There is no shortage of maladaptive desires in the world, and no shortage of ways to fulfill them. I think you can trace probably half the world's problems to one word: "addiction". The motivation system of the brain gone wrong.
I think what you're trying to point to here is the other half of the world's problems, which is effectively: "acceptance", or rather, the lack thereof. The empathetic system of the brain gone wrong.
However, raiding the cabinet of historically religious practices and stripping god out of them can be helpful. A lot of things we do on impulse don't actually make us happy, and cutting them out for a bit can be a good way to examine whether they've become unhelpful/unskillful habits. I don't think drinking is inherently bad, but "dry January" can be a nice way to check that I'm not developing a dependency. I'm glad I have a smartphone but I do find that periodically being completely away from screens is a good check. Sex, food, other substances, media, can all be good but can also become parts of habits that don't actually lead to happiness. Temporary self-denial can be a useful tool in reworking one's relationship to these, even if you're definitely going to keep them in your life in some form.
In Islam you're not hated or judged for what you call your true feelings. You are however instructed to gain mastery over those feelings and make them subordinate to you rather than the other way around. Fasting is one of the things that can help with that. As for feeling invited, honestly I get why you may think that (because a lot of Muslims do a frankly terrible job of marketing) but that's not how Islam looks at people, it doesn't look at people as unchanging monoliths, instead you are seen as a blank slate and whatever actions you do impact your life here and the life hereafter. Basically your inner reality is between you and God. Islam fully understands people have all sorts of desires, lusts, etc, the thing is in Islam you aren't cursed for having those desires, but for acting upon them rather than gaining control over them. HTH.
The most misunderstood part about Islam is that how practical the religion is - Islam expects believers to give it their best shot, within reason and without being judged by some rigid binary rule.
It's perfectly okay to not fast for 22 hours and it's also okay if you can make it. Islam prioritizes health and well being.
Makes more sense now.
The new smoking inventions only make it worse because they allow for much much higher dosages. I've seen teens smoking what amounts to 10 packs a day worth of nicotine. And they didn't have to chain smoke for 12 hours to achieve that.
The founder of Islam was far worse than the founders of any of the religions I listed. Why does he get a pass? Just because billions of people think he was a good person?
Eid Mubarak!
I'm not a religious person, but I believe (sic) that behind fasting periods, there's a training around the theme of balance.
That sounds exactly as repressive and hateful that other major religion, as well as historical laws which punished homosexual acts in many western countries. You have highlighted the difference between our desires and our behavior, but you seem to deliberately avoid acknowledging that straight people are permitted an institution in which their desires can be met within constraints, but gay people are not.
"You're invited to participate in our faith so long as you scrupulously act like someone else for your whole life" sounds a lot like an unvitation.
Empty comments can be ok if they're positive. There's nothing wrong with submitting a comment saying just "Thanks." What we especially discourage are comments that are empty and negative—comments that are mere name-calling.
Also, this: https://www.thenews.com.pk/tns/detail/567790-intent-law
(In Arabic) https://islamqa.info/ar/answers/232635/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B4%D8...
You also acknowledge that even straight people have constraints in Islam, i.e. no sleeping around etc, why not also argue that it's somehow terrible that straight people have to repress their desire to fornicate?
"You're invited to participate in our faith so long as you turn your focus away from your base desires and towards God and the hereafter"
You're insinuating that you're being targeted or singled out whereas Islam "blanket-bans" entire categories of what are considered regressive behaviours such as overeating, you're not being targeted here, so can you stop with the victim complex please? Islam is as against environmental destruction, abuse of animals or overeating as much as it is against what it sees as wrongful sexual desire. What I feel like is being missed for the trees here is that the "holisticness" of Islam. It's against what it sees as destructive behavior, without prejudicing or singling out any specific group. Look at the higher purpose here.
Murder? Mayhem? Destruction? Greed?
I agree homosexuality is a fine thing, but your comment is altogether far tooo broad.
Societal morals are often about denying ourselves things we want to do: often because our actions affect others or offend others, but also often for no strong reason at all. Virtue is almost defined by holding ourselves back from unvirtuous actions: can virtue exist in the world if we can all do whatever we will?
> A note on Ramadan. To those interested in intermittent fasting, longevity, and coming back to a more human experience not drowning in technology, food and consumerism I would say check it out! After over 20 years of doing it I'm still learning something new every year, or I should say, unlearning bad habits we've created for ourselves as a society through abundance.
Notice how imams are not celibate like Catholic priests. In fact celibacy isn't even a thing in Islam. You're actively encouraged to get into a relationship and get married so you can fulfill your sexual desires. There's even a prophetic quote that says getting married is half of your religion. It's that important. Of course some things like drinking is not allowed even if you desire it and that's just something you have to deal with. But even if you cave it's not the end of the world because the grading system is heavily curved in your favor.
Having desires is natural and human and it's even ok to indulge in them every once in a while in a healthy way.
The Islamic term for this is nafs which means "self" or sometimes "ego". So fulfilling human desires is filling your nafs. But just like overfilling your stomach can be bad, overfilling your nafs is also bad so you need to practice discipline in not getting carried away.
[0] https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/01/416371/juul-delivers-subst...
The research found that blood nicotine concentrations in the JUUL group (136.4 ng/ml) was eight times higher than e-cigs group (17.1 ng/ml) and 5.2 times higher than cigarettes (26.1 ng/ml).
Liberal humanism is against what it sees as destructive and oppressive behavior, without prejudicing or singling out any specific group. Look at the higher purpose here.
Last time I was on vacation, and might have bought a pack of cigarettes, I decided "hey, why not try a Juul instead," and, the rest is history.
While I'm overall in favor of vapes and think that they're a valuable cessation device, the problem, for me, is that it's all to easy to vape while I work in my home office - no smell, no fire, etc. I think that makes it a lot easier to continually dose nicotine and really settle into addiction. Also, while I'm sure they're safer than cigarettes, I still have doubts that they're safe, and I can't help but think of the attitudes that used to prevail with regards to tobacco back in the 40s and 50s when I hear folks talking about how totally OK for your body vaping is.
Leads me to doubt the conventional wisdom these days of "drink gallons of water per day to have a chance of being healthy"
To me, this is just another angle of what the parent comment was talking about. We are not blank slates. We have millions of years of evolutionary instinct and genetics/epigenetics built into us AND we have everything we are fed (literally and figuratively) affecting us before we even get a chance to start thinking about 'who' or 'what' we are.
The blank slate line of thinking is what conservatives in the US implicitly (or explicitly) use to make the claim that being gay is a choice. It seems that it's just another way to justify punishing people for things that may be beyond their control, because if we are blank slates, then everything about you is your own fault.
Obviously there are aspects about ourselves that we can change, but the blank slate ideal is a dangerous slope to slide down.
>You are however instructed to gain mastery over those feelings and make them subordinate to you rather than the other way around
Genuine question: How is this different from saying "it's not bad to be gay, it's just bad to not repress your feelings and never act on them", as is a common (paraphrased) refrain among those who are anti-lgbt?
do you think I'll relapse? I don't usually get cravings anymore but I'm scared it'll happen.
In my personal experience as a compulsive snacker being able to fast daily for a month makes me feel like I can do anything
The charitable case is that while something might be predictable, it's our conscious interaction that's important to these religions, not the theoretical knowledge.
The uncharitable case is that religions derive a lot of power from being able to fix time, and this demonstrates their sovereignty over people's lives in this sphere.
> instead you are seen as a blank slate and whatever actions you do impact your life here and the life hereafter
I assumed you meant that people will be welcomed because they are a blank slate that can be written upon by those seeking to influence them.
But, I am not going to try to stop her or make her life difficult with constant needling. Just like you shouldn't stop those who are willing to constrain their own sexuality for the sake of avoiding what they perceive as spiritual pollution, just like Greta is willing to constrain herself to avoid environmental pollution. To each their own, and for some living up according to their idea of honor is a greater comfort than more direct gratification. In time, we all learn something valuable even from those we don't agree with.
Can we however agree that America and other countries that embraced Western culture are great because you can live your life as you want and observant Muslims can live their lives as they want?
Is this not how it works? I'm not Muslim, this is what I understood from a Muslim coworker. He also implied that there's some politics involved, in that various Middle Eastern countries align themselves with their political bloc when announcing the day, although any political motivations are "alleged" and not acknowledged.
It's like Pancake Day in the UK. Traditionally the time to use up sugar/milk/eggs before lent but turns into everyone buying extra to pig out on. To think we could have got Mardi Gras instead.
I'll admit it's probably not hugely different though to my understanding Islam's purpose is more about guiding a person to have a relationship with God rather than being anti-anything, and about doing what is within one's ability to move towards that goal. Like I said in a different reply it's not like you are being singled out for hatred or anything like that, the purpose is for everyone to get themselves right with God.
There are no central authorities, only a menu of organizations and traditions that one can choose from. In some cases there is social pressure to choose one, and that social pressure is sometimes intense enough so that it feels like there is a central authority.
> Murder? Mayhem? Destruction? Greed?
The bar is so low you consider not being a dangerous sociopath a virtue?
At the end of the day you just follow whatever mosque you go to. If you want to follow moonsighting but your mosque does calculation, where do you go to celebrate Eid if the days differ?
Personally I wouldn't go to a mosque that uses moonsighting because I like predictability. My boss is Muslim so she would understand but it's still annoying for the company if I just went "I'm off tomorrow byeee" the night before.
I imagine some Muslim countries differ in the same way (some use calc some use sighting), though I can't say off the top of my head which countries use calculation.
Even this Ramadan, when I went to pee later in the day, the color wasn't dark implying I wasn't that dehydrated.
- Follow Saudi Arabia (Mecca)
- Use astronomic calculations
- Moon needs to be sighted with naked eye in the local city
- Moon needs to be sighted with any tool (telescope) in the local city
- Moon needs to be sighted with naked eye anywhere in the world
- Moon needs to be sighted with any tool (telescope) anywhere in the world - ...
"In Zoroastrianism or Mazdaism, however, fasting has been implicitly rejected throughout the faith’s history. Zoroastrian doctrine perceives no disjunction between spirit and matter along lines of good and evil; rather, it regards both as essential for achieving piety and both as susceptible to unrighteousness. Hence, Zoroastrians believe that the body should function as a means by which the soul can fight evil and regard any action that physically weakens the body as sinful. Moreover, sex is viewed as essential for procreation which brings more believers into the world. Standard or Young Avestan texts such as the Vidēvdād (Avesta, ed. Geldner, 3.33, 4.48, 7.70) emphasized that eating was essential for life, claimed consumption of meat enhanced spiritual perception, and suggested hunger and thirst caused much suffering. Pahlavi commentaries continued this anti-ascetic theme, stressing the notion of moderation or paymān between gluttony and privation in partaking of food, drink, and sex. Piety was said to result from not fretting about moderate consumption, and deviation from this mean was equated with concupiscence (Dēnkard, ed. Madan, pp. 267, 295)." https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/fasting
Then Mani came along, introduced fasting. It was the main rival to Christianity before Islam came along. Both Islam and Christianity are heavily influenced by Mani and vice versa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manichaeism
Fasting is a practice of discipline; consciously choosing to forgo one thing to focus on another. You don't not eat because God or Allah or Buddha or whomever actually care that you didn't eat. You don't eat to focus on mastering your own desires such that you can better your own mindfulness of adherence to the other strictures of your faith during your daily life, even when you are not fasting.
The reason many religions focus on fasting is that it is a common and simple way to be aware of a temptation and choose to not give into it.
Edit: I should add, in case my point wasn't obvious, that none of the above has to do with you or anyone else. It is purely a personal thing.
Anyone who brags about how much religious fasting they are doing are just showing that they have been wasting their time and have gotten nothing from it.
However there are legal schools and councils that people trust. Legal schools (or fiqh) were established by famous scholars that nearly everyone recognizes as an expert and were carried on by their students.
From a political standpoint, a lot of Muslims defer to Saudi Arabia because they are the current caretakers of Mecca and Medina.
But generally speaking for everyday normal Muslims they go with whatever their local imam says and go with whatever method the imam used because they are usually the most knowledgeable person around on such matters.
And no, fulfilling the very bare minimum is not virtuous. When virtuous person stops being virtuous, they fall to "average", not to the lowest possible.
You can accept that or not, but it's disingenuous to equate asking gays never to have sexual or romantic relationships, to asking non-gay people just to curb excess.
That's not an equal imposition, it feels like self-equivocating ad-hominem to read "you're not being targeted here, so can you stop with the victim complex please?"
If you agree that it's better for gay people to never experience intimacy, please just say so, without labelling the concern (that gay people may feel less invited) as ridiculous
No thanks.
To me, that sounds like a very fancy way of saying : repress your feelings and who you are to conform to an arbitrary set of rules written by one dude hundreds years ago.
Enlighten me on how are you supposed to act/feel to “gain mastery over your feeling” when said feeling is “as a male; I want to spend the rest of my life sharing experiences with this other male, intimate and not intimate, without endangering anyone else” ?
How did you come to find the religion? What impacts (positive and negative) does it have on your life?
One thing which has made me uncertain, is the praising of martyrdom throughout the Quran. How is this aspect reconciled within peaceful societies? I mean no disrespect through this question, and recognise this may not be the best place to ask.
If the only criteria for allowing posts like these is "People can wish each other well without coming close to that" then HN can easily be flooded with junk posts from every single Religious (and any other) group (Real/Imaginary and Bonkers) for every single day of the year.
If people start posting too many of them, we'll downweight them the same way we would any other repetitive pattern—not because we have any problem with their particular topic but because repetition quickly becomes tedious. (And users would flag them increasingly heavily in any case.)
The post was just a nice thing, a complete change of pace, and an opportunity to have an interesting conversation about something we normally wouldn't. That's on topic for HN. It doesn't mean the same thing would be on topic tomorrow—in fact it wouldn't, because avoiding repetition is one of the main functions here.
It was also a garish opportunity for flamewar, which plenty of commenters unfortunately took advantage of. But that's how the internet, and human nature, work.
This is a form of discipline and mastery of desires. Enlighten me how this is not what a faith built on God’s word should be commanding on any individual?
See crescentwatch.org
Martyrdom in literal terms is death by any means other than natural. So if a building collapses on a person, they are called martyred. I am not sure which one you are referring to but if you mean the martyrs of battle, they get a special kind of salvation on the day of judgement.
Your fourth question is funny. Peaceful societies are transient. When push comes to shove, no society is “peaceful”. Islam works upon an order of laws that command action and discipline at all times including during persecution and battle. The first physical battle is one for your defense. The second battle is one for the liberation of another. Anyone who dies in this cause is given a certain kind of salvation different from any other. But to be honest, the salvation is not the highest of salvation that one could get. There are higher magnitudes.
Islam gives a person structure (as all religion do?), an absolute perfect guidance, and an order of hierarchy that puts God above all, and the worshiper as His slave. From this point on, the worshiper struggle and strives in the path to establish his prayers, pay the charity that is due, and fast.
My journey is one of successes and falls. And persistence. It helps me discover personal flaws, work towards eradication, and then discover deeper truths and more concealed flaws. And upon an endless cycle that I hope by the time I meet my lord, I am free of any and all imperfections. Without Islam, I am a slave to my desires and intellect, which is self driven, and misleading.
Last note: A Muslim is one who submits to God, follows the religion of Abraham called Islam as conveyed by Muhammad, peace on them both, who was gifted with a miracle called the Quran. It is the only religion that specifically came by design for all of mankind. And though this is a challenging statement to make, the Quran is bold enough to make it. I cannot imagine a book or making such high claims, and not fail them even after so many centuries, without being a miracle itself.
Forbidding a person from lusting anyone other than spouse whether they like it or not is no different than forbidding a person from having gay desires. And no amount of self identification can label that inhumane.
https://www.notquitenigella.com/2023/04/13/ramadan-nights-fe...
As for my experience, suffice it to say I’m more in peace more I live according to Islam, and I see the same in everyone else around me. I’m Muslim and live in a muslim country btw.
[0]: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcnL9bB-q3ymnRNcpZGcVVjiD...
Why should you repress those feelings ? Unless they don't hurt you or hurt others; I see absolutely no reason to hide them or not act on them. What makes them "sinful" is you deciding they are sinful according to some made up rules you read in a book.
> Enlighten me how this is not what a faith built on God’s word should be commanding on any individual?
- Rule nb 1: Avoid harming yourself as much as you can.
- Rule nb 2: Avoid harming others as much as you can.
- Rule nb 3: Let others be.Know people who have had strokes or break the fast due to extreme hardship. Domestic helps who are Muslims, or people doing physical labor, simply can't observe it. Its one of the hardest fasts there is, and restraint from drinking water is the main reason.
Orientation is not a choice, and is orthogonal to identification.
I believe that same-sex relationships can be as profoundly fulfilling, enriching, and pro-social as heterosexual relationships.
That marrying a straight woman with a gay man is profoundly unfulfilling for both.
And that denying a class of people something so profound, freely enjoyed by everyone else, and which does not harm anyone else, can indeed be seen as inhumane.
Islam has no concept of empathy for all beings, or enlightenment really. The assumption is that without the fear of God and Hell, people would sin by default, and religious practices are meant to please God.
Often progressive Muslims mention Sufis but they have been persecuted enough, for holding God-consciousness type beliefs amongst others, to consider them a different thing altogether.
After 30 years of trying, I'm pretty sure I can't believe any religion was ever true. It's literally all made up, and the only bits that survive are the unfalsifiable parts or rely on nostalgia or ignorance.
I don't believe for a second any person has this immutable orientation, straight or gay. And likewise, I don't believe it is inhumane for a person to avoid a relationship that is illegitimate. Trying to argue otherwise is like arguing the color blue can also be seen as red.
Have you felt strong attraction for both sexes? If not, have you tried to?
Which is an empty exercise. You can't "stop having desires" for a month. Just another ritual to control the population, huh?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Arabic_numerals
[3] https://translate.google.com/?sl=ar&tl=en&text=%D8%A3%D9%8E%...