Aren’t there lots of problems with Islam?

AbdurRaheem Green

This is what Muslims claim, but aren’t there lots of problems with Islam?

I mean how can anyone in the civilized free world, or in fact anywhere, be expected to follow a religion that’s 1400 years old? It seems to treat women as second class citizens (but in the civilized free world women are still paid less for the same job, are regularly portrayed as sex objects, suffer scary amounts of sexual and physi­cal abuse and find it almost impossible to be respected as mothers and wives, but at least in the civilized world we claim that women are supposed to be equal). I mean the Quran actually says it’s allowed to beat your wife on certain occasions! Men can have up to four wives and unlimited concubines! Nice for them, and they get twice the inheritance, and a woman’s testimony is worth half a man’s!

Then there is this jihad business and all that terrorism and ‘fight and kill the disbelievers wherever you find them.’

And how about all those seemingly barbaric laws with hand chop­ping for thieves, and death for apostates and adulterers (and how come it’s always the women that seem to get killed?) and death for homosexuals, and whipping for drunks, and even crucifixion for highway robbers!

Isn’t the Quran just like every other religious book; full of contra­dictions, vague terms and open to many levels of interpretation?

Well, the Quran seems to be unlike any other scripture from at least one angle, and that is the nearly undisputed fact of its preser­vation and authenticity. Then again, how many of the issues that people have with Islam are actually to do with the teachings of the Quran and the Prophet as opposed to the behaviour of Muslims?

Let’s look at this rationally rather than emotionally.

Does the fact that the Quran teaches some things that go against the customs and norms that we are used to, mean that it is not from the Creator?

There is in fact no rational reason why any of the aforementioned issues actually preclude its divine origin. So what if it does not seem compatible with ‘modern’ life? Perhaps the Creator doesn’t like modernity or any other man-made ideology. I’m not saying this is the actual case, I’m just proving the point that again this is not a rational reason to reject the claim of the Quran to be from the Creator. In this respect, nearly every religion joins Islam in questioning the validity of a lifestyle based on pure materialism and enjoyment that seems to characterise much of modern life.