Hi all,

I'm British and live in Egypt. I sit next to another european who is a female in her early twenties who recently converted to Islam after (in my opinion) being brainwashed by a combination of people. Whilst it is technically not allowed to "insult" (read question) Islam in this country, we have agreed to have a conversation and ask each other questions and we will not divulge each others identities.

I though it would be interesting to post an anonymised version of our debate here. Also, I would be delighted to get any suggestions/help on possible angles and responses.

Sounds good.

Here is the first part of our conversation:

ME: I've been thinking about [what we spoke about the other day].

Whilst in theory I should leave this alone, I figured I would research and answer your question. And encourage you to ask more questions for me to answer. Maybe we can both learn some things!

There is a rule though - you must not tell people that we are doing this as it is technically illegal in Egypt (and would get me lynched by many people who live here)!

HER: ok
I don't think i have enough information to answer everything
but if you want i can pass on the questions to one very good sheikh i know
i only know what i learned and heard
somethings better than others
Give me the questions and i will pass them on to get an correct answer!
What i learnd is that you should always try to find facts and that you always should question what you hear

ME Here is my answer:

FACTS:

Muhammad lived between 570 and 632 CE

It became an accepted fact that the world was round in 300 BCE and by 240 BCE


ADDITIONAL RESEARCH:

The verse in question is 79:30 which says:

“Waal-arda baAAda thalika dahaha”

Which is translated as one of:

YUSUFALI: And the earth, moreover, hath He extended (to a wide expanse);
PICKTHAL: And after that He spread the earth,
SHAKIR: And the earth, He expanded it after that. 

Egg in Classical Arabic is “al baiza”. There is no similarity between the two words.

Apparently it is a myth, propagated by Rashad Khalifa

CONCLUSIONS:

1. The Qu’ran does not state that Muhammed said the world was round.
2. Even if he did say it, it was an accepted fact 810 years before he was born.


MY RETURN QUESTION:

Where is there any real advanced knowledge displayed in the Qu’ran or Hadiths? Any information that is clearly stated that wasn’t known at the time? Not something that involves playing with interpretation.

HER Will pass it on


ME Why don’t you do your own research? Don’t rely on other people to feed you information that might be false. What if I have lied in what I sent you?

HER I don't trust various sayings on Google :/
then i don't know enough about it

ME Don't trust google. Check multiple sources and check places you trust.

HER however will pass it on, hopefully you'll get your answer ;0


ME Why do you trust the answer that you will get?

HER Why wouldn't I?
I would for example not trust anyone in the street telling me things
This is a man i totally trust, he's high educated and considered one of the most knowledgeable sheikhs at the moment. He's born in the states and are very used to talk to non belivers in a true way

ME Yes, but he also said that Muhammed said the world was round before science knew it??? and he is wrong.

HER wait for your answer on this one!
There's so much more stated in the koran!
If it's like you say that all the world already know that the world was round in Muhammeds time, it's still true right?
The koran is not wrong
and now you will say that he copied that part.. couldn't he just have copied that the earth was flat and putted in the koran then?
however
The earth question will be paused. awaiting the sheikh's answer
There's so much more than this..
The biggest thing which somebody that doesn't belive can understand is the belief.
As long as you dont have the feeling of belif you will never understand..
I never belived in my life and was soooooo against islam that you couldn't imagine. And then one day i got to see a miracle myself and my heart just accepted islam at that point... Many things followed that first miracle and i choosed to convert after 6 months

when you know it's right, you know
The most funny for me is when people that claims that they dont believe, suddenly starts to pray and ask good whyyyyy when they're having a hard time? Like if they are about to die in an accident, lost a child and sooo on..
why would they ask god then if they never belived before?
thats' my question

ME Ok, that's a lot of (rather defensive) writing to answer my very simple question.

Where is there any real advanced knowledge displayed in the Qu’ran or Hadiths?

But, since you wrote so much (and asked me a question) I think you deserve some answers. Again I will try to deal with facts, not anything else.

1. “There is so much more stated in the Qu’ran”

Correct. The Qu’ran is a big book. It also has inconsistencies, contradicts itself and has some pretty disagreeable statements in it (we can talk about them another time).

2. It is a fact that the earth is approximately an oblique spheroid (not strictly a sphere, and definitely not egg shaped). Why didn’t Muhammed say that? In fact, it seems that he said nothing about the shape of the earth, so why do you use this as an example of why the Qu’ran is true? But this is a question that we will put on one side until you get your answer.

3. Something nice happened to you. That’s great. Good things happen to people every day. Is it more likely that a happy coincidence occurred or that everything written in a book from 1400 years ago is true and that there is a supernatural being that made that “miracle” happen for you?

4. Why do people suddenly start to believe when something bad happens? That is very easy. People seek solace in religions (and not just Islam - any religion that you would like to name). Imagine you lost a child, would you rather think your child was dead and gone forever or that he/she had eternal life? People are at their least rational when they are going through hard times and understandably turn to religion to make themselves feel better. This doesn’t change facts.

You may enjoy believing in Islam. It might make you happy, it might improve your life. It doesn’t make it true.

So. My question to you:

What is special about Islam and the Qu’ran? What about Hinduism or Buddism? What about Judaism or Zoroastrianism? What about the ancient Roman and Greek gods that (if you had lived in their time everyone would have been convinced were the true gods, but now no-one believes in them). You are already a non-believer in hundreds of gods and religions. What is special about yours?


I'll update with her answer later!

cg399 wrote:I sit next to another european who is a female in her early twenties who recently converted to Islam after (in my opinion) being brainwashed by a combination of people.

Has she recently got herself a boyfriend/husband who's a Muslim by any chance?

Is she going to tell you what this "miracle" was that caused her conversion? It's kinda weird to say there was this great miracle, and then not describe it.

One of the better known Islamic apologists in the English world (though he's also a hateful, ignorant fuckwit besides) has himself renounced the claim that the Quran contains miraculous scientific knowledge:

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/islam ... 41106.html

Keep us up to date. This looks like it should be entertaining, at least.

I'd be very very careful with this if I were you. If the woman gets pissed because you push her one step too far towards reality her defensive reaction might just be to turn you in to the Islamo-fascist. Similar things have happened before, and I don't trust any woo heads as far as I could throw the great pyramid at Giza.

Also there might be an issue with the forum rules about advocating or promoting an illegal activity, but that is a call for the mod team to make if there is an issue here or not.

Still, I wish you well.

RS

theropod wrote:Also there might be an issue with the forum rules about advocating or promoting an illegal activity, but that is a call for the mod team to make if there is an issue here or not.

I sure hope that doesn't apply in this case. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to promote International Blasphemy Day.

quisquose wrote:

cg399 wrote:I sit next to another european who is a female in her early twenties who recently converted to Islam after (in my opinion) being brainwashed by a combination of people.

Has she recently got herself a boyfriend/husband who's a Muslim by any chance?

That's the normal way of things, however, in this case no.

I'm not sure how much I should write here (since it isn't my personal information to share), but the story is something like this:

She had an Egyptian boyfriend who, whilst ostensibly muslim, drinks alcohol, smokes (pot included) and parties hard.
She broke up with him but remained friends with his family.
She decided to convert
She then got back with the old boyfriend (whose attitudes haven't changed) but only once he agreed to an "orfy" (basically a paper which allows muslims to have sex outside of being properly married without sinning.

It is an bizarre situation, but I'm hoping I'll get to the bottom of it (and get to share it with you guys)!

Can I get a paper which allows me to have proper sex inside of being married?

theropod wrote:I'd be very very careful with this if I were you. If the woman gets pissed because you push her one step too far towards reality her defensive reaction might just be to turn you in to the Islamo-fascist. Similar things have happened before, and I don't trust any woo heads as far as I could throw the great pyramid at Giza.

I agree with this, but have a feeling that this isn't lost cause. I feel like it is my responsibility to step in and try to help, as I genuinely believe her "sheikh" has brainwashed her.

Soon she'll be fasting in the 40+ degree Egyptian summer for Ramadan (which sent her to the hospital last year) and I find the idea of her praying five times a day laughable (since she doesn't speak a word of arabic and has simply learned the noises that she is supposed to chant by heart).

I find it all rather weird and distasteful!

cg399 wrote:Soon she'll be fasting in the 40+ degree Egyptian summer for Ramadan (which sent her to the hospital last year) and I find the idea of her praying five times a day laughable (since she doesn't speak a word of arabic and has simply learned the noises that she is supposed to chant by heart).

That's all I did when I was practicing Islam, as well as almost all the Muslims I knew then and know now. I imagine it's a bit like how Catholics used to all celebrate the mass in Latin before Vatican II.

quisquose wrote:Can I get a paper which allows me to have proper sex inside of being married?

Become a muslim and you can!!

Someone I know (but won't name) had a relationship with a married muslim man and had to have the "orfy" so that he could "legally" spend the night with her.

Whole different world, I tell you... We have a term for all the goings on: "Middle-Eastenders".

My advice (for what it is worth):

You are on the right track, but don't get caught up in minutiae. Minutiae are the natural battlegrounds of the apologist. Much like how the lawyer with a guilty client will focus upon technicalities, the apologist will try and draw you off into irrelevant squabbles.

As far as Islam goes, there are two fundamental assertions that it makes:

1. There is a God, but only one God.

2. Muhammad was His Prophet.

Pretty much the whole rest of Islam flows from these two premises in a manner - IMHO - much more logical than anything Christianity has to offer. It is therefore these two premises that must be attacked.

Personally, I've always thought the second was the easier avenue of attack. If God can reveal the truth to human beings, then why does He not reveal the truth to all human beings? Why just tell one bloke, then the rest of us just have to have "faith"?

Clearly He could, if He wanted to. Everyone could get a visit from an Archangel. This would seem the logical course of a deity who wanted His existence and wishes to be made known.

So why does God not do this thing that would remove all doubt as to the true faith; this thing that is well within His purported capabilities?

Free will?

It didn't interfere with Mo's free will, did it?

Worthiness?

If Mo was the greatest guy evah, then how much greater the need of the rest of us for a visit from Gabriel (or Michael, or ... Frank or whatever).

The idea of prophets does not stand up to any kind of scrutiny.

Nicko wrote:

If Mo was the greatest guy evah

I spat out some tea!!


I like the rest of your argument as well! Thanks for the advice!

The two angles I'd take are either:

(1) Highlighting all the religious fascist killings being done every day in the name of this religion, and keep pressing the point. No excuse is going to bring those people back. How can god sit there are and doing nothing while all of it is being done in his name? I mean, humans are pretty quick to sue for libel for even the most trivial of things, why would the overly sensitive Allah not react 100x worse when bad things are done in his name?

(2) Mocking these beliefs whenever they are brought up - However not an option if you are the one making a deal out of this. It is an effective way of dealing with overly religious or political types who use every opportunity to annoy everyone with their beliefs.

I agree with the reasoning above suggesting that objecting to any religion by picking a few lines of scripture to prove it's not totally consistent is not the most convincing approach. You may get stuck in a loop of trivial details. Saying that I have a link in my signature to a video doing something similar, but it ties in with point (2).

If, after all these conversations with her (or as she gets older and matures), she decides to de-convert or have second thoughts, she could find herself in a very different and dangerous world of continuous internal rationality and outward deceit. All it would take is one slip of the tongue.

I think you are doing a very risky thing, this person by the sounds of it is very willing to follow advice from a sheikh in fact seeks her opinions from one. If she doesn't play this game well such as not telling the sheikh that these are queries from a seeker, and tells it how it is this could get out of hand very quickly.
I do suspect she is in 'moderate' company though, the situation you describe with her boyfriend and just the fact she will talk with you, this moderation will not extend to attempts to 'force' a believer into apostasy.
Any kind of electronic communication like this extremely risky, and person to person will have other kinds of risks for the both of you.
Your best approach, if you wish to proceed with this, is to take the point of getting her to convince you of the veracity and the reasons to convert. Your defense becomes you are a seeker, and hers she is trying to convert you.
I found when I was religious that the most challenging thing to me was attempting to convert others as it caused me to question things myself.

cg399 wrote:Hi all,

I'm British and live in Egypt. I sit next to another european who is a female in her early twenties who recently converted to Islam after (in my opinion) being brainwashed by a combination of people. Whilst it is technically not allowed to "insult" (read question) Islam in this country, we have agreed to have a conversation and ask each other questions and we will not divulge each others identities.

I though it would be interesting to post an anonymised version of our debate here. Also, I would be delighted to get any suggestions/help on possible angles and responses.

Please be careful, not worth the risk unless u fancy her. Cant think of a good reason why u are bothered about this girl in Egypt where u are not in a good position.
U should do some safety checks first.What is her opinion on other religious people, christians, jews, and hindus (polytheists), tribals, buddhists(no creator god), taoism etc. Do they not find miracles in their belief, are they wrong. Anyone who cannot be sympathetic to others religious beliefs while being one themselves and cannot respect an agnostic position is dangerous in such countries. Get them to the first 2 bases. Have sympathy with different sects in ones own religion and respect for the right of others belief and then agnosticism.Be careful

cg399 wrote:She then got back with the old boyfriend (whose attitudes haven't changed) but only once he agreed to an "orfy" (basically a paper which allows muslims to have sex outside of being properly married without sinning.

As an aside, these "orfy"s appear to give the lie to the Sunni claim that only the Shia allow temporary marriages.

I'm going to go with Kiore, Theropod and Cavarka on this one. Even if she doesn't feel the need to teach you a lesson by selling you out, but instead, her 'mentor' figures out on her his own the questions she's asking are questioning the very core of Islam not only you but she as well is at risk.

edit for clarity