Reddit comments from March 2025

Modern science has gone too far and is detrimental. Never before has humanity faced multiple existential threats (nuclear war, climate disaster, mass infertility). In the span of less than 200 years, modern science & technology have unleashed the horrors of modern warfare, created an international mental health epidemic, and is threatening the entire existence of the human race.

While this view that Ash'arism and Ghazali somehow killed science is childishly reductive, the bigger issue is assigning some kind of moral value to progress in these fields. From a consequentialist egalitarian perspective, advancements in STEM have been a mass net negative to the human race.

This has to be the most absurd criticism of ridda laws I've ever read. It reads like a superficial popular liberal take. There's not even an attempt to engage with Islamic source texts. It also demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of secular governance or treason laws. In the US we just had huge treason trials over January 6th, and people are even given death sentences over it. This is borderline pseudo intellectual

Someone tagged me here so I'm commenting to remind myself to respond later.

I'll respond more fully later although I agree Muslims made many epistemological assumptions in their study of history. At times, they made more than modern Western academics, at times less. The question isn't really who makes more assumptions, but it should be - whose assumptions or biases are more justified.

It's not possible to fully justify your entire methodology because of some of the problems radical skepticism presents. That being said, there are some really glaring problems underlying the HCM that should be addressed.

I will delineate some of these when I get up later.

>In my engagement with critiques of Western academia, one recurring argument I have encountered is that the methodological assumptions underpinning Western historiography are deeply flawed. Specifically, many critiques suggest that these…

>In contrast, classical Muslim historians(according to the claims I've encountered) adhered to an empirical methodology, prioritizing transmission integrity and rigorous source criticism over speculative reconstruction. This is completely…

This comment is a really good example of why someone who is within the paradigm and assumption stack of the Western intellectual tradition today would be convinced that HCM is a more objective and unbiased approach than traditional Islamic…

u/chonkshonk

>I am not a radical skeptic (nor is that part of the HCM).

That wasn't my point. My point is that the intellectual traditional of radical skepticism poses problems to all forms of positive knowledge. The radical skeptics have presented some issues that are difficult if not impossible to solve. Decartes attempts to deal with it by proposing cognition as a fundamental truth, Ghazali proposes God, etc.

HCM is not based on radical skepticism.

Pyyrho, Sanches, Hume, Gillian Russell, are examples of radical skeptics. Russell for example proposes logical nihilism, that the rules of logic are baseless and cannot be proven. In fact, there are some provable flaws or glirches in modal and even classical logic. Bertrand Russell's paradox is a famous example.

I'm willing to polish up what I have of the manuscript and send it to you so you can start reading the arguments the sources. But, the great thing is that I don't actually need to present a book to present the argument. It's a negative…

PART 2 4. Empiricism (epistemology) Empiricism assumes that true knowledge can only be derived from direct human experiencd/the senses. Extended to history, the HCM presupposes an empirical approach. The meaning or authenticity of texts is…

PART 3 7. The materialist theory of religion (anthropology) Following on from Hegelian dialectic and the West's materialist turn, HCM presupposes the "materialist theory of religion", a mode of religious intepretation studied in academic…

Since you are an advocate of the HCM the onus of proof falls on you to justify it's myriad assumptions. That being said, the book length discussion is laying all of this intellectual background in one place so the reader doesn't have to read 20 different books and demonstrating where these assumptions are operant in academic works and how they lead to unjustified conclusions. That's not easy. I am willing to let anyone take a look at my arguments. Your characterization here and subtle mod threats to delete my comments are not appreciated.

>Currently, I am reading Talal Asad’s Formation of the Secular, and one thing that has become increasingly clear to me is that many of the assumptions I once took for granted within my own (admittedly limited) epistemological framework are,…

I'll respond to this more fully later but can you please ping me in a few days or next week to get the manuscript to you? I'm going to clean it up a bit. It's obviously very far from complete but it would be good if you looked at it.

It does have a clear definition. The problem is that the entire concept of religion stems from a very WASP perspective and doesn't make sense when superimposed onto other traditions. For Protestantism, religion being a section of life primarily concerned with abstract questions of faith and text made sense. For other cultures, their theological beliefs were more closely integrated with physical acts of worship, ritual, and daily life. Asking other ways of life to segment "religion" the way Protestants have and can is essentially asking them to change their way of life to accomodate this Protestant outlook, which became known as "secularism."

Most other ways of life never had a clean distinction between religion and secular, so creating this divide is a superimposition. Arguably, it just means forcing people to accept a different flavor of another religion called secularism - Hindu secularism, Jewish secularism, Islamic secularism - as opposed to Protestant secularism. But the core beliefs are the same.

Some worldviews are much more compatible with being integrated into the secular religion than others.

I don't agree with this at all. Everyone is doing general and applied philosophy. Some people are just doing it really poorly.

I think you have an idea of a philosopher as being some nerd living in a library paralyzed by impractical questions when really the most successful philosophers are agents in the real world and the consequences of their philosophies are ginormous. Usually the most impactful people in history are pushing a philosophy if not outright at least an expert in their own philosophy.

Most philosophers come to conclusions and then act on those conclusions to test their theories in the real world. Only university academics spend all their time guessing about what's true without testing it.

Where does this claim even originate from? I've never seen a traditional source that claims all of his battles were defensive. Even in the Quran, offensive warfare is discussed. He conquered Mecca. There's no such thing as a "defensive" conquest. It's strange to me.

Where is it proven that the development of Jewish theology was a linear progression from henotheism to monotheism? Isn't it possible that there were different groups with different views that alternated back and forth? This seems a bit reductive and linear considering how old Judaism actually is.

Please provide some reference to establish scholarly consensus

The abstract literally contradicts what you said. "Other scholars who reject this evolutionary paradigm tend to assume passages evincing divine plurality actually speak of human beings, or that the other gods are merely idols. This view…

That's not what I'm talking about. I believe most prominent world actors have a philosophy they're trying to bring about

Yes. There isn't a consensus on climate change because there are tons of climate change deniers including in the scientific community and big oil corporations spend millions of dollars a year to publish reports that disprove it. Consensus means:

"'Consensus' refers to a general agreement or shared opinion among a group of people. It signifies a state where everyone in the group, or at least a large majority, agrees on a particular matter or decision."

There is a consensus Elvis died although there is a very fringe group of deniers. Climate change I can present to you respected academics and scientists that don't believe it's caused by greenhouse gas emissions (although this take is silly).

What you’re referring to is a predominant or preponderant or majority view.

Saying another deity is a demon is denying that it's a competing god. Demons and angels are typically viewed as being created by gods. If a person says, "Don't worship Baal because he's a demon" that isn't polytheism or henotheism, he just believes Baal is a real supernatural entity that is worshipped but doesn't deserved to be worshipped because... he isn't God with a capital "G." Many current day monotheists believe that there are evil powerful supernatural entities who people worship that are real but not the true God.

I don't know how you're trying to prove that monotheism didn't exist until the 4th century when there are Jewish and Christian texts that predate it which are clearly monotheistic, let alone from other civilizations. There were definitely…

I think we agree at this point. A few straddling dissenters or people whose opinion is illegitimate anyways don't violate consensus. I think you're right on climate change being a consensus within the scientific community.

However I think this demonstrates that Jews going from polytheism/henotheism to monotheism is not a settled issue of consensus.

What I described is still a strict monotheistic outlook. Strict monotheists believe in powerful supernatural entities that God created who are also worshipped.

I think your definition of strict monotheism is lacking. Almost all monotheists also believe in the existence of entities who are real and worshipped illegitimately instead of God, whether they be seen or unseen. You can take the most hardline Salafi and he will agree that some people worship Shaytan, an unseen powerful supernatural being. That isn't at odds with the strictest definition of monotheism.

Jews saying, "Baal is real but he is just a powerful demon so do not worship Him" is not saying "Baal is real, he is a god like the supreme God, but he is of lesser stature therefore worship YHWH." The first is monotheism, the second is henotheism.

If someone said that there is such a creature who wanted to be worshipped as Zeus but was just some subordinate supernatural entity I don't see how that would violate strict monotheism.

I don't know what sect ascribes to what you're describing. Naturalist deists? Islam is generally seen as a strict monotheistic religion and it doesn't cohere with what you're describing.

I don't even know what you're trying to communicate

I don't understand the imperative of calling something apologetic when there are citations. It would be better to deal with the argument which is that belief in a designer God and some kind of primitive monotheism is a phenomenon of human…

You're turning philosophy into what nerds do in universities. Philosophy is trying to answer: what is truth? Can we know truth? Does truth exist?

A lot of people have answers to this and their answers play out on a grand scale.

Dark enlightenment philosophers like Nick Land have an answer. Xi Jinping believes in a sinocized modern socialism which he is working to bring about. Bernie Sanders has a different philosophy he is trying to enact. All of these have firm beliefs about metaphysics, epistemology, and ontology that they're testing on a world scale - even if they don't use technical terminology.

Almost all modernist historians subscribe to some kind of a Whig Historiography versus a declinist historiography. There are some notable exceptions like Primitivists that believe humans have "progressed" too far to our own detriment, but generally speaking almost all modern Western historians agree with Hegel's thesis that we are moving gradually toward a more ideal state of freedom. I think recently that's been shaken and a lot of people are looking back at things like The Last Man by Fukuyama with renewed skepticism.

A lot of it stems from a belief that intelligence is primarily quantified in a phenomenal way (STEM, business, linguistic, logical) and that noumenal intelligence is subordinate or not real (spiritual, ethical, creative, abstract). Since we have the most sophisticated phenomenal civilization ever, most historians I have seen presume that means we have the most sophisticated civilization ever period.

Some like Wael Hallaq recognize the importance of noumenal intelligence and consider past civilizations that had that in much greater abundance to be more sophisticated than our current civilization.

Obviously no historian believes history is an exactly linear march but I can't find any prominent one that's saying, "society peaked before the industrial revolution" like philosophical primitivists say.

If you know of any please recommend them to me.

The Quran delineates how to establish treaties with nonviolent states but also under what terms those treaties expire. It's clear that the Quran itself has an expansionist attitude saying that people should be fought until the "Din of Allah" is made highest, with exceptions carved out for "People of the Book."

Baqarah 193 and many similar such verses

Thanks for the recommendation

Can we really call Yasir Qadhi an academic? He has the credentials but I don't know what he's ever published in Western academia besides his PhD thesis. I know he's working on a book about Salafism from a more academic lens. It would seem to me YQ is mostly a traditional Muslim scholar with some revisionist tendencies and an academic training as well, but who isn't really involved in academia?

EDIT: u/chonkshonk did refer us to several published works by YQ of an academic nature.

Yeah it was a chapter in an edited collection. That's the only one I know of that's actually been published.

Thank you, this is what I was looking for.

If the Quran came about in a world where Judaism and Christianity weren't predominant... it probably wouldn't discuss Judaism and Christianity in so much detail? The scenario makes no sense? If Buddhism and Hinduism were the popular religions on the Arabian peninsula, then most likely the Quranic author wouldn't ignore those and discuss other irrelevant religions.

I think Muslims would interpret the Quran as having succeeded in its objectives in such a scenario and have refuted Christianity and Judaism so devastatingly that only Islam remained.

Are there any grammatical or syntactical similarities in the original languages?

Thanks for this insight

What makes people believe that the author of the Quran was setting out to accurately describe the shape of the earth in the first place? I don't really understand why so much ink has been spilled on this issue. Why are we assuming the Quranic description of cosmology are supposed to be scientifically accurate as opposed to common literary tropes? Can someone explain this to me?

I think the negative consequences could have been greater than just the Meccans but it's very hard to speculate.

I don't think it's possible to tell that based on the evidence. We can argue how it describes the earth but i think it's too speculative to go farther than that

I don't know how we could possibly answer this question.

Have this problem on firefox

Are you doing better now?

So, under capitalism, we can change the economic model every 4 years? When has this ever happened?

Most ulama allowed asking Allah by the station of the Prophet. What is not allowed is asking the Prophet directly or asking the prophet to make dua for you.

You're speaking about tawassul not regular du'a.

thank you

I normally get a few thousand views. Suddenly I am getting less than a 100. It was like a switch was flipped.

It's about 10% for me. Starting to wonder if I'm shadowbanned for some reason

It happened to me yesterday. It was an overnight change.

Makes me want to jump to another platform

Same thing happened to me although my page is much smaller

Anyone notice their insights/analytics page always has a flat or inaccurate views chart?

On March 13th my views dropped 90% and it hasn't recovered. Has to be something on Meta's side

Show last week please

All of these Ayat refer to someone who sees the truth, understands that it is true, then choses to either to hide that (kufr) or pretend that they accept but rebel internally (nifaq). Such people Allāh ﷻ abandons to their own spiritual circumstance, to delve deeper into the illness that they chose. However, it is still a choice. Allāh ﷻ is not compelling them from this nor closing the gates of forgiveness. However, when a person knows the truth but tries to cheat Allāh ﷻ, Allāh ﷻ will not compel that person to faith and instead leaves them to their own devices.

El Prophet - France, prison

Logic is not empirical but much of historical analysis has to do with reconciling data using logic.

There is no such thing called being unbiased. Everyone has their biases and assumptions. Some biases and assumptions are thoroughly reasoned and robust. Others are demonstrably false. A Muslim academic would have a thoroughly reasoned Islamic epistemology, not an "unbiased neutral" one which is just a myth secularists unknowingly push (and which subsumes all other epistemologies under secularism under those false pretenses).

Good post

Epistemology is a framework and a system. There is no such thing as a neutral or unbiased system.

Seeking a neutral epistemology is like asking for a building that reaches as high as possible with no levels to it. You don't want the visitor to have to climb any levels to get to the top. It doesn't make sense. By definition, buildings are levels atop one another. By definition, a methodology or epistemology are layers of assumptions on top of each other. Some assumptions you can prove, others you can't.

The important thing is to be epistemologically /robust/ and be willing to question, critique, analyze, debate your assumptions - not to have no assumptions. Every claim of neutrality is a lie.

You don't have to ask...

I'll think about it.

Isn't it very obvious that religious exclusivity was established some time during the life of the Prophet because of the Qur'an's clear verses on this topic?

Al-Bayyinah 98:6

إِنَّ ٱلَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ مِنۡ أَهۡلِ ٱلۡكِتَٰبِ وَٱلۡمُشۡرِكِينَ فِي نَارِ جَهَنَّمَ خَٰلِدِينَ فِيهَآۚ أُوْلَٰٓئِكَ هُمۡ شَرُّ ٱلۡبَرِيَّةِ

Indeed, they who disbelieved among the People of the Scripture and the polytheists will be in the fire of Hell, abiding eternally therein. Those are the worst of creatures.

The Qur'an spends a very significant amount of time reproaching Jews and Christians. It's our primary source for the life and community of Muhammad ﷺ himself.

Early on there was no Muslim society for there to be a sociological conception of Islam. When there was a Muslim polity, it only made sense that Muslims were distinguished. All groups have in-group and out-group bias, this is an observed sociological phenomenon.

I don't see how this theory is plausible unless you consider these Quranic verses ahistorical.

It's worth noting that traditional Islamic scholarship still holds to this day that Jews & Christians who don't know about Muhammad ﷺ are candidates for salvation.

That's possible as well just looking at the Quran. Regardless the interpretation above is the most farfetched of many possible interpretations.

The Quran clearly critiques the Jews and the Christians extensively, calling trinitarianism polytheism and accusing the Jews of worshipping Uzayr. It also describes many dialogues the Prophet had with the people of the Book and repudiated them for their stances towards him. This reading requires quite a lot of mental gymnastics if we look at the Quran.

I don't see how you reconcile this interpretation with what we know of the Prophet's battles against the Jews and Tabuk. Not only does this require you to superimpose a modern conceptualization of religion onto the Quran and then claim that there was no distinction because it doesn't conform to what you think the distinction should look like, but the various maghazi also make no sense in this regard.

How do you deal with, "The Din in Allah's sight is Islam" and the various Ayat that mention if someone prefers another Din they will be punished?

I also don't see how this makes sense at all sociologically and why you can't find any sect that adopted such an understanding throughout history.

This is so bad. These arguments are not good at all. These should not be used.

Pushing back is much appreciated as it opens the door for greater understanding and improvement. > I find myself questioning the alternatives, since at the end of the day, every methodology is going to rely on some set of flawed axioms…

> I have come across quite a few academics who are transparent about the philosophical underpinnings of the HCM. Within critical theory, for instance, there are serious discussions about the biases and epistemic limitations of Western…

The earliest extant sources seem to be the Qur'an itself, Maghazi of Musa ibn Uqba (contemporaneous with ibn Is'haq, about 60 years after prophet's death), and Tarikh ibn Abi Shaybah (MS Berlin 9409). We can situate these within the first 100 years of the death of the Prophet, the Quran coming from him directly. Coupled with hadith literature and contemporaneous reports from non-Muslim sources, we can construct a pretty accurate view of the Prophet's life.

The questions we should ask about ibn Is'haq, ibn Hisham, and Tabari should first be: do they contradict some earlier source? If not, then do we have any idea of their source (such as a sanad)? If it isn't a contradiction and has a source, then is there a clear motive for it such as embellishment? If there also isn't a clear motive, is it a detail that fundamentally changes how we see the Sira without recourse to some other evidence? If not then I don't think it's harmful to consider those pieces of Sira in light of other factors.

What's being discussed here is New Historicism. Since the Quran was thought of as literature or a historical document by orientalists like Patricia Crone, they had to choose a literary theory by which to analyze it.

"New Historicism, a form of literary theory which aims to understand intellectual history through literature and literature through its cultural context, follows the 1950s field of history of ideas and refers to itself as a form of cultural poetics."

New Historicists see the text as being a product and a reflection of it's cultural context rather than shaping it. This is contrasted with other literary theories that seek to isolate the text from it's context or focus more on the text's impact.

Without tying choice of literary analysis or explaining why we're treating the Quran as literature in the first place, the decision is totally arbitrary. I would assume historians would take a New Historical approach because it is most in line with what they are trying to accomplish.

Ibn Abbas famously held that mut'ah wasn't abrogated. What's the point?

Mutah also isn't prohibited in the Quran. There's a concept called ijma. If ijma isn't accepted why aren't temporary marriages allowed?

Why isn't mut'ah allowed if we are doing ijtihad at this level?

At least you're consistent although I think this is ridiculous. Mut'ah is clearly unethical and wrong, to be able to have a temporary marriage. It would be possible for a modern sex worker to essentially have a temporary marriage every week…

Yes he was mistaken but point is there isn't an explicit Quranic text on it

I don't think it's possible to reconcile the two if you understand Islamic epistemology and you understand the HCM.

This demonstrates a lack of understanding about why the conclusions of HCM & the tradition are largely incompatible because of the different assumptions each methodology makes. You cannot go on a conclusion by conclusion basis and try to compare the evidences from both sides because the ways the conclusions are arrived at are mutually exclusive.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MuslimAcademics/s/VidUqVnnzH

At what point isn't it just a low intensity gender war? I don't feel any sort of community, fellowship, or fraternity among Muslims anymore. It seems to me that the way we have set up marriage and are living our lives in the West makes us literally hate each other. How do we fix this?

If a sister did this to me I would allow her to look through everything she wanted on my phone for as long as she wants. Let her find absolutely nothing wrong or haram alhamdulillah. Then after she's done I would end the meeting and tell her I'm not interested in seeing her again. This just screams "major insecurity and possessiveness" problems. I'm good, don't need that in my life.

The kind of men that don't look at haram would find this so insulting.

Typical zionist hogwash

This is how most societies were structured before the industrial revolution and capitalism/socialism. It stems from a bottom-up social order. It wasn't until modern technology allowed governments to institute top-down social orders that a Federal or national government could have so much granular economic control.

Joon is far superior

Nasime is unbelievable

Nasime
Oyster Oyster
Albi

We can agree to disagree, I stopped going to Shamshiry because I'd always rather go go Joon

What? That's a borderline fast food restaurant

I think the assumption is it's moving too fast to break in time

I remember asking my friends if all of our "blue" was the same in the 4th grade on the playground. True skeptics in the wild let me tell you

They're not doing real philosophy (metaphysics, epistemology, ontology). That's just fake math

∃x(Kx∧∀y(Ky→y=x)∧Bx)

This looks like I forgot to study for my calculus exam and I'm trying to confuse my teacher into partial credit

(Russell's theory of definite descriptions)

A blank slate can be written on. They could try to convince an innie they are someone else and give them a false history.

It also seems possible that some innies take over their outies as a kind of final perk. So I don't agree that innies are always disposable.

"Your outie likes figure skating"

Lumon is close enough to Mormonism for multiple wives to be a thing

They built up so much stock in each of these narratives only to fizzle all of them out. It made the entire season feel pointless. The only thing that matters is Mark and Gemma, it seems.

I don't think she's undercover, I think it's just poor writing. The entire argument between Mark and Cobel in the woods was poorly done. Mark had nothing tangible to say and Cobel wasn't advocating for herself, it was just Devon saying, "Mark we have to trust her!" And Mark saying no, meanwhile no one was explaining their logic.

They needed some way to convince Mark to work with Cobel and Devon became the plot tool to that end. The justifications that would have made it compelling probably didn't make it in time for the script or were overlooked.

All of the weird winks and smirks Devon was throwing Cobel like they were a girlboss unit were ridiculous. It was something I'd expect in a show of much lesser quality. Suddenly Devon is not only advocating for Cobel but she's doing it in this unserious way like, "don't worry we'll convince him to get us pizza tonight."

While this was a great episode I found the reveal of Cold Harbor and what they were testing underwhelming. So Lumon really is just trying to create a pain segmentation chip. So why did they need 25 innies to do that? I feel like some of the theories on this sub were actually more interesting.

Show writers already said they aren't doing cloning.

It comes down to too many things happening so the authors are trying to resolve them all simultaneously instead of each thing taking its time. These plot lines needed to be separated and taken more slowly. The Gemma and Cobel episodes were great for that. The ORTBO episode was great. I feel that if each character had their own full episode it would've been much better paced - even if that extended into next season. Ms. Huang, Milchek, heck even Devon & Ricken, all of them need their own 45 minutes.

Confirmed Gemma is a goat

Helly just gave a speech about fighting for their half a life... why wouldn't she be happy running off with Mark?

Brilliant. I think it's both

This makes no sense. Drummond was preparing a sacrificial lamb to bury with Gemma's body. Drummond told the doctor that he'd have to say goodbye to her. This guy is talking about all of the innies.

I don't see what other possible interpretation there is considering Cobel confirmed Gemma would die upon completing Cold Harbor.

This is the craziest thing I've read on this sub

Clearly Irv's severance is particularly weak. Not only does love break his barrier, but he is able to induce sleepy hallucinations in his innie. I think outie Irv had a vision of innie Irv being experimented on.

I am having this issue as well for the last two weeks

Did you try it?

Two terms

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you!

😂

Ameen wa iyyak

2 terms. I own a company now! Small software startup

Thank you

I can't remember the course that well but have you take the CompTIA certs? I remember it being very similar to those?