Reddit comments from July 2025

Pretty cool that you're a mod here now.

Unfortunately Farid is not equipped to engage with either the current state of academia or Yasir Qadhi. There are critiques that can be made of HCM at various levels, in the same way that HCM critiques the traditional hadith sciences. However I think most of this is just lost in the controversy.

I don't think Qadhi's interview was detailed enough for us to evaluate his thinking other than that he thinks these are two separate spheres of thinking (which is true in some respect but fundamentally they are both seeking to critique each other).

I would like to see a more sophisticated discussion. Unfortunately, Qadhi's position as a traditional Islamic scholar means that when he makes these short offhand statements they become an entire news cycle in and of themselves. I wish he would pick up on that and stop doing it, and focus instead on having these academic discussions in print or at length.

There's not enough literature on this especially not with examples or case studies. It's something I intend to work on. There's some brief overviews on my Reddit page.

Just send me a direct message I'll link you

Robert Irwin's book is entitled "For Lust of Knowing", not Knowledge. Typo.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MuslimAcademics/s/dbczm9yE1h

Humanity is cooked

Did you just spoil the ending 😭

When is the update? 😅

This is a one-dimensional way to interpret the hadith that seems to be barren of knowledge of the traditional sciences such as balagha. There's no need to take this hadith to mean that the Prophet was going to execute by fire people who missed one prayer in congregation. Firstly, the hadith says burn their houses - so even if taken literally it says nothing of immolation. Secondly, this is clearly a kind of mubālagha (hyperbole) intended to emphasize the importance of these prayers in the masjid to one's faith.

The problem with these rationalistic interpretations of hadith is they're not based on some systemic reasoning. It's literally just conjecture. It's not clear to me why this conjecture is superior to me than the traditional analysis of the muhadithun, that look at hadith grading, Arabic, reconciliation with the Quran, reconciliation with other hadith, empirical facts, and a wide variety of other tools.

It seems to me the author just did not have access to Fat'h al-Bari or Umdat al-Qari.

If Muslims since at least the 4th century had a fabricated narration which commanded them to burn people's houses down literally for not attending the prayer where are the historical incidents of people doing so?

Your description of prophetic gentleness is two dimensional. Was the prophet similarly gentle when raiding caravans or during war? We're not talking about a romanticization of Jesus. RasulAllah was a military general in addition to a messenger who himself participated in combat.

Mubalagha is a tool of balagha and exists in English literature, it's called hyperbole. The fact that you're not even using the tools of linguistic or literary analysis (as Patricia Crone championed if you don't want to take traditionalist scholars) is concerning. Your edifice of "logical" analysis of narrations for historicity is entirely arbitrary.

There's nothing problematic about this hadith. You have not yet even articulated a system which could problematize any hadith. If you want to throw traditionalist usul al-dalil out of the window at least clearly articulate a rival method by which an academic can evaluate your criticisms. Otherwise you're just shooting from the hip.

1. I didn't shift the goal posts. I provided an obvious stress test to your theory that this hadith is a fabrication because it literally requires Sunnis to burn down people's houses. Since that's your thesis, please substantiate it with…

1. I quote your previous comment, If the hadith had been fabricated as a *command attributed to the Prophet (which it was)*, the fact that traditional scholars later justified it as an exaggeration or a wish shows they themselves could not…

Some people cope with the fact that phenomenal philosophies cannot account for the existence of anything but their own mind by throwing their hands up in the air, saying a solution is irrelevant, and taking a nihilistic/absurdist attitude.

The materialist philosophies underpinning modern civilization are incapable of accounting for simple things like the existence of other people but, if this world is real, is destroying the planet and making it uninhabitable through climate change. Seems pre-modern civilizations knew where to stop.

Probabalistically speaking it is more likely for a random system to produce one complex brain than for it to produce two. If we assume that the cosmos is a totally random system, then the probablistic that it produces one sentient brain is higher than two. The more brains you add, the less probabalistically likely it is.

The simplest explanation is one intelligent brain hallucinating the rest of the world and imagining more complexity than there actually is. This is called the Boltzmann brain problem.

No there are rational arguments for God, and theists argue that God is axiomatic - meaning he has to be disproven. This isn't a God of the gaps argument, I think you need to go back, read Decartes & look into Boltzmann brain

You tether objective reality to the noumenon instead of the phenomenon and no longer need material proof that other things beside you mind exist.

You are the bottom half of this meme and it went over your head

You have blind faith in the existence of other humans minds and the entire world outside of your head without any evidence to justify it

Is this philosophy memes or 6th grade memes

Go back to the meme and look at the failure of materialism to even justify the existence of your hamster sir

I don't think there's a need for the argument from dependency or Plantinga's ontological argument. If we try to operate from a place where God doesn't exist, we just fall into a radical skeptic, solipsistic, Boltzmann brain outlook from which no other philosophy can be justified. Hence, this post.

Hard materialism suggests that the cosmos is nonsentient and all developments are the occurrence of random natural processes.

This isn't a God of the gaps meme you are just unfamiliar with basic epistemology, go back and read Decartes

How do you prove that your hamster exists

You cannot prove that other minds exist outside of your own from a materialist perspective

Please explain to me how a materialist can prove his hamster is not a hallucination

How do you prove that your senses and measurement are objectively reliable and not just hallucinations?

That's called blind faith. How do you justify this faith?

Boltzmann brain is indeed arguing from a materialistic perspective, it's just a more rational one.

Because you're relying on the noumenon so you are no longer tied to phenomenal proofs

That may be the case but I don't see what that has to do with my argument here

Hard materialists argue the cosmos is the product of random processes

https://arxiv.org/html/2507.10959v1

Then you choose to have blind faith in materialism despite good probabilistic evidence to the contrary (Boltzmann brain). Any subsequent philosophical inquiry is therefore on unjustified grounds

If you concede that there is a noumenon then you are not reliant on the material phenomenon for evidence. Since we agree that materialism cannot prove the existence of other minds, we need a transcendental anchor outside of the phenomenon that can say, "Yes, other minds exist."

I am not a solipsist. The appearance of others that behave like you does not prove their objective existence only your experience of them.

What does this have to do with the Boltzmann brain problem and solipsism?

They could be fallible, we have many examples of people whose senses fail them or give them inaccurate understandings of reality (abnormal psych, hallucinogens). If you can admit other people's senses and logic are fallible, then yours are as well.

This is how Decartes went from cogito ergo sum to the evil demon thought experiment...

You don't access the noumenon in a material fashion. That's what makes it the noumenon, the immateriality of it.

I was arguing against hard materialists in the meme

You have no evidence that the world you think you are engaging with is in fact even a world therefore you are choosing to believe in it without evidence.

It's a simple proof. If cosmos is random, then randomly producing one highly ordered complex thing is more likely than randomly producing two of them.

Besides attempts to demonstrate that radical skepticism and solipsism are self defeating there are no compelling responses from materialist philosophers on these points, especially not the Boltzmann brain problem. If you know of some feel free to share.

This is called blind faith

I'm well aware it's a thought experiment but clearly you haven't looked at it at all because it is taken as a serious possibility by some theoretical physicists and there are a few who acknowledge that some Boltzmann brains must theoretically exist.

You just described blind faith and then totally strawmanned Boltzmann brain by describing a more complex system and rendering it more probabalistic somehow.

So if you can't prove that the hamster exists how do we know anything exists?

Let me know if you need assistance signing up for a library card

If what you're seeking out of doing things the halal way is a good marriage then that will be your reward if you get it. If what you are seeking is Allah's pleasure, then that's what you will get. Many haram couples are happy and many halal ones are not. Marital satisfaction has a lot of components to it. We shouldn't be doing things the halal way to try to make a bargain with Allah for worldly happiness, we should be doing things the halal way because of our relationship with Allah - regardless of how things turn out.

May Allah heal your heart akhi. This is the sad unfortunate reality.

Here is some research I pulled together from Perplexity:

"Based on demographic calculations and distributions, out of approximately 4.5 million Muslims in the United States:

2,475,000 are men.

420,000 are aged between 25 and 35.

147,000 are unmarried.

20,600 earn over $100,000 annually.

12,400 are above 5'8".

7,440 are not obese.

When combining all these factors, the estimated number of unmarried, religious Muslim men aged 25-35 in the U.S., earning over $100k, above 5'8", and not obese is around 13,500.

From this group:

Approximately 2,025 would be considered highly attractive (rated 7+ out of 10), based on typical facial attractiveness distributions.

Of these, about 1,150 have abstained from premarital intercourse, based on reported abstinence rates (~57%).

Final Estimate:

There are approximately 1,150 highly attractive, unmarried, religious Muslim men aged 25-35 in the United States who earn over $100,000 annually, are taller than 5'8", not obese, and have not engaged in premarital intercourse.

This population represents an exceptionally small and selective segment within the overall U.S. Muslim demographic."

If you adjust the height, age, facial attractiveness, physique, income, adjust for personality traits, hygiene habits, physical location, or ethnic origin - you will quickly drop to three digits.

Religiosity was a factor in the research & statistics calculations as indicated in the post.

Yes this is the issue. We don't have reliable statistics across various levels of religiousity.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2011/08/30/section-1-a-demographic-portrait-of-muslim-americans/?utm_source=perplexityhttps://www.cato.org/blog/muslim-assimilation-demographic-education-income-opinions-violence?utm_source=perplexity
https://ispu.org/muslim-families/?utm_source=perplexity
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5269531/?utm_source=perplexity
https://www.statista.com/topics/13415/muslims-in-the-united-states/?utm_source=perplexity
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/muslim-population-by-state?utm_source=perplexity

There's another 20 citations

The fact that people in 2025 don't know how to use research tools is concerning. It took about 5 minutes to pull this together.

It's very low as well yes

I don't understand this comment

Yes definitely. People who are reasonable have more reasonable outcomes for sure. It's a fabricated problem.

Yes definitely. People who are reasonable have more reasonable outcomes for sure. It's a fabricated problem.

I'm the same age akhi and the pain is immense but we should try to have hope in Allah.

Allah did not compel the people to disobedience rather He commanded us to obey. It's not good to attribute people's evil to Allah.

Even many women who are properly modest have severe deficiencies.

If you're happy alhamdulillah akhi.

There seems to be less subjectivity with respect to female preferences than male preferences. Women overall tend to find the same physical and personality features attractive. It's not monolithic but there's definitely a lot of research about that.

Religious is more subjective generally but in Islam we have a pretty good idea of the basics.

There's been quite a bit of research on male versus female pickiness that demonstrates men have much more distributed preferences. Social media is making women pickier but that doesn't seem to be true of all men. SOME men are becoming much pickier but that's due to, again, the internet allowing a larger pool of women to cloister around a smaller competitive group of men.

The internet isn't affecting male pickiness as much as it is affecting manliness. Men are playing video games and watching p*rn instead of working towards real accomplishments and getting married. It's two different problems that are not equivalent but that are interrelated.

The male issue: video games + p*rn

The female issue: social media + romance novels

This comment has aged so badly

Have you heard of Jeffrey Epstein?