Much of what I am about to write is applicable, in broad terms, to every religion, so I hope that it will help others to find their way in whatever school of thought they are subscribing to.
When I first started to study Islam, I was doing so as a Christian who was truly interested in obtaining knowledge of the in's and out's of the religion in which a few of my friends entrust their faith to and to know what was true and what was not in all the rumours floating around and to be able to debate, with knowledge, anyone making statements of hate and claiming that the religion itself is responsible for extremist behaviour.
I took an online course which was, alhumdulillah, excellent. I learned many things and am still in intermittent contact with my teacher.
One of the wonderful resources open to us in this age is the internet. What many people fail to recognize is that the internet is not an infallible resource for knowledge. Even intelligent and well educated people seem to be susceptible to the condition of non-critical thinking. Cases in point: those dumb chain letters that go around and YouTube.
YouTube is full of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of videos by all sorts of yeehaws (I don't mean just southern rednecks, but all of the uneducated masses telling other people how to live their lives). These people are focusing on the minutae and bickering and trying to prove the other party wrong. This is not labour worthy of anyone calling themselves a true believer. But that is just my opinon, and Allah knows best.
There is one particular clip, in which some so-called Muslim man is 'debating' a priest and tries to make it look as if the priest is not knowledgeable of the bible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOGLu5nfCNc
When one references the verse, Jesus did, in fact, technically, say that, but actually in the context of a parable: in which the original speaker was a king, in the parable of the 10 Minas!
This misquoting of holy texts to try and make oneself look good, victorious etc. is patently not worthy behaviour of any believer and is a waste of everybody's time.
But it is, in fact, not these easily refutable yeehaws I am concerned about. No, the real threat is from those out there who speak 99% truth and then slip in something every once in a while which is not true, but in their own interests of promoting their own vision of how things should be.
Point in case: Dr. Zakir Naik. Someone I knew suggested I watch his videos because he is so knowlegable, yada yada yada. I watched some videos and however it seemed he had memorized much, if not all of the Qur'an and was apparently knowledgeable yet he was speaking in such a way that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. There was something wrong, but I couldn't pinpoint what it was.
Determined to have some argument to take back to the one who referred me, I watched many videos until I came to his lecture: Islam and women - modernizing or outdated? It was in his question and answer period where his own words betrayed him. In answering separate questions, he stated that women should not be leading prayer because it would be disturbing and distracting to the men and he stated that women could not be good leaders because it had been "medically proven" that women become disturbed during their menstrual cycles and are not mentally fit to lead.
!
Now, let us use our powers of reason for a moment here: by his own reasoning, any man seeing a woman is somehow disturbed whereas he claims that women are not capable of reason during their menstural cycle. Therefore it stands to reason that all men must be disturbed in the presence of a woman (theoretically every day) where as a woman would only be having problems for 5 days a month (oh, that theory is completely false, by the way... and unfortunately is perpetuated by a couple of women wishing to reduce their sentences for killing or harming someone by claiming they were menstruating at the time of the crime and therefore not accountable for their actions). You should also know some real scholars (the Dr. in Zakir Naik's title is due to the fact that he is a family physician: not an Islamic scholar) have issued fatwas against Zakir Naik. I highly recommend you read up on their reasons.
The Qur'an reminds the reader to exercise critical thinking. There are many reminders regarding the perils and pitfalls of following convention and cultural habits rather than correct and moral action.
Why are so many Muslims apparently 'automated' in their worship?
These sorts mentioned above are dangerous men (and I say men, because the disproportionate number of vocal people in Islam are and always have been men. (Just as in Christianity and Judaism) Why is it that whilst Aisha was considered a scholar in her time, and many men came to her for advice and she even led the prayer, and women have been for long excluded from the realm of scholarship and leadership with few exceptions? Why is it that there are no women who sing the call to prayer? There are no women singing in Islamic versions of 'eurosong' etc? This exclusion to the point of segregation makes no sense and has no basis in the Qur'an.
Even in the Mosques, technology has allowed many men to justify the complete shutting off of the women from the men. Instead of following the imam directly, the women can watch on a screen or hear what he is doing through the use of a microphone. Would it not just be simpler to implement the system used in the time of the prophet Mohammed (pbuh)?
There are thoughtful scholars out there, one just has to exercise a bit of sense in order to weed out the rif-raf from the real scholars. I can tell you who I listen to, but certainly do not listen to someone else's decisions on who to listen to and who to dismiss. God gave you a brain, so please use it!!!
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