I was born and raised in a Western country by North Africans, sunni muslim parents. When I was young in my perspective my parents were the voice of god, so when they say that something is prohibited I simply followed those instruction as I still wasn't able to acknowledge those rulesby myself. It wasn't that great as I was pretty alone in this duality of muslim/western guy. Yes there where other muslims in masjed where I was forced to go but still I took the priority to integrate in the western culture, whitout go against those rules my parents tought me. It was hard. So this thing went for pretty all my young age, nor I did bad things nor I was sure if god exists as I felt brainwashed.
But it came a time where I had to take my responsability and be an actor of my religios life, and so I started salat and lurking in muslim sites where I learned a lot of things. There were times where those things didn't go along with my morality and logic but in general I had faith, a blind one. So, as I said, when I was kid the others were christians and there wasn't a lot of debate, but then they became atheists and I started to feel the need to defend myself from their attacks. And I started to use logic as that is the only language that they would understand. That's the period where my faith was going to crumble the most.
I started to question reality and muslim countries. Why they aren't like the western countries? There is war, poverty and so on... Isn't islam the true religion? Why god would allow something like this? So I studied a little bit of history and lernead that it wasn't always that way.In fact when the west had its dark age muslim countries had their golden age, where they were curious about the world and started to do science and so on and so forth. But then something changed.
It may not be a single cause for this decline but rather multiple. They had the Mongol invasion, the spain reconquest and of course the witch-hunt of philosophers. After that we came to the last century and after the colony period they started to reject western culture and it's like the islam of today is only about that anti-western-culture ideology.
Then I discovered about hadith and obviously I rejected them as that would be a solution of the decline of islam. As a truth seeker I was hoping that rejecting hadith I would have reached a more pure version of islam but that wasn't the case. Even with quran only islam there are multiple views on many key aspects of this religion.
And I was so confused about that becasue I felt the need to find some authentic truth to finally start living seriously my life without any doubt.
So even with only quran there were debates of the meaning of single words. I really felt the truth go away another time. I started to feel that as a human being i'm not enough to fully understand the messange of god. I would spend years studying quran and I would not get to the same conclusion as others.
But with this thought it came a possibility. We are imperfect creature in an imperfect world. So even if the quran is perfect we would still read it and process with our mind and come to an imperfect understanding. But if I accept this I would get to a very wonderful conclusion. That I can interpret quran through my own ideology. I know it's sound like blasphemy but still it is an inevitable thing that all human beings conscious or unconscious do. So if there is some passage that don't get along with my human morality maybe there is an interpretation that would fit in. I know that this sounds like hypocrisy and means that there would be a lot versions of islam but that is exactly what this forum tought me. No one here, even through the purest form of islam has come to the same conclusions.
I mean there are quranist who think that there are 3 salat, other 5 and also who think that salat is not an actual ritual. And we would debate infinitely and never come to the same conclusion. The quran is not like math where we all would agree that 2+2 = 4, instead it explains a lot of complex things that our minds would process and inevitably come to different conclusions. Maybe and probably god expected this.
Why all this, why would I fit quran to my own "agenda"? Because of faith. It was pretty easy to reject hadith, but quran? If there are passages of quran that I can't get along my faith would crumble. I dont say that I will fit quran understanding to follow my basic human instinct and go with hookers or start drinking alchool etc. But there are things like homosexuality were I wouldn't accept that god create them to suffer. They also have the right to be happy. I will not judge them if they want to marry eachother, I'm a simple human being, I would not judge them because reading quran with my imprefect mind I get to the conclusion that homosexuality is a bad thing. I will not judge anyone in this world, I will not see with an air of superiority those who follow wrong religions because from their perspective they aren't. Maybe I would question their morality but not their beliefs.
So why I wrote all this? I'm seeking approval? Maybe. I would like to know if anyone think the same way I do and if there is an interpretation of quran that support this thesis.
I apologize for my bad English and please go easy with me, I'm at the beginning of my journey!
