>>7128675No, not at all.
It's bullshit in the same way diviniation is bullshit. Consider Tarot card reading, it's a form of assisted thought. Of course shuffling up a deck of cards and laying them out in a pattern won't predict the future, but it does give you a lens through which you should think about things. It contextualizes your thoughts by forcing you to apply archetypes to them, more or less at random.
A similar thing applies to religious teachings, outside of the dogma and the rites. Today, they fail as strict rules and guides to how to live your life, but they help you examine the present in a decent way. And even when Islam was founded this approach was already being used. Islam is an adaptation of the Christian faith for a society that cannot support these practices and rites.
Consider why muslims do not eat pork. The scripture justifies it by saying that pigs are unclean, but once you think about the actual society Mohammed lived in you recognize that the pig was simply not an animal that could be used as livestock in these societies. And he recognized that and codified it as a religious law.
Why do muslims kill their animals in a specific way? Because if you remove all the blood from the animal, the corpse spoils less quickly.
Why are the women covered up? Because this type of attire is most practical in a arid and windy desert.
Why are musical instruments considered haram? Because you don't want to carry that shit around in the desert.
Islam is an extremely practically-minded religion. And that is why it was proliferated so quickly in the area. The teachings were not only imported by fire and sword, but they were incredibly useful.
This is the mistake all fundamentalists make, they do not recognize dogma. They do not bother to try finding the immutable core of the religion and instead take everything that is written as dogma. But religion doesn't work that way, it's like Tarot reading, you use these "laws" as baselines to examine the way you view the world and what you do in it.
