posted
You said in another thread you were a "former Muslim".
I've studied (as a hobby mind you. I like Religion studies as a whole) Islam for a few years.
I am curious about your Islamic Background.
You claim to be a former Muslim? Sunni? Shia? or Wahabbist?
Were you Muslim per Arabic past or were you a convert?
This is what I learned from them. Please tell me if I am wrong.
the Muslims I have talked to believe that the Bible, including the Talmud, are distorted.
For instance Lot. Muslims believe Lot was a Prophet of God (along with Ishmael and Alexander the Great (two horned one), etc.) In the Talmud (Old Testament) it says that Lot got drunk and his two young daughters went in and "raped" him basically.
All the Muslims I talked to don't believe that is true because:
1. Prophets don't drink alcohol (they don't believe any prophet did including Muhammed despite the Sahih Bukhari, Muslim, etc. that talk about him drinking Nabidh)
2. Prophets can't be tempted to do anything evil by Satan because as the Quran says they are protected and infalliable.
Pretty much the Muslims I have talked to consider Jews and Christians to be "People of the Book". They believe that the Psalms of David were inspired. They believe that the Talmud WAS inspired, but they believe the scriptures are all corrupt now.
They believe only the Quran is the perfect unchanged scripture (despite missing verses and making God a poor storyteller, but that's another debate).
That's one of the first things you see a Muslim bring up if they've read up on Dr. Jamal Badawi or Ahmed Deedat. Deedat specifically calls the Bible "Pornographic".
Am I wrong? I've never been a Muslim (despite their claims we were ALL born muslim/submisers)
Also, what caused the "ex" status of your Muslim association?
Just wanting to get to know you better.
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posted
I was a Baha'i -- which is about as far from fundamentalist Islam as you can get while remaining Islamic, certainly far enough that Baha'is are still being killed in Iran just for being heretics. While the Baha'i philosophy is pretty darn liberal -- believing in progressive revelation and the metaphorical nature of religious texts pretty much guarantees this -- one of the side benefits is that it's easy to become familiar with "mainstream" Islam from a comfortable position on its fringes.
The "distortion" of the Bible is, indeed, part of the Islamic faith, although not perhaps in the way you might always expect; it's closer to the Mormon belief that the Bible, as the product of men, is incomplete and altered from its divinely inspired roots. The attitudes and behaviors of the prophets, too, are subjects of some discussion -- as well as the status of the prophets, as different sects actually disagree about who in the Bible can be called a prophet in the first place. (Note: on this point, Baha'is are rather stricter than some other Islamic sects.)
I left the Faith because, quite frankly, I woke up one day and, for a variety of reasons, no longer found God to be a credible character -- and, with that doubt in mind, re-examined the tenets of my chosen religion and found them pretty unlikely, too. *shrug* I still try to keep an open mind on the issue, but really I'm waiting for a bolt out of the blue of some kind.
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As a side note: Alexander the Great is NOT considered an Islamic prophet. This is a common misconception, even among some Muslims. The reference is to "Dhul Qarnain," and the two horns of the ram are, according to Daniel, the kings of Medea and Persia. (It's also worth noting that Dhul Qarnain is not universally revered as a prophet.) While this description is true of Alexander, it is ALSO true of Darius and Cyrus, founders of the Persian Empire and moderately devout Zoroastrians (a religion that is the direct predecessor of the Judeo-Christian tradition); Mohammed is also known to have been an admirer of Cyrus.
What confuses things, of course, is the presence of the whole "Gog and Magog" gate story, which of course is part of the famous Alexandrian legend; it's for this reason that medieval scholars almost univerally assumed that Alexander was the target of the reference. My own feeling on the matter was that Mohammed wanted to appropriate what he considered the best founding myths of Pan-Hellenic culture, and was not enough of a scholar to be able to properly source them.
Of course, a fundamentalist Muslim will insist that the sura of the Quran are completely historical and meant to be interpreted literally; such a person is clearly a fool. Examples like this one strongly suggest that the suras and sunnah both work best as advisory tools and not books of record.
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While the Baha'i philosophy is pretty darn liberal -- believing in progressive revelation and the metaphorical nature of religious texts pretty much guarantees this -- one of the side benefits is that it's easy to become familiar with "mainstream" Islam from a comfortable position on its fringes. 
