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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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I don’t know anything about Islam but a fairly similar phenomenon exists in Christianity. I don’t think progressive Christians are lying.

As an exmoose like @ymeskhout I am willing to give the absolutely ignorant "cultural Muslims" who literally know nothing a pass but many of the more educated types I'd say are lying or at least misleading via omission.

There's one every common example that drives me crazy: anyone who knows anything about Islam and says, in a debate with the broadly Protestant audience in the Anglosphere, "that's not in the Qur'an" is lying. Whether they set out to be malicious or not, they're exploiting the sola scriptura assumptions of their audience (it's very easy to assume Islam is the same because of its elevated view of the Qur'an, but the Five Pillars are literally impossible without the Hadith) to mislead and soothe their audience. This is especially liable to go unpunished on panel shows that don't have the time to drill into Islamic jurisprudence and the Legends EU-like hierarchy of sources.

There's no way to understand basics of Islam without understanding why this is misleading.

I've seen this on both sides. I've seen crypto-conservatives do it to defend against New Atheists, and I've especially seen progressives do it. And, imo, anyone that does this without explaining that the "Sunni" in "Sunni Muslim" that makes up 90% of the Islamic world literally means "one who follows the Sunnah, the ways of the Prophet" mainly found outside the Qur'an is a liar.

What about Quranists?

They're not insincere and they're not liars. But they're like the Mormons of Islam

In what sense? To me, from a Catholic background, what stands out the most about Mormons is the addition of the Book of Mormon to the canon. Quranists, as I understand, don't add anything, they just reject the hadiths. In this sense they are very similar to sola scriptura Protestants. Did you mean that all the other Muslims think they're weird?

In the sense that, if there was a debate about core Christian doctrine, most Christians wouldn't feel good about Mormons being the ones to represent the "Christian position".

They claim the title of Christian and many Christians (not all) may be fine not fighting them over it - now. But trinitarian Christians are the overwhelming majority and differ enough from Mormons that one side's answers not only don't count or aren't representative but may be offensive at times.