Re: Bond between Allah and Banda.
Call it self-defense or whatever, it is just not something I would expect God to command us to do - fight each other for religious beliefs and political gain. Christianity did not stop with Jesus' death. Islam wouldn't have stopped with Muhammad's death. There was no need for violence, especially from the man of God. At least this prerequisite has to be met for me to believe that a Man could be a prophet.
Also, I don't believe a higher power would cherrypick a few men to tell the rest of the world about his existence - sounds more like an E.T. encounter than God.
The fact that men have rights over women is enough to ensue abuse towards women. Also Quran conveniently forgets that it's talking to women as well. why are the audience expected to be men? why does it have a separate chapter on women like it does on livestock and everything else. Did God conveniently forget that women someday would be able to read, be as powerful as men?
As for more women converting to Islam in the west, this is all hogwash. There's a greater number of women leaving islam but you obviously wouldn't hear about them and I think you understand why.
this is borderline offensive. I shall stop here. this will do no good.
I have looked at it from the outside and have lived inside of it, I didn't see any beauty.
Peace Theorist
We can fight in only two circumstances:
a) When an oppressor is oppressing a people - to liberate them
b) When an oppressor is oppressing us we can retaliate
We are not allowed to kill others for politcal gain and we can't force people to become Muslim ... what however we can do is offer the enemy in either a) or b) to avoid fighting by doing one of the following:
1) Accepting Islam (stop fighting) and hence earn protection
2) Not accept Islam but stop fighting and live peacefully as a citizen of the Islamic state paying taxes
3) To leave - i.e. run away
If the person insists to continue fighting then we defend (either others or ourselves) with valour.
Regarding the picking of a few men to tell the rest of the world about Him ... I don't know why that is the case ... but it is ... perhaps a wisdom behind this is that although many see great honour for men in being chosen by God to be prophets, we need to understand that in the grand scheme of things they were only a few of them ... such people need to be subjected to lots of hardship such as travel and abuse and in a way a woman is saved from such a thing. On the other side each prophet had a mother to whom they needed to be most dutiful to ... Generally men deal with the public and have been doing so since the beginning of time ... there may be a natural tendency for prophets to have been men ... although some scholars feel that people like Sayyiduna Maryam (AS) the Mother of Jesus (AS) was prophet like - since she was visited by the Angel Gabriel (AS) ... Also, we have many scholars who are women since after our own prophet came and went ...
Regarding the parts in the Qur'an about women ... well Arabic deals with humans and says so in many places ... "insaan" which covers all humans. It will make mention of men in particular and also make mention of women in particular ... all three conditions are served ... however when it deals with humans in general it uses the masculine gender because that is the limitation in Arabic - it does not have a neutral gender ... Also, nature itself is almost sexist ... the male human has an X and a Y chromosome, but a female will have two X chromosomes ... The male contains both and the female contains one type ... it is interesting how the One who made us addresses us in terms of how He made us ... Actually this observation of the Qur'an addressing the men was made by a woman early in the time of the prophet Muhammad (SAW) I won't hazard a guess but I think it was a high ranking (female) Sahabiya. Soon after verses upon verses came for women and many verses doubled the emphasis for men and for women ... The names of the Chapters are not part of the Qur'an - These have been given by the followers many years afterwards. I wouldn't judge the Qur'an on the basis of how the Chapters are named ... that would be a great injustice to the Word of God ... which came as raw revelation not as chapters and titles ...
In terms of the way women and men have been given very different expectations in Islam is about the duties that they are given ... in an office, each person does the tasks that is allocated to their skills and abilities - why should Islam put the burden of earning household income for the family when the chances of her being out of action for at least 4 months due to pregnancies is present? In fact many women today even are on lower salaries than men because 9 times out of 10 they are second income earners - many do not need to work and others have part time responsibilities ... but they are ok with this ... it is because they know at some point they may not be able to come in to work. Islam gives space and freedom to women and this is often taken wrongly as doesn't value women enough ... so I think there is another side to this whole conversation.
And yes there are many women who leave Islam ... most of them due to familial pressures and bad husbands ... not about Islam.
Enigmatic. This is what I would have told Theorist, but you did a better job than I would have done. 