The Twitter page @exmuslimbecause began to revive the #exmuslimbecause. As expected, Muslims did not appreciate this hashtag very much because it offended their faith. So they began to tweet sarcastic remarks under the #. Others attempted to disagree with and challenge the #.

One young woman and I had a brief exchange in the midst of this. I will paste the screen shots below. I kept her username and photo out to maintain her anonymity because I would much rather focus on discussing her thought than single her out and bully her. #realtalk

It is clear she did not want to continue the conversation. Therefore the conversation ended there. It is clear she wanted to be left alone. One can wonder though: Why did she want to stop talking as soon as she was challenged? Was she uncomfortable around evidence? Would evidence force her to confront her inner doubts?

Or maybe she just simply wanted to be left alone. Which is reasonable.

Let’s discuss what happened. A woman disagreed with the notion that men and women in Islam are unequal. When I provided her clear evidence of inequalities and the scriptures actually belittling women’s intellect, she cried “misinterpretation.” That card is commonly used when Muslims are confronted with the darker side of scriptures. As soon as she used that card she insisted on ending the conversation.

This is a common sense of denial we see in Western Muslims. They convince themselves that Islam is an egalitarian and peaceful religion. When confronted with evidence that disproves this perception of Islam, they don’t want to confront it and charge you with misinterpreting/”twisting” the texts.

I speculate that they use this cop out because they subconsciously realize the literal world of the scripture can be really displeasing. So they want to brand all the displeasing parts of scripture as “metaphors.”

This denial makes it really difficult to have meaningful dialogue with the Muslims in the west on advocating Islamic reform. They refuse to acknowledge there’s something wrong with the scriptures in the first place.

Scripture Sources

Some relevant links to this topic:

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