Burqa banned, pro LGBT mosque slammed by islamic authority

[Ricardo 8,132]

7 hours ago, Delusional Aura said:

Ammm Christianity was once that way. Everything takes time. Get off your high horse. At least one mosque is making a change just like many years ago where churches started to become accepting of gays. Your ignorance is disgusting. 

how exactly does that make me ignorant?

and I didn't exclude Christianity. Sure, there are people who do not follow the conventions of their religion but those religions still have conventions.

[Ricardo 8,132]

7 hours ago, Benji said:

Because many LGBT+ people, me included, believe that if there is a God that they would not punish us for being loving and bringing joy to someone else's life. I am agnostic, I look around and find it hard to believe that there is a God but I like to think there is one and they would not hold it against me for being different when I am not hurting anyone.

I agree completely, I also want to believe there's something else out there, I understand BUT my issue here is not if a LGBT+ person having faith or not, everyone is free but why there is this need of identifying with a religion (mainly talking about Islam and Christianity/Catholicism) who have damaged the community so bad? 

and to make it clear I understand the freedom of every person to belong in whatever religion they want? I'm just commenting on that and not trying to force anyone to leave their religion just because

[Fatigay 21,211]

10 hours ago, Simon said:

“The pushback I am getting makes me feel that I am doing the right thing,” she said. “God is loving and merciful—otherwise he wouldn’t have turned me into the person I am.”

Finally a religious statement I can agree with. Include all instead of exclude and separate.

[Edonis 28,974]

Good for her for standing up for what's right. As a gay Muslim, I can only applaud her for doing this  

Hopefully the youth and more moderate/liberal Muslims help pick this up. Women and men should absolutely be allowed to pray together (there are mosques in the US and Canada that actually allow this as well as a very small one in south Lebanon 👀). I can't tell you the amount of times I've prayed with my grandmother or sisters at home when I was younger. There's literally no point in still propagating old traditions that aren't very feasible in this day and age. It's time that religious conservatives grow up and realize that faith is way more than just tradition and practices. I'm extremely excited for this 

 

[Roomingfree77 244]

10 hours ago, Simon said:

"The woman who opened a mosque in Berlin where men and women pray together and face-covering headscarves are banned has vowed to defy a fatwa from Egypt’s highest Islamic authority and criticism from the Turkish government.

German-Turkish women’s rights activist Seyran Ates, 54, pioneered the opening of the Ibn Rushd-Goethe Mosque in the Moabit neighborhood of Berlin on June 16. Ates said that the mosque was open to all, including LGBT Muslims, and would seek to provide a liberal counterpoint to extremist interpretations of Islam espoused by groups like the Islamic State militant group (ISIS).

But the mosque has not been received well by traditional Islamic authorities in Egypt and Turkey, where Ates was born. Al-Azhar University in Cairo, which is widely regarded as the world’s highest authority on Sunni Islamic theology and sharia law, issued a religious judgement (or fatwa) criticizing liberal mosques in general, according to The Guardian.

Egypt’s state-run Islamic institution, Dar al-Ifta al-Masriyyah, issued a statement on June 19 heavily criticizing the Berlin mosque, saying that men and women praying side by side was a violation of Islam and stating that such liberalization of Islamic values was not the way to combat extremism.

In Turkey, the criticism has been widespread and virulent. Turkey’s main religious authority, Diyanet, said that the Berlin mosque’s practices “do not align with Islam’s fundamental resources, principles of worship, methodology or experience of more than 14 centuries” and described them as “experiments aimed at nothing more than depraving and ruining religion.”

But Ates told The Guardian that she took heart from the criticism. “The pushback I am getting makes me feel that I am doing the right thing,” she said. “God is loving and merciful—otherwise he wouldn’t have turned me into the person I am.”

The mosque is housed in part of an old Lutheran church and is open to Muslims of all traditions, including Sunni and Shiite, as well as people of other religions or no faith. Ates, who is in training as an imam, has led prayers at the mosque; the position of imam is traditionally reserved for men in mainstream Islam.

She also banned the wearing of burqas and niqabs—the former covers the whole face except the eyes; the latter covers the entire face, with a mesh for the wearer to see through—at the mosque as she considered such practices to be “political statements,” Ates said in an interview with German magazine Spiegel.

Ates told The Guardian that the congregation has dwindled since the mosque opened as would-be worshippers stayed away due to the controversy. She said that the mosque had nothing to do with Gulen or his followers, and added that she has been the subject of abuse and death threats herself."

http://www.newsweek.com/islam-germany-berlin-liberal-mosque-al-azhar-fatwa-628945

 my respect to Ates. 

 

Wow.. Seems a bit retaliatory, Aint too sure about that.. 

[Economy 52,844]

Why ban the burqua tho? Wouldnt it make more sense to let ppl come as they wish if ur being more liberal?

 

plus what if someone is curious to see a more liberal view and wants to go but isnt ready to get rid of the burqa????