askchapo

There is Islam and there are muslims. Muslims can be homophobic and sexist. Islam is their belief, religion being used to justify ones bigotry is nothing new.

A lot of the times westerners have this view of Islam as if it's a dogma like calvinism. But it's a whole religion, it's a lot more cultural, it's very unique to the individual and what they make of it. There are very dogmatic views of Islam for sure, but if people are talking about "Is Islam X" or "Does Islam teach Y" there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what religion is. Look at how different orthodox christianity, catholicism and protestants are. If you try to pin-point "what does christianity teach?" you will end up with a set of very broad universally-agreed truths "Love thy neighbour etc." and the bare-minimum of christian lore "Jesus was the messiah and died on a cross for our sins and rose again 3 days later from the grave". Other than that everything open. Was Mary a virgin her whole life? Is it ok to pray to idols? Is the bible sent by god? What books should be in the bible?

Pretty much the same for Islam. There as many perspectives to Islam as to Christianity. A historical, an individual, a theological (which depends on the school), a cultural and probably a couple more I'm currently not thinking of. If someone is talking about Islam as if it was a tangible thing there are deeper brainworms at play.

Islam teaches nothing. Mohammed has taught. Allah teaches. A hoca, imam, your mom and dad might teach you what it is to be a muslim. And what they teach you might be completely different from what another muslim is taught.