When a stranger online says Islam is a cult: 6 claims answered

A cult, in the usual sense of the word, is a small and recent group gathered around a leader, which isolates its members and demands their obedience. Islam is none of these things. Pew Research Center counted about 1.8 billion Muslims in 2015, 24 percent of the world, living in nearly every country, in every economic condition and under every kind of government.^[1] Its scholars disagree with one another in public, in writing and across fourteen centuries, which is the opposite of a single leader’s control.

The claim contains something real. Groups that cut people off from their families, demand total obedience and punish questions exist among Muslims, as they exist among Christians, Jews, Hindus and secular movements. A reader who has been inside one has every right to call it by its name. The sources do not defend such groups. The Quran says “there shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of] the religion” (2:256) and asks whether the Prophet ﷺ would “compel the people in order that they become believers” (10:99).^[2]

The error is in the step from a group to a religion of a billion and a half people. The article on the numbers gives the counts and their limits. Verdict: no, for Islam. Yes, a real thing for some groups. The word describes the second and not the first.

Deprogramming assumes that a person’s faith is the product of pressure and that it dissolves once the pressure is removed. For some people that is how it happened. Many writers who left Islam describe households and schools where belief was enforced, and the sources side with them against the enforcers: no verse of the Quran authorises forcing a person to believe (2:256, 10:99).^[3] The article on 2:256 sets out what the jurists made of that.

For many others the assumption is false. A great many Muslims hold the faith after reading widely, leaving, returning, or coming to it as adults. The article on the fastest-growing religion deals with conversion, and the article on testimonies explains what a story of leaving can and cannot show about a religion. Telling a stranger that his belief is a symptom is a claim about his mind that the speaker cannot check.

A person is free to hold that Muslims would be better off outside the faith, and to say so. What a reader should notice is that the Quran’s own method does not answer with a counter-insult. It says “invite to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction, and argue with them in a way that is best” (16:125).^[4] Verdict: an argued opinion, and an unprovable one. Forcing belief is condemned by the book itself.

This is a claim that a person may hold and may argue. The site does not treat it as an insult. It treats it as a question, and the question has an answer that can be examined in public: who wrote the Quran, whether it was preserved, whether the reports about the Prophet ﷺ are reliable, whether the earlier scriptures were changed. The articles on who wrote the Quran, preservation and the Islamic dilemma take these in turn, and several of them concede points the evidence does not support.

The method matters more than the verdict in a thread. The Quran says “do not pursue that of which you have no knowledge” (17:36).^[5] A Muslim who answers “liar” with “hater” has pursued something he does not know, and a critic who says “lie” without opening a source has done the same. Al-Fārūqī’s rule for the sites is that the truth is one, knowable and open to test, and that counter-evidence is to be welcomed.^[6]

A comment thread cannot settle the question, and it does not need to. It can ask for the reason behind the claim and point to a place where the sources are laid out. Verdict: the claim is open to examination, and abuse is not an answer to it.

The Quran’s two passages on dress do not say that. The first is addressed to men: “Tell the believing men to reduce [some] of their vision and guard their private parts. That is purer for them” (24:30). The second asks the same of women and adds the rules of dress (24:31).^[7] The reason the Quran gives for the outer garment in 33:59 is “that they will be known and not be abused”.^[8] That is a reason about protection from harassment, and it does not describe the woman as a lesser person.

The same book protects chaste women from the very accusation in the comment. A person who accuses chaste women and cannot produce four witnesses is lashed eighty times and his testimony is refused (24:4), and false accusers “are cursed in this world and the Hereafter” (24:23).^[9] A reading that makes modesty an accusation against women has the book backwards.

A concession is due. In some countries dress is enforced by law and by police, and women are punished for it. A reader who calls that oppression is describing something that exists, and the Quran’s own line against compulsion cuts against it. The article on hijab and modesty sets out the verses, the reports and the range of opinion. Verdict: the reading does not come from the text. The enforcement is a separate matter, and an argued one.

Both descriptions can be right about different sentences. Criticism of a doctrine, a text or an institution is argument, and the Quran invites argument: “argue with them in a way that is best” (16:125), and with the People of the Scripture “except in a way that is best” (29:46).^[10] Contempt for the people who hold a belief is something else. The Quran forbids insulting what others worship, “lest they insult Allah in enmity without knowledge” (6:108), and forbids ridicule and nicknames among believers (49:11).^[11]

Hatred of Muslims as people is a recorded fact and not only a complaint. The article on Islamophobia gives the origin of the word, its limits, the harm recorded in hate-crime statistics and the argument over the term. A fair reader keeps two lines in view. A critic has the right to say that a doctrine is wrong. A critic has no right to say that a whole people are vermin, and a Muslim has no right to say the same of anyone.

The Quran tells a Muslim what to do with provocation: “Repel [evil] by that [deed] which is better; and thereupon, the one whom between you and him is enmity [will become] as though he was a devoted friend” (41:34), and it describes the servants of the Merciful as those who, “when the ignorant address them [harshly], they say [words of] peace” (25:63).^[12] Verdict: both words apply, to different sentences. The reply to either is the same: answer the claim.

On 15 March 2019 a gunman killed 51 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, the Al Noor mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre, during Friday prayer. He was convicted of murder and terrorism and sentenced to life in prison without parole. A Royal Commission of Inquiry examined the attack and reported in 2020.^[13] The victims were Muslims at worship, and nothing in that record is a matter of opinion.

It is easy to move from this fact to a charge against a stranger: because someone writes hatred of Muslims, he is the same as the man who killed them. The step is not supported by what the stranger wrote. A comment is a comment, and a massacre is a massacre. Hateful talk about Muslims is wrong, it is recorded as hurting people, and it deserves a reply. It does not deserve a charge that its author is a murderer, and a reply that makes the charge has stopped answering the claim and started inventing one.

The Quran’s rules on this are plain. “If there comes to you a disobedient one with information, investigate, lest you harm a people out of ignorance” (49:6). “Do not let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just” (5:8). And “do not pursue that of which you have no knowledge” (17:36).^[14] Justice is owed to the person one is arguing with, including a rude one. Verdict: the hatred is wrong, and the comparison to a killer is a claim the words cannot carry. It is better to name the harm that hatred does, and to leave the person out.