Ali A. Rizvi Profile picture
Aug 25, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read Read on X
This may well be one of the most important video clips about Islam ever, and it comes not from any secular activist, but Islamic scholar @YasirQadhi himself. The printing press was indeed declared haram by the Ottoman Empire, and the use of it was punished with death.

/1
So while Christian Europe underwent an Enlightenment that skewered Christian theocracy and propelled it out of the Dark Ages into the enduring and prosperous time of secular liberalism we have today, the Muslim world stayed where it was—a place where

/2
any and all innovation and free thought was considered heresy, blasphemy, or apostasy.

If this hadn't happened, would we have a diluted, reformed, or "protestantized" Islam today, separate from the state, as we see with Christianity?

/3
Would we have more lapsed Muslims, secular Muslims, and atheists who were Muslim only culturally, like we do now in Christianity and Judaism?

@MaryamNamazie says, "The Internet is doing to Islam today what the printing press did in the past to Christianity."

/4
We're all seeing it happen. Imagine if it had started four hundred years ago.

/end

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More from @aliamjadrizvi

Nov 23, 2023
This could be the first war Israel could lose.

What does Hamas want, aside from its long-stated goal of eradicating Israel as a Jewish state from the map?

Let’s break it down:

(THREAD) ➡️
> Conduct an attack so heinous that it will embed tribal hate in its victims for generations. Check.

> Provoke a tremendous overreaction from Israel that kills tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians, advancing Hamas's aims of eclipsing any sympathy Israel temporarily gained for the worst terrorist attack in its history. Check.
> Knowing it doesn't have the military strength to achieve its goals, leveraging Israel's military strength against Palestinians to make the Palestinian cause the world's focus, painting Israel as a pariah, and weaponizing the world's empathy against its enemy. Check.

> Ensuring an endless supply of future recruits, devastated, angered, and rendered hopeless by the bombing and killing of their children and parents. Check.
Read 10 tweets
Oct 30, 2023
When forming your opinion about the Israel-Palestine issue, ask yourself:

Do I want justice, or do I want peace?

If you seek full justice, you will never achieve peace.

But if you are seeking peace, you can get at least some justice.

[THREAD]
For tribal conflicts dating back decades, if not centuries, justice is impossible. Every new tragedy and every atrocity is the effect of / response to / result of a prior cause—and each of these causes is the effect of another cause preceding 𝘪𝘵.
The never-ending series of “They started it!” spans so much time into the past, there is really no way to make any actionable sense of it today. All the lives lost, hearts broken, souls destroyed—they aren’t coming back. What price could you put on them to make it feel like true justice?
Read 12 tweets
Oct 10, 2023
Either you’re pro-Palestinian or pro-Hamas.

You can’t be both.

Some things to note about this current conflict:

(thread)
➡️ Hamas is more loyal to the Iran’s mullah leadership than it is to its own Palestinian people. It is a despicable group that fires rockets from its own hospitals and schools to get Israel to bomb them so it can exploit dead Palestinian children to get the world’s sympathy. Hamas is no more loyal to the Palestinian people than the Islamic Republic of Iran is to the Iranian people.
➡️ Egypt controls the southern border of Gaza. There are two million people trapped in Gaza, and they’re partly trapped there because of Egypt, the largest Arab country in the world. The blockade of the Gaza Strip is cooperatively maintained both by Israel and Egypt. Whenever Gazans have been bombed by Netanyahu’s Israel and wanted to escape across their southern border, Egypt has said no. If all the “pro-Palestinian” activists celebrating Hamas truly cared about the Palestinian people, they would also have an accountability campaign for Egypt.
Read 12 tweets
Feb 18, 2023
The question isn't 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 Andrew Tate @Cobratate is exploiting Islam to grow his Muslim fanbase, but 𝘸𝘩𝘺 he finds Islam so compelling in the first place.

Let’s dive in.

Thread ⬇️ Image
Look at verse 4:24 in the Quran. It starts as follows, and the consensus on translation is pretty much universal:

---
"And all married women (are forbidden unto you) save those (captives) whom your right hands possess. It is a decree of Allah for you." [Pickthall]

2
Two more translations:

"And [also prohibited to you are all] married women except those your right hands possess." [Sahih International]

"Also (forbidden are) women already married, except those (captives and slaves) whom your right hands possess.” [Mohsin Khan]
---

3
Read 19 tweets
Apr 26, 2022
In a break from most of my friends, I’m a big admirer of Elon Musk. I think he is the Edison (Tesla?) of our times.

Unlike billionaires like Warren Buffett, who made their fortunes by investing in other people’s ideas, Elon has made his by pursuing innovative,

/1
difficult challenges that required lots of risk and very few people thought were realistic pursuits. If it were just about the money, he could easily have gone the Buffett route after selling PayPal, or any of the other easy routes. So I don’t think it’s as easy as the

/2
“all billionaires are evil” meme.

Elon Musk is turning a long-dreamed-of progressive agenda into actual reality.

Electric vehicles. Exploring space and other worlds humanity could possibly live on. Building tunnels to solve traffic problems. A renewable energy project that

/3
Read 15 tweets
Feb 22, 2021
Ah, Woody Allen again. It's tragic all around if you want to believe the victims. Dylan Farrow claiming abuse by Allen. Moses Farrow and Soon-Yi claiming years of abuse by Mia Farrow.

This isn't about believing victims—it's about choosing *which* victims to believe.

Are some /1
alleged victims more credible than others? I don't think any are lying—I think they're all sincere about what they believe.

When you watch the HBO doc, you believe Woody's guilty—for all his artistic genius, the guy's creepy. But when you read Moses Farrow's and Soon-Yi's /2
articles and interviews, you believe Mia Farrow was the abuser. All of the people in this tragic saga have been interviewed only by advocates of their side. There has never been any "cross examination" of either Woody Allen or Mia Farrow.

The only solution to all of this is /3
Read 5 tweets

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