mashaAllah what a reply. By the way, when you say you were shia. Which country are you from? Did you become shia because the majority of muslim you met were shia in your area?
I'm american. At first I didn't know I was shi'a. I only liked what I read of Qur'an and believed in it. My shi'a friends were giving me books and I read them to learn more about Islaam.. I had no idea there were sects because Allah condemns sects in the qur'an.
I was very naive and thought that islaam is practiced the way that Allah ordered it to be practiced, so it didn't occur to me that there are denominations in islaam like there are in other religions. So I studied "islaam" (ithna ashariyya sources) because I wanted to learn as much about islaam as possible. I only knew shi'as at the time and thought that islaam was just one big religion. I was shocked to be called a shi'a pig by one girl because I had no idea why she was upset at me.
After four years of learning and sending in lengthy questions to scholars, I started doubting many of the fatawa and hadiths I read and nearly became a quranist (astaghfirullah) because I just couldn't consolidate some of these vulgar and/or contradictory quotes with the beauty in the Qur'an. On top of that, they rarely if ever give references to how they came to a certain conclusion. We're just supposed to take their word for it and I was discouraged from gaining ilm by one student of a scholar because of my gender (he answered instead of his mentor apparently because he was too busy), he told me there was no need for female 'scholars' (I was just seeking info) and learning the basics is enough to be a good mother, that I shouldn't waste my time learning about matters that do not concern me.
Not that this stopped me, of course, but I just felt it was the same thing my pastors told me when I was a christian questioning the trinity. I was told that I don't need to understand the trinity and that it won't stop me from being a good christian and I should just stop wasting his time asking about it. I asked him about seminary school and he said there is no point in me learning my religion that deeply if I wasn't planning on becoming a pastor. As if laymen have no right to or use for ilm.
On paltalk I joined muslim chatrooms and started meeting other Muslims from other schools of thought who gave me resources that contradicted and refuted things that I had learned. I was given the emails of scholars from all four madhabs and books from every sect and philosophy from ghazali to ibn taymiyya. As a user (brother husayn) said on a different thread, I am a self-educated layman. I don't claim to know a lot but alhamdulillah this was enough to convince me that shi'aism was a separate religion from what I read in Qur'an. I cannot explain the relief I had after read the real seerah with references to sahih hadith I had never seen before. I downloaded every english sahih and hasan hadith book I could find and sat through and read them all (although I didn't understand the context of most of them).
My shi'a friends steered me away from it, and 'sunnis' insulted me a lot and didn't help me very much (I kept getting called a troll on forums), but I didn't listen because I wanted to find out the truth. I have no shi'a friends left because they all stopped talking to me after I said I don't believe in that anymore. We haven't spoken since '07/'08.
But Allah guides us the way He wants.
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July 13, 2016, 12:55:06 AM