Hi everyone and welcome to CiceroPastate Profit. Today I want to talk a little bit about my broom, my personal experience with Islam. Because Muslim apologists like it very much when we talk about how someone left Islam, it made experiences with Islam and once they tell the world about it. We hear it all the time how I am misinterpreting the Quran or you are misinterpreting the Quran. We are misunderstanding the Quran. We need to read it in Arabic. We need a scholar, an interpreter. We need to read an exegesis and all that nonsense. Before going into it, I quickly want to announce that I'm currently starting a new show, which I'm calling the Apostates. And on that show I will be speaking to other ex-Muslims. It will be a long series. It may be it will never end. My first guest, if everything works well, will be Yasmin Muhammad. That should be out very soon, most likely next week. And after that I will keep making interviews, little discussions with other former Muslims. So if you have anyone on your mind who is an ex-Muslim that you want me to speak to, please let me know in the comment section. In fact, the show could possibly be expanded to other people who were never Muslims or who are still Muslims. But I'm going to think that through. For now it is the apostate and it will be quite great. If you want to support me through this project, most of my videos will probably not be monetized. You can support me on Patreon. I appreciate your support of this mission very much. Anyways, back to the topic. I remember a conversation that I had with my father the first time I decided to read the Quran through. I was quite religious and I wanted to thoroughly study my religion. Of course I had to read the Quran through and really understand what it is about. So I decided to sit down every day and to read the Quran. It was a very tough read and there were so many occasions where I just stumbled upon something that I couldn't properly process because I didn't really understand what the Quran was telling me. It was something that just sounded absurd and I didn't want to admit that it was absurd. So I tried to understand it the best I could. Or it would sound very cruel and very inhuman. And that would make me think but I would suppress my doubts and my thoughts. So long story short it was a very painful read. Anyways, my father asked me to go somewhere with him and I told him that there are some places in the Quran that I cannot fully understand but that I'm trying to understand it. And what he told me was that it is hard to read the Quran on your own. That if you want to read the Quran and understand the Quran, you should refer to scholars. You should read interpretations by scholars in order to properly understand the Quran and not be confronted with a doubt. What I thought when he said that was that it doesn't make any sense. I just read in the Quran that this is a book that is easy to understand and that this is a book for people who think, for people who use their minds. And I kept thinking about how Allah created my mind and Allah gave me the ability to understand. And He gave me this book that I am supposed to understand. This book is for me, right? So how does it make sense that I am that I should be afraid of reading this book by myself, that I should refer to scholars, that I should ask them? Doesn't that completely go against the Quran's own claims? And the function of the Quran as a guidance for humans that is easy to understand. It's funny because I then also found out that most Muslims who attempt to read the Quran or who attempt to learn anything from the Quran learn it that way by referring to scholars, to imams, to those who know better. I don't believe we have any statistics on this. I made my research, but the number of Muslims who have actually read the Quran is extremely low. The number of Muslims who have read the Quran through in Arabic is very low. I would guess it's maybe 10-15%. And the funny thing is that most Muslims don't speak Arabic. So the percentage of Muslims who read the Quran through in a language they understand is probably 5%. Then from all those who read it by themselves, who actually read it through, there is a significant number of people, a significant percentage among those who read it through. A significant percentage among those, among that tiny population, that also thinks I shouldn't think anything of this, of what I have just read. I should just refer to scholars and to interpretations. What we are dealing with here is 1.6 or 1.8 billion people as they always like to say, who believe in Islam, but the vast majority, the overwhelming majority of these people, have never read their scripture. They only get the information about the Quran from other people. That's why I say I definitely know more about Islam than most Muslims, because I read the Quran just three times through as a believer, and I read it several times after I left Islam. So the Quran and Muslims claim that the Quran is a very clear book and very easy to understand. But at the same time, they put it behind a huge wall of interpretations, of scholarly opinions, of different views, and this and that. They don't let you make up your own opinion on the Quran by yourself. When you go online and discuss the Quran and debate about it, they tell you that you probably misunderstood it, that you should refer to scholars, that you should ask a scholar. If someone wants to say this is about Arabic, no it's not. We have an increasingly immense number of Arabic-speaking ex-Muslims. Among those ex-Muslims, there are so many people who have read the Quran and who really don't like it. Let's put ex-Muslims into disbelief aside. Within Islam, there are so many branches, so many schools and movements and individuals, famous scholars, who vastly disagree on the content of the Quran. On the message of the Quran, they read the same text and exactly the same letters, the same language, but they completely disagree about what it wants from us, about how it wants us to treat each other, about how it wants the Muslims to treat the non-Muslims, about metaphysical things and times, miracles, the sun, science, and so on. The problem here is actually very simple. It is not that the Quran is not easy to understand, and that you have to refer to scholars. These are just defense mechanisms of Islam, of the Muslim community, because reading the Quran by itself scares Muslims. I disregarded my father's advice of going to scholars and asking them and reading it with them, and referring to people who know about them. I thought I am a human just like all the others, and I spent my entire life thinking and reading and questioning. I should be able by the logic of the Quran itself to sit down and to read the Quran through and understand it, and that's what I'm going to do. And now I am an ex-Muslim. Muslims want to put the text of the Quran behind scholarly exegesis interpretations, because they are scared of what the Quran does when they read it, without any interpretation. When they read it, the Quran just doesn't make any sense, it sounds extremely absurd. It is full of inconclusive thoughts, illogical verses, scientifically extremely inaccurate statements, hostilities, treatments of humans that we can never accept in today's time. Ignorance about such basic things, like the solar system. Please Muslims take the challenge and answer my question about where the Sun goes at sunset. Because according to the Quran and according to Muhammad, the Sun clearly goes somewhere at night, and then comes back in the morning. Muslims are hiding the Quran behind interpretations, because if you just read the Quran as it is, you will end up having a lot of doubts, and those doubts can lead you out of Islam and make you a non-believer, make you an ex-Muslim. You might also end up being a hardcore Muslim and shut down your doubts, as I tried to do back then. But the point stands, Muslims are scared of the Quran, because the Quran is not hard to understand. It is very easy to understand. It is just very hard to read because it is so repetitive and full of agonizing. It is something you should read and then probably stay away from. Therefore, I am in no way afraid of endorsing the reading of the Quran. Please do it. If you are interested in Islam, if you want to learn more about it, go out there and read the Quran. Start with the first chapter, with the first actual chapter, which is chapter 2. The first chapter is just a prayer. If you start with that and read the first few lines, you will, I don't know, I'll leave it to you, what you will do. But please, just do it. If you are a Muslim, please go and read the Quran. Make up your own mind. Listen to the Quran itself, which claims that it is easy to understand, easy to remember, easy in the Arabic language. Listen to Allah, who says that you are supposed to think, that you are supposed to use your mind. Listen to the Quran, which says that it wants ease for you and not hardship. Reading the Quran shouldn't be a matter of going through so much stressful education and studying, right? It is supposed to be the basic guidance of your life. Do it and see what you end up with, honestly. And dear Muslims, once you are through that, I am waiting for you on the other side. Thank you for watching. I will be back very soon with a lot of stuff out of the Quran. For now, have a great day and stay away from Islam.