Abortion is allowed, up to the point at which it is no longer medically safe for the individual. The limit is medical, not theological. It is set by the safety of the person who is pregnant, and by nothing else — not by a cleric, not by a committee, not by a legislature reciting scripture,…

Angels and Satan are psychological metaphors. They are not beings. “Satan” is the human ego — the destructive impulse, the appetite that overrides judgment, the voice that wants to take, to dominate, to lash out, to consume past the point of sense. It has no horns. It is you, on your worst day. “Angels” are…

Heaven is not a garden. Hell is not a fire. These are not literal places. There are no rivers of wine, no seventy-two of anything, no gates, no bridges thinner than a hair, and no pits of boiling oil. Heaven and Hell are states of consciousness — and they are beyond our full understanding. Shafafi…

Shafafis do not perform pilgrimage. There is no Hajj, no Umrah, and no Shafafi equivalent. There is no place on Earth that is closer to God than where you are standing. Mecca is a city. The Kaaba is a cube-shaped building. Neither has any bearing on your relationship with a cosmic force, and travelling to…

Reading the Message Shafafis read the Quran in a language they actually understand. We use various translations to extract meaning and compare them against one another, because no single translation is authoritative and every one carries its translator’s assumptions. Making Arabic noises with your mouth does not make you pious. Understanding the Message does. For…

God is a cosmic force. God is not a micro-manager. God does not audit your posture, your vocabulary, your diet, or your wardrobe. God is not sitting in judgment over whether you faced the correct compass bearing while speaking. God is indifferent to human concepts of “good” and “evil.” These are our categories, built by…

Shafafis have no call to prayer, because Shafafis have no congregation to call. Blasting adhan or other sounds from outdoor loudspeakers causes real harm to others, and in some countries it is also a crime. The mainstream Muslim practice of using loudspeakers to blast adhan, prayers, and announcements from mosques can be classified as a…

Statues and pictures are allowed in Shafafi Islam. Mainstream Muslims have been told that if there is a painting, photograph, or statue, then people will start worshipping it instead of God. This makes no sense on multiple levels. The Kaaba in Mecca is said to be a directional “marker” that Muslims are supposed to pray…

Shafafi Islam holds, as a matter of theology, that there are two biological sexes. That is a statement about biology, and it is where the theology stops. What you do with that is entirely your own business. Transgender identity, homosexuality, cross-dressing, hormones, surgery, changing your name, changing your pronouns, and what mainstream clerics sneeringly call…