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Hello,
Me being a Muslim means certain rules apply. I am not allowed to date! You are all probaly all shocked and so on! Infact it makes me laugh
Lol, man I'm Muslim too but I have a different opinion on that. We are ALLOWED to date as long as we keep our limits. Like if you went out with some girl and just had a casual chat and got to know her and all, then yeah it's okay to date and that won't be a sin. But if you went out with a girl and ended up foreplaying or getting laid with her, then that's a huge sin cuz sex before marriage is not allowed, in all religions and not Islam alone.
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Also Muslims are commanded to not look at the opposite sex. So i am not allowed to look at a girl for example and check if she is 'hot'.
Again, you do not understand it quiet perfectly. You can look but you can't "stare with desire"! And that's actually a good thing for the girl, to preserve her dignity and respect. Because look at what girls have turned to in the West! Girls are being treated like items or sex tools these days, whenever a guy feels aroused he just goes to a bar, meets a girl, takes her to a hotel room, gets laid, and then leaves (and in most cases pays her for sleeping with him). Ok I know it's hard to see a hottie walking on the street and not look at her (personally when I see a girl wearing a mini skirt and a top that shows most of her breasts and body, I cannot take my eyes off her

) but that's why girls have to wear veils in Islam, just to protect them and protect their feminine being so they wouldn't be abused by men.
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But how do you get married and stuff? Who chooses your wife?
LOL! good question, but no don't worry, Muslim men choose their own wives after they love them and get to know them very well (at least in my country that's how things go

) but there are some countries that have extremely strict rules and dress codes and traditions (like Saudi Arabia and most of the Gulf countries) well, in these countries I don't know how people get married but I don't think it happens normally

and I would say that happens because over there people do not understand Islam quiet well, I honestly think they are somehow radical and extreme and they really need to look at Islam from a totally different perspective!
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"Sunni branch believes that the first four caliphs--Mohammed's successors--rightfully took his place as the leaders of Muslims" <> "Shiites, in contrast, believe that only the heirs of the fourth caliph, Ali, are the legitimate successors of Mohammed"
Yeah that's right, that's the basic difference between Shiites and Sunnis. I'm a Shiite myself, and we believe so because there are alot of Hadiths (speeches and situations of the prophet mohammed) where he clearly states that his successors shall be Imam Ali and his descendants. And about what Loyal said that we believe only some people can explain the Qur'an, well yeah that's true, we believe that SPECIALIZED people can explain the Qur'an correctly so that we wouldn't understand the Qur'anic scripts in a wrong way. And those specialized people shall have GREAT knowledge about the Arabic literature (because the Qur'an's standard of language is very hard and complex, and not common people can understand it correctly) and in Islamic history and the prophet's life. Well, actually this is what causes the confusion in understanding the scripts, common people tend to explain it literally as is, while actually the Qur'an should be interpreted metaphorically - God may say something while he intends to say something else which is more general or more specific (it depends on the case) so... that's why there must be specialists to interpret the Qur'anic scripts. There are also some other differences but those two mentioned above are the most important.