Weird idea I just had. "Islamoid Polytheism". That means, a form of Polytheism that is as similar to Islam as possible (the -oid suffix means "similar to"). I find this idea very fascinating since Islam is extremely hostile towards Polytheism. This is a polytheistic religion, or rather, a collection of polytheistic religions, as similar to Islam as possible.
Islamoid Polytheism (conceptualization 1):
-99 Gods (like the 99 names of Allah)
-Death penalty for homosexuality
-Death penalty for apostasy (in this case, "apostasy" is defined as "abandoning the submission towards the pantheon of the 99 deities")
-Women have no rights
-If you don't submit to the pantheon of 99 gods you'll burn in hell forever in afterlife, tortured forever by those 99 gods simultaneously.
-Muslims (and anyone who is not an Islamoid Polytheist, tbh) are considered "infidels", "impious" and "blasphemers" since they submit to a god not found among the pantheon of 99 gods, and they deny the existence of all 99 gods of the Islamoid pantheon.
-None of the 99 gods are pro-LGBT or feminists
-Alcohol is forbidden
-Eating pork is forbidden
-Pilgrimage to [some place, I guess] is mandatory and one of the pillars of Islamoid Polytheism
-Praying 5 times a day to the gods is mandatory
-Iconography is forbidden. It's blasphemous to draw or depict the gods in any way.
-Theft is punished by cutting the hands of the thief.
-Female rape victims are to be stoned to death
-Sex before or outside of marriage is forbidden
-Music is either forbidden, or just frowned upon (in the more "liberal" versions of Islamoid Polytheism).
-The gods have no moral diversity, they all agree with the same moral rules. Their differences are what the gods and goddesses represent. For example, god of fire, god of death, life, afterlife, fire, water, ice, wind, thunder, war, abundance, goddess of the Moon, fertility, Sun etc.
-Fasting during Ramadan is mandatory.
I've written a page about this some time ago, I may expand it one day if I feel like it.. Also note that I'm becoming increasingly uncomfortable with using the word "morality" when referring to arbitrary set of rules. There can be a rule against eating tomatoes, or against wearing a yellow t-shirt... is that really "morality"? Islamic rules are often non-sense or even harmful. "Morality" should at the very least have some semblance of being beneficial to someone (even if in a deceptive way, but jeez, at the very least one should pretend that it's for a good cause!), or to avoid harm, so I'll eventually replace the word "morality" in such contexts with "set of rules", as that seems to be honest and more transparent about what it's really referring to. I may be open-minded on perspectives, but not so much on the lexicon itself (though I do believe that word definitions are arbitrary and depend on the consensus between the speaker(s) and listener(s) (not even necessarily a consensus among "society")). Even child sacrifice towards Tlaloc in order to make it rain could be framed as "moral" because those societies just wanted to avoid severe drought, therefore preventing harm from occurring (at least, from their own epistemological point of view). Some (though not all, admittedly) Islamic rules cannot even be framed in that manner, they seem like they were just formulated purely for the sake of sadism and nothing else. But whatever...
Sorry for the digression, anyway... applying the options in that page to Islamoid Polytheism:
1: Every god has the same morality, there are no moral differences between the gods. The differences are in terms of whether a god is of lightning, wind, death, crops, rain, etc.
2: There is one 'god of morality' (in this case, the god associated with the Islamoid set of rules), and that is the god whose morality must be followed. The other gods are not moral-givers, though they may be useful to have in a pantheon for other reasons (e.g. they can help with the crops or something).
3: No god by itself has the full morality, the one morality is constructed from the prohibitions and requirements of every god added together: in the case of Islamoid Polytheism, there is a god of anti-homosexuality, a god of anti-alcohol, a god of anti-bacon, a god of anti-"sex before/outside marriage", a god of anti-apostasy, a god of anti-iconography and so on. The prohibitions and requirements of all the gods combined together is what forms the Islamoid set of rules.
4: Morality has nothing to do with the gods, but there is one, say, "objective" morality, based on "society's best interest". So, yeah, there can be versions of Islamoid Polytheism where the set of rules does not come from the gods but from human beings who have decided that the Islamoid set of rules is the best set of rules that can ever be.
I had a sudden epiphany, one of those "aha" moments! So, basically, it's possible to somewhat argue for a moral version of Islam, by saying that what is haram (forbidden) in Islam causes psychological damage in the minds of Muslims, and that therefore it should remain forbidden (out of compassion, to avoid causing psychological suffering). There is one little problem, though. Let's say for instance that two men have gay sex in private, and that nobody else knows. There is no ground to prohibit such action, even with that argument. And here's where the epiphany comes in. If one postulates the existence of a cosmic mind that perceives everything and suffers psychological damage anytime something haram is performed, then a moral argument can be made to prohibit haram things. Even here, there's a significant problem: the existence of such cosmic mind directly contradicts Islamic monotheism. So, it cannot be argued in standard Islam. However...
...Islamoid Polytheism has no such problem! It could very well be that one god is such cosmic mind, and that the other gods give instructions explaining what causes psychological damage to the cosmic god. Forbidding haram things, in this version of Islamoid Polytheism, is done for moral reasons: out of compassion towards the cosmic god, to prevent its suffering. So this is one of the way morality can emerge out of Islamoid Polytheism, and the set of rules are there for moral reasons! Hmm... interesting!
Hmm... but now that I'm thinking of it... an Islamoid Monotheism is perfectly plausible! With a panpsychist conception of reality, a cosmic mind can easily be postulated... but it doesn't need other gods! It can very well be that the cosmic mind itself explained what it is that made it suffer, and begged humans to not do those things! And Islamoid Atheism can be formulated as well! For instance, doing haram things may cause the release of "low-vibration energies" in the environment, which may cause troubles, and that's why they may be forbidden! No deity needed! Ah, I see... and why stop at creating borrowing from Rodinia and bringing into our planet weird versions of Islam? All other religions and philosophies (even secular/non-religious/non-theistic) can be modified as well! Hmm... I'll rewrite this page from scratch in order to reflect that! What an amazing idea!