Can Muslims question their faith and what they perceive as God's rules?

Many people told me that Muslims aren’t supposed to question their faith with all its rules. However, I think that well-educated Muslims (as well as well-educated Jews and Christians) should question everything. Religious beliefs without critical thinking are empty and meaningless. Believers with brains running on autopilot not only dishonor God’s wonderful creation like the universe, planet Earth, life on Earth and especially human beings capable of making some sense of our universe. Humans are not mindless robots blindly following some binary code being carried out in their CPUs.

But questioning our faiths and all of God’s rules by applying critical thinking can also lead to answers why many elements of our faiths and their rules actually make a lot of sense. Human altruism for example does have survival value, if you look at it from an evolutionary perspective. Then look at Zakat, the third pillar of Islam. It makes a lot of sense. Or take daily prayer. It makes a lot of sense. It slows down our minds, especially in a technologically advanced world where everything seems to accelerate. Prayers can give us back our strength and focus.

Jesus said that if someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. This metaphor is reflected in various nonviolent resistance strategies that led India into independence and helped Martin Luther King’s dream come true. It even brought down the Berlin Wall in 1989.

I think many rules are actually rules invented by humans. They are cultural traditions. For example that Catholic priests can’t marry or that Muslims should not eat pork. The latter was invented because there were no refrigerators in the 5th century and extreme heat can render pork inedible. If people eat it they can get very sick. But there’s more it. Food and the preparation of food became a symbol and a set of rituals which are very important for social bonding. Therefore even in 2010 with plenty of refrigerators not eating pork can make sense. Muslims share common rituals. Christians share common rituals. Jews share common rituals. Hindus share common rituals. Wikipedia states that the purposes of rituals are varied; with religious obligations or ideals, satisfaction of spiritual or emotional needs of the practitioners, strengthening of social bonds, social and moral education, demonstration of respect or submission, stating one’s affiliation, obtaining social acceptance or approval for some event or just for the pleasure of the ritual itself.

So to me eating pork in an abstract form isn’t a sin. Same as eating meat on Friday for Christians. It simply means that these believers do not share all rituals common in their religion. If God exists he loves people regardless of whether they eat pork or not. God loves people when they care for the poor. I think we have to keep in mind that religions do evolve. They cannot be frozen at a particular point in the past. Religions do have to make sense in the context of today’s world. Do they?

If educated religious believers are convinced they are doing the right thing because of their critical thinking, then their belief has true value. If you force people to believe in God or even make threats that atheism is punishable by death and the belief in the Prophet is mandatory, such a belief is essentially worthless. Only after Muslims and Christians and Jews have dealt with their doubts and questioned their belief can they become true believers. Do you agree?

What are the views of the Muslim communities when it comes to questioning their faith and God’s rules?