Is SeekersGuidance reliable?

A lot of people seem to recommend SG, especially here on reddit, sometimes I'll see people recommend it as an alternative to IslamQA net info, because they find it too extreme. SG depicts themselves as committed to the prophetic tradition, as per their about us page, but they always seemed sus to me so I decided to take a closer look.

Initial impressions, aside from the pics of women on their site, you can tell they take a more casual approach, their articles that answer fiqh questions are written like personal essays, and rarely have references to Quran/hadith, scholarly work, etc.

In this article Can a Husband Marry a Second Wife Without His First Wife’s Permission?, he basically says scholars today say its generally wrong, cites nothing except speculation on what harm it may cause, doesn't even cite who some of these scholars are. He doesn't even answer the question, lol. This article was written by the founder and leader of the site Faraz Rabbani.

Lets look at some more sus articles from their site, I'll just briefly go over them.

Am I a ‘Dayyuth’ If I Let My Wife Go out Without Hijab? A mans wife doesn't wear hijab outside, what do they advise him? Essentially just make dua and talk to her, tell her how you 'feel', teach her, bring others to talk to her. Nothing about disciplining her if she still refuses, as per whats advised in the Quran.

Should Women Refuse Polygamy in This World Because They Have to Share Their Husbands in the Next World Inevitably? This one isn't too bad but it just ends really weird, so its worth mentioning. They end with this:

Perhaps you can just marry a jinn in Paradise, and not worry about mankind at all:

And then it links to their article about if they can marry jinn in paradise.

Why Are Women Not Permitted to Marry More Than One Husband in Islam? This one is written by 'Ustadha' Raidah Shah Idil, remember this name because she'll come up quite a bit. In this article she tries to explore the wisdom behind polygyny, but she uses the common feminist reformist explanation, "Islam didn't start this, it just put a restriction".

Polygamy in today’s age opens the door to financial, emotional and spiritual abuse.

"Spiritual abuse" is basically a dog whistle for these liberal reformist types, anytime you hear this term used, you know you shouldn't take them seriously.

At one point she tries to justify why polyandry is not allowed because women with four husbands would have the burden of four mother in-laws... huh? Then she talks about female sexuality for some reason, and how little its written about in Islamic scholarship.

Can I Be the Second Wife to an Already Married Man With Children? Again written by Idil. A woman used to have this haram relationship, they broke it off, he later got extremely religious and married another woman, this woman asks him if he can be a second wife and he's open to it. Idil is against it, you'd think it was because of this specific scenario, but no she's against it because she's against polygyny in general, she gives the common liberal talking points, that he'll keep you as a secret wife and abuse you, even if he does tell his first wife she'll take away his kids and break the family. She accuses the guy of being controlling even though nothing the questioner says indicated that.

I Dislike My Wife’s Interactions With Her Male Relatives. What Do I Do? Again Idil. Mans wife mixes too freely with her non mahram male relatives, asks advice. Idil says:

To save your marriage, I suggest that you stop all attempts at controlling her behaviour. Focus on building happier memories with her.

Basically the same "teach, talk, tell her how you feel" advise, she even shills their marriage course. She also recommends:

I encourage you to look inwards, instead of outwards. What are your own shortcomings? How can you better worship Allah? How do you want to improve your relationship with the Creator, as well as creation?

Rather than preoccupy yourself with her flaws, preoccupy yourself with your own. It is far easier to find fault with those around us, instead of admitting that our own selves require much work.

I Committed Zina and Am Now Pregnant. What Do I Do? This ones a doozy, and even SG realized since its not on their site anymore, this was back when they were called SeekersHub, I've linked an archived page. Guess who wrote this one, yup, Idil again.

Girl commits zina with boy many times, gets pregnant, her parents would never accept them marrying since he's lower status. Idil advises basically to repent, ditch this guy, and get an abortion!

You have a made a mistake, and you do not have to make it worse by continuing this pregnancy. Please do not feel pressured into getting married to this young man. You have up until 4 months of pregnancy to decide whether or not you want to keep your baby.

How is someone titled "Ustadha" so ignorant when it comes to this ruling in Islam! Not only was she ignorant, but how did they let this be published on the site? Even says "Checked & Approved by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani", the founder and leader of the site. No statement that they retracted the article either. Seems like she doesn't write articles for them anymore, but many of her articles are still on the site, a lot of the times one of few articles on these key controversial topics. I looked her up and I saw she has ties to liberal feminist Muslim deviants.

Some of you may know that the site also has had connections with Ingrid Mattson, a deviant who's been promoting (__) to Muslims, she's written articles for their site, she was a teacher for them and they promoted her courses. Even though she hasn't written on the site since 2020, her articles are still up too.