Pericles, I'm in total admiration with your ability in responding to and boundless patience with Boazy.

I almost choked on the Shiraz I was sipping while settling down to read some pithy debate on OLO when I read the INTERPRETATION DEFINITION of Holy texts by our resident bible and Quran interpreter Boazy-David. My word. To be so sure of knowing the RIGHT interpretation.

David, you're not likening yourself to your biblical namesake, that Philistine slaying decendent from faithful Ruth are you? Just wondering why you think you know the right interpretation.

Goodthief, would love to get to some deeper layers of discussion. I've had some of my most profound discussions with an elderly, very knowledgable and very humble Catholic priest.

As to the article. Surely it is inevitable that Islam will have a renaisance. Whether that is from the West or not probably doesn't matter. Aqvarivs had some very interesting and valid points on this.

Boaz and Pericles, At risk of being contrary, I don't agree with either of you. Or, if you prefer, I want to offer a third view about interpretation. At least, I think it's a third view.

I think that interpreting a document means trying to get to the meaning intended by the author. However -
i) the author might have intended more than one meaning;
ii) or intended the material to be adaptive;
iii) or even intended it to be obscure;
iv) there might be more than one author;
v) or it might have been ghost-written;
vi) the document under discussion might not be an original, but itself a copy that is unavoidably interpretive;
vii) (There's probably a vii)

So, there might be a range of reasonable interpretations - rather than one true one. A limited range, though. Pericles’ American was being reasonable, and was in the ball-park (if you will excuse me), so I don't think it's open season on interpreting text.

There’s another important distinction – between knowing there is a true interpretation (or, at least, a finite range) and knowing one has got it! This doubt might spring from humility, not a lack of decisiveness.

So, when a Bible-type like myself is looking at a passage that is of interest, my question is: “What is God saying to me? That is, what is God saying to me here and now?” My answer will be nothing better than my best shot. My best shot will involve serious reading of, under, behind the passage (various contextual dimensions), some hard thinking and some prayer. (I don’t expect the Dawkinsians to read this with composure.)

I find literalism attractive, when fatigued.

Yvonne, I'm not an “elderly, very knowledgeable and very humble Catholic priest”, but I am a shiraz man.

Pax,

Goodthief, I like the way you read your bible, I like your take on interpretation and you like Shiraz. Sounds like an excellent mix for a great debate.

And if when you say God, I say Good, we might not even have too fierce an argument. That is until we get to the nature of God.

bigmal,
I used to tell my students when discussing their (maths) papers: "I think I know what you wanted to say, but I have to mark you on what you wrote and not on what I think you thought." Perhaps one should also judge the open letter by the Islamic scholars on what they wrote rather than on what we think they might have thought.

aqvarivs,
I would agree with all that you wrote but perhaps there is also the possibility that what D. Treadgold wrote about Far East over thirty years ago could also be applied to present day Middle East: "The central problem is one of thought, and its focus as before lies not in the East but in the West itself; even if the Western mind is suffering from a paralysis ultimately residing in the spirit or the will, the problem remains to be worked out in the intellectual domain. ... countries outside the West have always responded to the doctrinal innovation of the West, and my do so again." (The West i Russia and China, CUP 1973, Vol. 2, p. 178).

goodthief,
Words of appreciation from somebody who feels more at home with mathematics and philosophy of science than with e.g. Gadamer and literary criticism.

Poor old RobbyH. It appears nobody ever warned him that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. He talks about fairy tales, but yet he accepts philosophical naturalism and its "just-so" narratives about the universe and life. Unobservable, untestable, and therefore, unfalsifiable "just-so" stories with no basis in empirical evidence. Sounds like "faith" to me.

As for overreaching, I find it somewhat bemusing that RobbyH can accuse me of going overboard in my previous post, but yet defends anti-green in his demands that atheism be imposed on the entire populace for the alleged benefit of mankind.

George, not to dispute your post but, the difficulty with harking back to a thirty year old theory on the condition of nations and what is at most influence leaves out the following thirty years of change(hopefully progress)and especially the instigation of some change made by the to and from of the migration of peoples. Todays Australia does not mirror 1977. There were Muslims happily residing in Australia and happy to be Australian in 1977. What changed? Science, technology, medicine, etc. as well as the national and cultural make up of Australia, and in broader terms due to all this change, Australian society.
Imagine living in a country where one can observe all this exciting advancement on television but, not allowed to experience it first hand or freely express ones frustration of such backwardness thanks to political and religious restrictions. Some one has to be blamed. If blaming your government can get you dead, you blame the instigators. So today from closed, heavily controlled societies we have hatred for the "west" and "America", and sometimes it is even expressed as hatred for whites.
Observe the social differences between say Dubai and Iran, or Saudi-Arabia.

Here is a little something from my Canadian friend.
http://www.nowpublic.com/a_widow_into_iran