"He who hath ears to hear, let him hear"

Wise words indeed, from whoever it was who wrote Matthew 11:15

But words that you persistently choose to ignore, Boaz, proving rather neatly the accusations against you concerning you ability to cherry-pick only those parts of the Bible or Qur'an that suit your specific beliefs.

Your own arguments add to the evidence. Most people use arguments to defend their position, not to undermine it:

>>EXAMPLE 1. "if your eye sins against you, GOUGE it out" etc. (Symbolic)...
...PAUL: When Paul says pastorally "men, treat the younger women as sisters in all purity" he means exactly that...literally.<<

What you fail to explain is the basis for your determination of the interpretation.

It is entirely insufficient to say that they are "based on context, reason and culture."

Specifically, because it is you who determines the context.

It is your reason that is applied.

And - the big give-away - that it is measured solely against the culture of your specific religious affiliation and leanings.

That, I'm afraid, is not only illogically shaky turf, it is appallingly arrogant of you to assume that the world has to see things exactly the way that you do.

All this would be nothing more than a mildly amusing quirk, if it weren't for the fact that you use this method to constantly vilify and insult Muslims.

You do this by choosing quotations from the Qur'an that portray their religion in the most violent manner possible, applying your personal "this is literal" label to everything that denigrates Islam.

You cannot claim "I didn't realise that's the way it is perceived", because you are regularly reminded of it on this forum.

>>Your primary difficulty is the issue of "literalness" and "modern practitioners". Bear with me here, as it will take a bit to develop this.<<

You don't "develop", Boaz.

You spin.

BB: contestable.

Methodological relativism is the best tool to apply here. Suspend your own ethnocentrism and open a window into the ancient world. Let the stale air of historical revisionism blow out. Substantiate what you see by peer review, cross-referencing with other ancient texts.

A Christian can be relativist to a certain degree, however, no Christian will argue that the distance of time or place renders the experiences of Israel before and after Christ as irrelevant to the modern experience. Sure there are non-universal traits, that were specific to the time and culture and that are alien to life as we know it. However, Christians are absolutist in their core belief: the bible is the Word of God which transcends time and place.

When a Christian calls for context to be wrapped around a biblical quote, it is more than a call for historical or cultural context. It is a call to understand scripture in its entirety. The bible cannot be accused of inconsistency, even though certain passages seem to jar with others. When God says “I am the Alpha and the Omega”, it applies to the beginning, the end, and everything in between.

As the scriptures have been scruitinized by scholars for millennia, do your views hold up to cross-examination? Are you wiser/smarter/more informed than the legions of scholars and detractors who came before you? Is your criticism original? Is there a danger that you are not getting it due to some deficiency in your understanding?

Living life by biblical principles is only possible once you have accepted the bible as the word of God. For each and every bible passage, ask “What does this teach me about God’s character, God’s plan or God’s purpose?” and then, “How does this apply to me?”

Pericles, your persistent attack on BD personally, his methodology, his logic, his bias, his beliefs, masks an inability to mount an argument against his basic premise. MIA: an insightful critique on K Trad.

KT: Thank you for your continued presence. As you are still here, please answer the questions that have been addressed to you.

GrahamY: <<It gets difficult to convince people to write for OLO if posters are just going to call them names. If this thread doesn't pick-up its act we will start deleting any responses that are even vaguely a flame. Some of the above are perilously close to being just that, and perhaps cross the line - we have that under consideration at the moment.>>
Posted by GrahamY, Friday, 9 May 2008 12:12:14 PM

"Perilously close" and "Under consideration"

Is your concern driven over an inability to attract writers? What about that old "glass houses" saying, doesn't that apply anymore? Check Ruby Soho's article as a good example.

Or, has legal action been threatened?

I agree that many can lift their game in regard to name-calling and personal attacks. However, your choice of language is more alarmist than mere "sticks and stones" stuff or justifying the choice of K Trad as a contributor. Are there deeper issues?

I can't help but notice that you don't seem to have trouble attracting the advertisors... or IS that the problem?

What the...?

katieO, fair enough. i don't want to distract from the main point of my post, so let's change the reference to absurdity/nastiness in whichever book. please read my post as referring to "prima facie absurdity" or "absurdity if taken literally", and so forth. will that suffice? If you do so, i think the point i am making still stands.

the point is, as a non-adherent, i simply don't care about either apparent or actual absurdity/nastiness in religious texts. all i care about is what the current believers make of it.

let's take biblical references to slavery. you may interpet and contextualize, treat as metaphor, or just say god was having a bad day, and i don't care. i may be impressed by your scholarship or bemused, but i really don't care.

what do i care about? i care that you are not actually enslaving people, and that you are not arguing it is o.k. to do so. that's it. how you get there, i simply don't care.

may you judge muslims and muslim beliefs? of course! all i am saying is that the same fairness be accorded to muslims and their actual beliefs, that it is to be judged by what muslims say and do, not by a literal reading of the koran. and it is most definitely not done by cherry-picking.

and here is an important point: you are to play fair, even if muslims make some general claim about koranic truth.

for example, you wrote "... Christians are absolutist in their core belief: the bible is the Word of God which transcends time and place."

i very much doubt that all proclaimed christians agree with you, but never mind. i also doubt that you can consistently treat the bible in this way, but that doesn't matter either.

what matters is that, even though you are making a strong universal statement about the bible being the word of god, i still have no right to cherry-pick in order to accuse you of defending slavery.

katieO, play fair and in good faith. cherry-picking is the furthest reaches from this.

Dear Pericles.

once again we find ourselves up against the problem of your lack of knowledge and understanding about how faith communities work.

I'll try to limit this post to just "1" main point, which we might just be able to thrash out to a reasonable conclusion.

You made all manner of wild claim about:

<<Specifically, because it is YOU who determines the context.
It is YOUR reason that is applied.>>

Now..lets take just ONE example..and not wander around the bush like we usually do.

QURAN surah 9:29
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/009.qmt.html#009.029
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/maududi/mau9.html (for the historical background ala Maududi)

HADITH BUKHARI
Volume 4, Book 53, Number 386:

Narrated Jubair bin Haiya: http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari/053.sbt.html#004.053.386

Please read these passages. Now..if you want to get really technical, and go deeper, you can also search out who is 'Jubair bin Haiya' and see his connection to Mohammad.

One way of gaining more insight is:
a) do a Wiki search.
b) Use the Quran/hadith search engine in the site linked, using that name, and see what is said in other places about him.

Gradually, you build up a picture of where it all fits together.

I've done this. Have you?

SOURCES. Another thing you must realize is that the 2 above mentioned sources (Quran/Hadith) are the primary and secondary ones that all Muslims refer to. There is nothing earlier. While there is dispute about some hadith for political reasons, related to the Abbasid/Umayyad split, the hadith mentioned above is not in any dispute to my knowledge.

QUESTIONs.

1/ As you read the hadith, and particularly what Al-Mughira says to the Persian envoy.. can you retain even a shred of intellectual honesty by repeating the baseless claims about 'MY' interpretaion? (of 9:29)I was simply relating Al Mughira's interpretation!

2/ IF....you disagree with Al Mughira, why, on what grounds?

KAYSAR.. coffee? why not, I'll raise you a "video'd interview":) and we can offer it to TT and ACA. For a PRICE of course, proceeds to homeless shelters.

Bushbasher,

1) No I wasn’t referring to you. That’s why I didn’t say “you Christian haters”
2) The inference from the statement that there are ugly passages in both texts is that there is no point in suggesting one is any more violence provoking or cruel, than the other.

I have not argued that all Muslims take a literalist approach to the Koran. I specifically made the point that many, if not most, don’t. What I am saying is that the radical Islamists are not twisting the words of the Koran in order to further their aims. They actually are practicing a version of Islam entirely compatible with a literal reading of the Koran.

In this thread I have attempted to question Keyser Trad’s role as a so called “moderate” muslim spokesperson. I don’t deny that moderates exist; it just seems to me Keyser Trad isn’t one of them.

You say >> “if you want to argue that today fundamentalist islam is more of a problem than fundamentalist christianity, i would agree. you may even argue that it is in the nature of islam that it is more prone to fundamentalism, and i may even agree to that. the overwhelming majority of muslims (and christians) i have met have been admirable, loving people, but i don't deny the nastiness of fundamentalist islam.”

I entirely agree with this.

All I am trying to highlight is the growing influence of the literalists, specifically among the younger generation; and the obvious incompatibility of fundamentalism with western democracies. I find myself regularly having to face soft-lefties who think WE are the problem, not the fundamentalists. I admit that this kind of black armband thinking leaves me impatient and snarky at times.