Quote Originally Posted by Watchman
So ? Any Scripture always requires interpretation, doubly so if you're going to start deriving practical stuff like legislation out of it (something not exactly confined to Muslims). The Muslims at least purported to base very considerable parts of their laws on it; which naturally necessitated a whole lot of de facto "active reading" of the holy texts to see if there was something there that could be used as a guideline in the first place, and then determine what the fig it meant in practice. They had a whole class of literati whose one main job was specifically this, although I understand the institution decayed somewhat at some point.

And of course two sages could come to completely different rulings from the exact same passages. That's people for you.

As a minor reminder, one would point out that the Catholic Church once fought tooth and nail against the Bible getting translated... There have also been attempts at basing state laws on literalist readings of the Bible, chiefly by hardline Protestants (Cromwell's Puritans tried something like that, as well as Carolus XI of Sweden) for that matter.


Scriptures are nothing more than texts, and nigh invariably rather cryptic in meaning at that. The meaning of their contents, and any practical policies based on such, are supplied by the readership - whatever they might like to think. The Church didn't fight to keep the Bible in Latin just for shit and giggles, after all; it had a bit of a monopoly to maintain.
This does not address the purported absolute divine representation of the Qur'an. You are comparing apples with oranges, put mildly. That muslims revolve their entire legislation, and jurisprudence upon Islamic principles does not negate the fundamental weaknesses of the Islamic literal corpus. It's not just "So?" as you so succinctly put it, it should rather trigger the reaction of "How the hell did those buggers justify overlooking this obvious blunder?". I can easily spot a thousand other ways of conveniently putting the more embarassing aspects of Islam under the rug. That people do have the natural distinction (At the individual level) of interpreting things differently is not exactly breaking any grounds in my perception of Islam. I'm pointing out the philosophical problem which arises whenever the divine representation of the Qur'an is mentioned. Do you think the Qur'an, touting itself clear as glass and the ultimate source of the truth would allow for the natural human breadth of interpretation in finding truth? Then what is then the purpose of a religious book that purports itself the moral roadmap and compass of ethics and morality? Now of course, I'm not stupid in basing my entire criticism of Islam on mere polemics of the religious literary core, but I take upon myself many facets.

Like I said before, there are many ways of responding to your previous rhetorical answer; Perhaps the more powerful way is to address the conduct of Mohammed Ibn Abd'allah, as a far much more unique aspect of Islam, if the philosophical problems in the divine representation of the Qur'an does not convince you.