Muslims V Christians V Satanists V Conspiracy theorists V ?

[nomadjack]

[nomadjack]

From the same article you referenced. Did you just not read all of it or did you cherry pick and leave out the bits that didn't fit your argument?

http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t243/e275

Discovering Meaning.

Following the death of the Prophet, the Islamic community grew rapidly, and theological conflicts emerged among the believers. A significant doctrinal dispute occurred during the 700s. At that time, a group of thinkers called Mu'tazili departed from the mainstream Islamic belief that the Qur'an is eternal and uncreated. In their view, God's uniqueness and unity is absolute, and therefore, nothing else besides God could exist for eternity. Consequently, the Mu'tazili taught that while the Qur'an expresses God's eternal will, he created the Qur'an itself at some point in time.

In these and other disagreements about conceptual and practical matters, Muslims looked to the Qur'an for solutions. The correct explanation and interpretation of the sacred text became the focus of a special branch of learning called tafsir. For centuries, Islamic scholars have devoted their careers to interpreting the book's passages. During the medieval period, several Muslim thinkers produced noteworthy commentaries on the Qur'an.

The rise of modernism during the late 1800s brought new influences to Qur'anic studies. By that time, colonial rule had severely undermined the political and cultural authority of the Islamic state and society. Modernists noted that the early followers of Islam were willing to accommodate new ideas in their understanding of the Qur'an and its guidelines for society. As a result, during the Middle Ages, the Islamic societies had thriving centers of learning. The modern reformers advocated a revival of this earlier flexibility as a way to restore dignity and greatness to the Muslim world. They believed that a flexible and continuous reinterpretation of the Qur'an would enable Muslims to reform various aspects of their societies, making them more suited to modern life.

[HAL]

No I didn't not read all of it or did you cherry pick and leave out the bits that didn't fit your argument. What's not read all of it or did you cherry pick and leave out the bits that didn't fit your argument like?

[3.14159]

[Wokko]

You're again conflating interpretation with NOT believing that what is written in the Quran is the immutable truth, that which Allah told directly to Mohammed and is unquestionable.

Now of course there are phrases that people look at and decide "It means this" or "It means that", that is why I said that "interpretation" was a bad word for me to use initially. Both those people still think that what is written is literally exactly what it says and needs to be followed verbatim. The devil may be in the details for various sects and scholars, but those details are still the 100% literal word of God through his prophet.

[pietillidie]

Wokko, you're tangling yourself in knots here. The last four plus decades of literary studies has debated "the locus of meaning" in the process of "reading" "textual artifacts" for this very reason: There is apparently no one "meaning" in any text, with even the authors not being aware of the full range of their own "meanings".

Indeed, there is no "literal meaning" of anything that isn't substantially imposed by some authority and power centre somewhere, with ancient holy texts being classic cases in point. The very notion of singular meanings is now considered quaint at best within the arts and humanities for good reason: Given what we now know about the big bad world, the history of human nonsense, and our own limitations and delusions, the notion of singular meanings is simply unsustainable.

Thus, when we call people "biblical literalists", we're referring to their bizarre miscomprehension that texts have single, universal meanings, and that they as readers somehow have access to those single, universal meanings.

So, when you say "they're Quranic literalists", you're referring to people's imaginings about the world. That is, textual literalists imagine (a) there can be only one meaning, (b) there is only one meaning, and (c) they miraculously have access to this one meaning. The third clause (c) is required because plainly in the world there are many different interpretations, so the only way to rein those in and prove (a) and (b) is to claim special insight and criticise (or demonise and persecute) different interpretations.

But you can't say ghosts are imaginary and then go on to discuss the evils of ghosts and the need to stop them causing havoc. That makes you the literalist here, and it's not surprising because your need to justify to yourself that you've identified the root of evil in Islam is causing you to grope around for fundamentals that don't exist.

What you ought to be discussing is the social psychiatry of fundamentalism as a general, scientific phenomenon, and seeing if you can find ways of mapping its many and various manifestations usefully.

As I've tried to explain to you, it's the emotional need which pushes people over the edge in their efforts to maintain ideas central to their sense of personal meaning and efficacy which is the psychiatric hallmark of fundamentalism. That excess results in what we call "splitting", very often into the binary categories of good (us) and evil (them).

You have yet again vividly demonstrated your own inner fundamentalist here, and that accords with your attraction to the fundamentalist economics and morality of Libertarianism, that perfect equilibrium where the received, "unfettered" order is the natural balance, and active change and deviation are corrupt and evil imbalances to be rectified by restoring the natural order of things (which miraculously involves putting us back at the head of the order of things with supreme control over others!).

[David]

[pietillidie]

Wokko doesn't know the background of the theology of biblical inspiration, and is confusing "literalism" with what is generally believed, i.e., "inerrancy", which in most cases translates to "inerrancy in matters of moral authority". Thus, he seems to be thinking Christian fundamentalists don't stone people or cast menstruating women from the camp, hence they're not "literalists", and therefore not "fundamentalists". But, in this case, Wokko, "literalism" is not to be taken "literally"!

No doubt in some places and rhetoric it would appear to be the case that there are "literalists", and some folk might even be under the delusion that they are "literalists" (i.e., "originalists")! But, as explained somewhere above, the very notion is an impossibility. I mean, do you really think these people you've never met whose countries you've never seen wander around "literally" re-enacting the sixth century? Sure, there are some places which no doubt seem more like that due to their level of urban and economic development, while many components of ancient culture no doubt linger on in various places, as they do all over the world.

But when you look at the streets of Tehran, Jakarta, Istanbul, Amman, Ashgabat, Kuala Lumpur, Marseilles and Reading West, do you really see the "literal" sixth century, even in photos? Shariah police and stonings don't account for 2B lives dispersed across the world, despite what Fox News might have you believe. You simply can't take the extremely trivial exaggerations of the media and bloggers literally. Such people are "professional informationists" who think their handful of hotel stays and sightseeing tours in the Middle East and North Africa, and piles of reading and tweets, mean they really understand the vast diversity and complexity of 2B Muslim people and some unknown number of sub-groups and sub-peoples they've never met or lived with. They crap on and on, being wrong time and again, with the fact they have no actual clue about the lived world beyond somehow failing to curb their pronouncements.

Perhaps I'm slow, but I only know a modest amount about South Korea after having lived there for a decade plus! My guess is that the claims of others to know the lived experience of people from thousands of miles in vastly different world contexts is much more likely (a) omniscience fantasy, or (b) anxiety-driven OCD (i.e., the need for control) than anything approaching expertise. Both are immature defenses and ones I personally recognise as I am also prone to them! (My guess is David, Tannin and I probably all are, just in case that's not bleedingly obvious ).

Back to biblical authority, your approach is like thinking Christianity must "literally" look like the Xth century because churches still use Latin, priests still wear stupid outfits, and newcomers are still baptised in the holy waters of the spirit. Yes, religion keeps it's head in some idealised past (and future), but it's not literally living there, despite it's ridiculous liturgies, 18th-century hymns and claims to be re-enacting the early church of the Acts of the Apostles (earlier is always purer, of course, as with the US constitution, lol).

But, as I say, the main problem here is you're desperately trying to fill in your knowledge gaps in order to maintain that beloved map of good and evil you can't bring yourself to let go of. Anyhow, to fill you in a bit, within the Christian context, the debate is not about "literal" versus "non-literal", it's about "inerrant moral guidance" (more conservative/fundamentalist churches) versus a "dynamic moral equivalency" which can be adapted to all ages and places at the level of broad principle (more liberal, modern churches).

The conservative end of the religion takes things more "literally" not because it does this consistently and has a rational argument for doing so, and obviously not because it actually lives in the sixth century, but because it consists of something like (a) conservative authoritarians clinging to the past order and looking for any old argument to force people to remain under their control, and (b) fearful, uncertain folk looking to be controlled by a strong father figure. The liberal end of the religion takes a much more metaphorical approach because it has a greater tolerance and desire for change, ambiguity and modernisation.

And, as we know, that continuum exists pretty much everywhere.

Anyhow, the last thing I will say to you on this is that we've got virtually zero cognitive science of religion and belief at one end, and virtually zero lived experience of even the tiniest fraction of 2B extremely diverse Muslim lives at the other. If you still think it's ethical to have a say in the lives of others in the light of such a monstrous knowledge gap, beyond the obvious of trying to secure ourselves against terrorism or conversely helping folk out as needed, then there's not much more to be said because we have extremely different ethical standards.

[think positive]

Gees everyone getting all tangled in the words of 2 books, that the same people argue black and blue, are more fiction than fact.

All religious deeds should be prefaced "in the name of" or even better "I'm using...... As an excuse".

Ok the nazis might have been of Christian faith, but did they come out and say Jesus made me do it?

Well these Isis tools do come out and say the prophet says this is what we must do. And maybe in the past Christians have used the "good" book to hurt other folks. Maybe the not so distant past. But not In this day and age where surely, we know better?

As with any terrorist group, take out their excuses, they are just a bunch of greedy, power hungry, immoral, murders.

And yeah I know I know, the USA oil excuse is no better. But they didn't go around blowing up unsuspecting civilians going around their everyday life.

Remember 'born on the fourth of July'? One two three four, we don't want your $£$%^%%$ war.

Those headscarved women fighting on the front line, protecting their children. Gees, they are killing their own, they are the scum of the earth. It's not a Muslim thing, it's a bunch of terrorists with piss poor excuses. It's like the nazis all over again. Crazy, just $£$%^%%$ unbelievably crazy, in this day and age.

[David]

[Jezza]

[think positive]

[David]

ISIS, naturally.

[5150]

[3.14159]