The Pope is right: Islam is stuck.

Submitted by Carl Goldberg (United States), Jan 17, 2006 at 13:30

Dear Dr. Pipes,

Wishful thinking! The two examples you gave represent only slight changes in the Sharia, but are not a reinterpretation of the Koran. Yes, there are a couple of very isolated Islamic scholars, lone voices in the wilderness, who argue for a reinterpretation of the Koran, but you can count them on the fingers of one hand. See, for example, the interesting article by Sherman Jackson, a Moslem professor of Islamic law at the Univesity of Michigan on considering the jihad injunctions in the Koran to be limited to an earlier time in history and no longer valid.

I agree with the Pope. Islam is stuck in its own logic. No Moslem would dare to reinterpret the literal word of Allah or to consider that the entire Koran is anything but perfect and valid for all time. Once they start on that road, the entire theological edifice of Islam collapses. Even so-called moderate Moslems understand that, and so they pretend that the Koran does not really contain all the nasty passages which it obviously contains.

The best antidote to Moslem propaganda and apologetics is for everyone to read the entire Koran (in translation, of course) for themselves.

Carl Goldberg

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