Reinterpretation in Iran

Submitted by juanon (United States), Jan 18, 2006 at 10:43

The last points in the article about Iran "granting" the right to seek divorce to women and the same recompanse for killing a Christian as for killing a Muslim are off the mark. Those may be innovations in Iran--and perhaps other obstensibly Muslim countries--but they have been part of Islam since the beginning.

There are hadiths, for example, of a woman divorcing her husband though he did not want to divorce and had not misbehaved toward her (ie, didn't abuse her or commit adultry) and after the prophet had even intervened on his behalf (as a friend, not as a prophet). Likewise, the Quran makes no distinction between the killing of an innocent Christian or Jew and the killing of an innocent Muslim.

So what these observations about Iran really illustrate is not that Islam needs to modernize it's interpretation of the Quran but return to the Quran and the true history of Islam.

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