reply to pipe dreams

Submitted by phonetics (Indonesia), Dec 12, 2006 at 02:17

As did Moses, Solomon, Daniel, Jeremiah, Peter, John and Paul, just to name few, interpretted their Bible so too the Qur'an has been interpretted in many different ways. It's not "text book" arabic so there are so many different ways of understanding it. If it were that literal why on earth do you think Shia's and sunni's are at odds against each other. Perhaps a little course on Hadits, Muhammadiyah, Ahmadiyah, and all the other very different interpretations of Islam would be a good start.

Islam is no different than any other religion, regarding basics. It can't be seen through one pair of eyes. Only the basics remain true. And those basics have no contradictions with other religions when concerned with humanity. You just have to dig a little deeper and see that it is not the Islam as portrayed by Radicals and Terrorists.

And perhaps the answer isn't about changing a religion. How about understanding it fully first. For a crash course you could start by reading Karen Armstrong and move on from there. If you could understand you'd find out that it was never about changing the religion but changing the peoples hard headed interpretations of tolerance when it comes to religion, and not just theirs.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".