Will.... please read the Haditha for which the Imams quote in such instances.
You'll quickly find that it was ancient cultures which adapted the relatively modern religions... not the other way around. In the same way that, while Jesus said absolutely nothing about homosexuality, homophobia had spread itself deeply into Christianity.
You MUST separate the scripture and the implementation of the religion if you are going to attack the religion. Otherwise, you're falling into the same logical fallacy as Glen Beck (Germany had socialized medicine, Obama wants socialized medicine... Obama = Nazi!).
In addition, I don't believe you understand how the Muslim world faiths are built. The Qur'an is a very, very, short book. It has a couple of laws and teachings, but one can pull very little from it. These are the words of God in their faith. Where the Imams get their bat shit crazy stuff from are almost always from relatively innocent statements in the Haditha.
Haditha is a collection of teachings from Muhammad, recited some 60 years post-facto from people who were there, and cross referenced to be relatively accurate. In the Haditha innocuous statements get severely misinterpreted and changed into something different.... to continue old traditions. Just like how in Lebanon/Egypt the veil is a simple had scarf, and in Persia and many of the 'stans the veil is a full separation.... these traditions existed long before and the interpretation shifted with the cultures it crossed.
You're completely incorrect when you point out "the scriptures don't change".. because they do.
Quote:
My mother, a Catholic, supports abortion, supports divorce, supports contraception, supports homosexual rights, etc. So what does that mean when she opens up the inerrant word of the Christian God and sees these things basically set in stone? She won't admit it to herself in such blatant terms, but she thinks parts of the Bible are flat out wrong. She thinks things that the Vicar of Christ says are flat out wrong. She disbelieves inerrancy. She probably believes that Jesus died on the cross for her original and subsequent sins, but that's hardly the only thing in the Bible. Worse still, when she's confronted by a fundy armed with specific Bible verses, there are things she just can't reconcile, so she reverts. I've actually seen her change her stance on homosexuality (temporarily) when confronted by a nutter wielding a Bible and calling out specific quotes about homosexuals. It kinda sucked.
Read more: http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/tilted-...#ixzz0r24g2ZvB
|
Your mother should read older interpretations of the Bible. In the High Middle Ages, they actually understood the bible's complexity much more than we do today. They understood then that the Bible is not the word of God, as they had various Bibles which said different things. They also cared enough to research the historical allegories, to understand the meanings within different statements. Us reading the Bible today is like a Chinese man who's just learning English reading a statement of "one in hand and one in the bush". We understand the phrase, broken as it is, but there is no way that man would possibly understand it without the proper education on the phrase.
For example, if they pull out the Sodom and Gommorah tale about homosexuality... "...let them out so that we may know them..." It gets interpreted modernly that everyone in the city was gay so god smote it. In reality it was breaking the sacred duties of a host against his guest... a guest should never be gang-raped while the host can prevent it (especially angels I guess). If fundy's dont believe it... then simply ask them why would he offer up his own daughter to be gang-raped? The duty of the host/guest was more important than preventing the rape of your own daughters... something which could never be properly understood today. It said nothing about homosexuality, it was rape.
Another example off the top of my head which is always misinterpreted modernly is why Sloth is a deadly sin and the phrase "idle hands do the devil's work". The definition of sloth has changed over the centuries, most notably in the 1800s with our own knowledge of depression. Sloth isn't a deadly sin because everyone needs to pull their own weight to survive... but because of a misunderstanding of depression. Depression makes it hard to get out of bed, it saps energy and causes you to not care about work... and causes one to do the only unforgivable sin (suicide). So naturally they determined the actions they saw prior to the suicide made the suicide occur. Sloth as a sin is only misinterpreted in the modern interpretations, just as the previous one. So if you wish to give your mother ammunition against fundys, she'll have to go back to older (and more knowledgeable interpretations).