Skip to main content

How to read

Brandon, always interesting and always Sirius, has some light to shine on both the breadth of the Muslim community and on how to read a religious text:
There is the further absurdity of going around and telling people that they're reading their own holy book incorrectly. It would make sense if the problem here were ignorance of the actual text of the Qur'an itself, but that's clearly not the problem. Indeed, there is no problem here at all except a made-up one. The meaning of any holy book is not how any Tom, Dick, and Harry think one can read the book, but how the religious community itself orders its own reading of the book. In Sunni Islam, the interpretation of the Qur'an is communal, not individual; the authority on what the Qur'an means is the consensus that builds up over time. It is a slow, hard way of reading a text, since your own reading is never complete until by the slow process of dialogue, prayer, and debate it passes into the community and comes back to you for further consideration. People who make the sort of argument noted above [ignoring convention and context] are not contributing to the interpretation of the text; it is almost as if a bunch of yokel fingerpainters were going about making snide remarks about how real painters were trying to avoid facing up to the messiness of paint. They are trying, somewhat irrationally and entirely arbitrarily, to foist a crude and fundamentalist mode of reading on people whose style of reading is much more sophisticated. The proper response to such people is: If you are incapable of reading books written for grown ups, perhaps you shouldn't read them.
Ouch. I like his point, however - and am glad to hear that there is such a tradition in Islam. I have always thought that one's bearings are hugely important in both reading and logic. In logic one has to assent to the terms and definitions before one can evaluate the argument itself. In reading, one has to have a sense of the context of any text. That means you need to know:
  • Who is author? Other writings by the same author can help us narrow the possibilities of what was intended.
  • What type of text is it, and what are its conventions? What do other texts in this form assume about the interplay between form and content?
  • Who is the intended audience? Can we make an educated guess? What would they most likley assume?
I don't participate in quoting verses because it is near senseless to compare different types of documents by different authors and read them as if they were written in a literal sense for twentieth century joes. 'God is the author' does not get around the objections. Of course God is the author of the book (and everything else too). He chose to use person X in a certain place and time, also to use a certain document style (conventionally or not). To overlook such details is disrespectful.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reuters joins CNN on the bench

Makes room for CanWest to join the majors Kudos to CanWest for calling a terrorist a terrorist . Many, including The Last Amazon , will be happy to hear it. Reuters is among the worst of the major western news services, where I would also place the BBC and the CBC. Unsurprisingly, Reuters is not happy about the changes CanWest made to Reuters wire stories: Our editorial policy is that we don't use emotive words when labeling someone," said David A. Schlesinger, Reuters' global managing editor. "Any paper can change copy and do whatever they want. But if a paper wants to change our copy that way, we would be more comfortable if they remove the byline." Mr. Schlesinger said he was concerned that changes like those made at CanWest could lead to "confusion" about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations. "My goal is to protect

Where credit is due

A good'un from Sawyer Brown . Thank God for You Well I've been called a self-made man Girl don't you believe it's true I know exactly how lucky I am When I'm gettin' this close to you It's high time I'm giving some praise To those that got me where I am today Chorus I got to thank momma for the cookin' Daddy for the whuppin' The devil for the trouble that I get into I got to give credit where credit is due I thank the bank for the money Thank God for you A strong heart and a willing hand That's the secret to my success A good woman - I try to be a good man A good job - Lord I know I've been blessed I'm just a part of a greater plan It doesn't matter which part I am Chorus I got to thank momma for the teachin' Daddy for the preachin' The devil for the trouble that I get into I got to give credit where credit is due I thank the bank for the money Thank God for you

A very limited form of inquiry

Real Clear Politics is carrying commentary on James Q. Wilson's WSJ article on ID (got that?). Wilson, the respected social scientist, gets it mostly right when he says that ID is not science because it can't be tested: So ID is not science. Does this mean that science, in any way, implies the non-existence of God? No. Does this mean that belief in God is irrational and that we should all be "free thinkers"? No. Does this mean that it is impossible to arbitrate between various theories of the existence/non-existence of God and come to some reasonable conclusions? No. Does this mean that we cannot say that humanity is meant to exist? No. In other words, rationality outside of science is quite possible, and has been around for a long time. How do you think humanity invented science in the first place? We surely did not do it scientifically. Science as we know it is the product of millennia of philosophical debate -- from Aristotle to Lakatos. Science depends upon phi