Or a Christian fundamentalist, or an Orthodox Jew, or a Hindu fundamentalist. _Literal_ belief in the tenets of any of these old religions is now absurd.
Don, don’t defang my point with your intellectually shallow moral equivalence. If those other religions are “absurd”, Islam is “superabsurd”, and stands in relation to absurdity in the same relationship as Nietzsche’s “Superman” stood to man. The fact that Muslims are still fighting over who was the rightful successor of Mohammed, while at least Christians, Jews and Hindus have joined the broader sweep of history, puts Islam in a class of absurdity all its own.
However, if taken as metaphors or legends or parables, they can often say things that are impossible to say in plain language.
Yeah, like I really care about metaphors, legends and parables. Don, the only important verse of the Koran, for me as an “infidel”, is 9:29:
Fight those who do not believe in Allah, nor in the latter day, nor do they prohibit what Allah and His Messenger have prohibited, nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.
I don’t care if the rest of the Koran is a retelling of the time Mohammed cleaned the Augean Stables with Hercules and they met up with The Prodigal Son and Vishnu afterwards for a few beers, as long as Muslims have this “literal” command to put me under their thumb, they can go pound sand.
