[lbo-talk] Marxism and Religion

sharif islam sharif.islam at gmail.com
Wed Feb 28 07:40:18 PST 2007


On 2/27/07, Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote: [.....]
> The thing is that
> most people of any religious faith are not fundamentalists, so they
> don't read the texts literally, which is the reason why they can
> reconcile faith and science.

I have to disagree with the statement that most people don't read the texts literally -- at least not the Muslims I know. The main problem is, as others mentioned, depending on the context and history, certain verses could be literal or symbolic. So mainstream religious folks usually don't have the time and knowledge to decipher all the intricacies. Now this may or may not make them fundamentalists. But it is easy to go for the literal interpretation which usually provided by religious leaders. Verse 3:7 (Surah Al-Imran) in Quran is a good example. I blogged about it here: http://khepa.livejournal.com/58797.html

--sharif

-- Sharif Islam http://www.sharifislam.com Research Programmer University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Library Systems Office 217-244-4688



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