Waleed Aly and the offering of nothing but guff

I wanted to use that opportunity to see what they would say, because it illustrates what a difficult position the would-be reformers of Islam are in. They need to be able to reject parts of the doctrine as ancient and not applicable. But as soon as they say what they reject, they are labelled as traitors and infidels.

However this is what they must do. They need to specify that verses like (8:12) are "contextual" and don't apply today; otherwise there will never be any "reform" of Islam. The next step, of course, is to realise that the whole concept of divine revelation is flawed, and abandon it altogether.

What has given rise to the great global upsurge in Islamism is a much greater awareness, due to increased literacy, education and technology, of what the doctrines of Islam actually say. So they can't be ignored. We can't just pretend that the war verses don't exist, and engage in an endless game of selective quotation.

To find a solution, the issue of truth claims of Islam (and all religions) needs to be addressed at some stage. We cannot just continually cherry-pick inoffensive quotations, when most of these were later "abrogated" (superseded) in favour of more aggressive and violent ones. As Peter Boghossian said, the more doubt about their beliefs that people have, the less likely they are to act on them. Unless and until a literalist interpretation of Islamic scripture is abandoned, these problems will never be overcome.

As long as Waleed Aly continues to present his false dichotomy between "traditional religion" and "austere scripturalism", he will actually be "stoking the fires of historical confusion and sectarian animosity that he professes to want to put out", as Paul Monk says. What we all should do is assert the ascendancy of secular civil law over any religious law.