73concern than the enslavement and obliteration of
countless people throughout the Muslim world.
As you say, even having a conversation like this
is considered a killing offense in many circles. I
hear from Muslims who are afraid to tell their own
parents that they have lost their faith in God, for
fear of being murdered by them. These people say
things like “If a liberal intellectual like you can’t
speak about the link between specifi c doctrines and
vio lence without being defamed as a bigot, what
hope is there for someone like me, who has to worry
about being killed by her own family or village for
merely expressing doubts about God?” So yes, I’m
aware that one can’t speak in Pakistan as I do here.Nawaz This raises an intellectual point and a prag-
matic point. Intellectually, I don’t accept that
there’s a correct reading of scripture in essence.
Now, you can point to many passages in the Qur’an
and in ahadith (and I’ve certainly read them, be-
cause I memorized half the Qur’an while a po liti cal
prisoner) that you would fi nd very problematic, very
concerning, and, on the face of it, very violent.
But, as I’ve said, to interpret any text, one must
have a methodology, and in that methodology
there are jurisprudential, linguistic, philosophical,
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