74historical, and moral perspectives. Quentin
Skinner, of the Cambridge School, wrote a sem-
inal essay called “Meaning and Understanding
in the History of Ideas.”^13 This essay addresses
the danger in assuming that there is ever a true
reading of texts. It asks the question, does any
piece of writing speak for itself? Or do we impose
certain values and judgments on that text when
interpreting it?
I personally do not use the term “literal” read-
ings, because this implies that such readings are
the correct, literal meaning of the texts. I would
simply call it “vacuous.” Similar to the printing
press’s infl uence on the Reformation, increased
Internet access has facilitated a more patchwork,
demo cratized, populist approach to interpreting
Islamic texts. Now, the key for me (and this is only
the intellectual point; I’ll move to the pragmatic in
a minute) is that if we accept that texts are, in fact,
a bunch of ideas thrown together and arbitrarily
called a “book,” then nothing in a vacuous reading
of a text makes it better than other interpretations.
The question is, do we accept a vacuous approach
- Q. Skinner, “Meaning and Understanding in the His-
tory of Ideas.” History and Theory 8, no. 1 (1969): 3–53.
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