76countries are the same. For instance, in the middle
of Ramadan 2014, Turkey witnessed a gay- pride
march.)
A sensible way forward would be to establish this
idea that there is no correct reading of scripture.
This is especially easy for Sunnis— who represent
80 percent of the Muslims around the world—
because they have no clergy. If a par tic u lar pas-
sage says “Smite their necks,” to conclude, despite
all the passages that came before it and everything
that comes after it, that this passage means “Smite
their necks today” is to engage in a certain method
of interpretation. If we could pop u lar ize the under-
standing that all conclusions from scripture are
but interpretations, then all variant readings of
a holy book would become a matter of differing
human perspectives.
That would radically reduce the stakes and un-
dermine the claim that the Islamists are in posses-
sion of God’s words. What is said in Arabic and
Islamic terminology is: This is nothing but your
ijtihad. This is nothing but your interpretation of
the texts as a whole. There was a historical debate
about whether or not the doors of ijtihad were
closed. It concluded that they cannot be closed,
because Sunni Muslims have no clergy. Anyone
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