68the extent that they’re certain that their scripture
was written or inspired by the Creator of the uni-
verse, demand it too.
So when you say that no religion is intrinsically
peaceful or warlike, and that every scripture must
be interpreted, I think you run into problems,
because many of these texts aren’t all that
elastic. They aren’t susceptible to just any inter-
pretation, and they commit their adherents to
specifi c beliefs and practices. You can’t say, for in-
stance, that Islam recommends eating bacon and
drinking alcohol. And even if you could fi nd some
way of reading the Qur’an that would permit those
things, you can’t say that its central message is that
a devout Muslim should consume as much bacon
and alcohol as humanly possi ble. Nor can one say
that the central message of Islam is pacifi sm. (How-
ever, one can say that about Jainism. All religions
are not the same.) One simply cannot say that the
central message of the Qur’an is res pect for women
as the moral and po liti cal equals of men. To the
contrary, one can say that under Islam, the cen-
tral message is that women are second- class citi-
zens and the property of the men in their lives.
I want to be clear that when I used terms such as
“pretense” and “intellectual dishonesty” when we
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