And therein lies the rub no? If we concentrate on the words in a book that will never disappear how do you propose we get out of this mess? And if Christianity could - to some extent - overcome the limitations of the bible how can we assist Islam? Surely not by attempting to polarize.
Why not? How about we fork the Qur'an like it were source code, delete the parts about killing people for their beliefs, add in some more commandments such as "don't rape, don't discriminate, be nice to everybody. It's ok if you don't literally believe that Allah exists." etc etc.
Then we can rename it to Islam2 or Progressive Islam, or something like that. Everybody wins.
Feel free, the council of Nicosia was a similar attempt at making Christianity more internally consistent and in a way the Bible itself already was a re-write, think of it as Judaism 2.0 and it starts to make a lot more sense.
But typically such a movement originates from within the religion and I highly doubt it can be imposed from outside. Note that most religious text are 'tamper proof' in that they contain little bits about how alteration of the text is forbidden, after all, who is qualified to modify the word of God except for God himself/herself.
Also note that the Qur'an in its current form will be alive and well in the heads of all those who remember it because they've been memorizing part or even all of it. A bit further down that road and we'll be burning books.
> A bit further down that road and we'll be burning books.
I'm not calling for aggressively imposing a structure change upon people, I'm calling for people who call themselves moderates or progressives to formally recognize their progressiveness by explicitly altering their holy text.
> I'm not calling for aggressively imposing a structure change upon people,
Ok, than how do you propose to go about this? Telling the united Muslim population of the world they need to change their holy book is tantamount to telling the Roman Catholics to restructure their religion without the Pope. It won't happen.
Putting conditions like that on the table is to redraw the lines in terms that the other party will find un-acceptable right from the get-go, and will show nothing but our ignorance about their personal relation with God. That's not going to end well if there is a reaction at all.
> I'm calling for people who call themselves moderates or progressives to formally recognize their progressiveness by explicitly altering their holy text.
Even moderates and progressives are not going to change that text. They will happily ignore the pieces of the text they don't personally agree with, but if you force them to re-write the text they just might switch the other way and become more literal about that interpretation because a very large chunk of their identity is under threat.
> I'm calling for people who call themselves moderates or progressives to formally recognize their progressiveness by explicitly altering their holy text.
If their understanding of the meaning of their religion and its text is already moderate or progressive, why should they modify it (especially when part of their understanding is that it cannot be modified?)
The Christian Bible has some things in it that support shockingly regressive interpretations, and which some Christians apply in exactly that manner. There isn't pressure on moderate or progressive Christians to change the text of the Bible in response to that. Why should it be different for Muslims?
> I'm calling for people who call themselves moderates or progressives to formally recognize their progressiveness by explicitly altering their holy text.
Yeah... um... don't hold your breath. Those who believe that it is literally the words of God are not going to alter it, to "formally recognize their progressiveness" or for any other reason.
Note well: There are those who are progressive and still believe that the Quran is literally the words of God.
> How about we fork the Qur'an like it were source code
That is the problem. Muslims believe that Quran is the word of God. When you say that it needs to be changed then it means God was wrong which is not possible.
