outlaw: So literally cutting off hands is one of the possible understandings. It's settled then. That's what was done in this case. You can stretch your imagination and derive your "metaphorical meanings" all you want, but as long as physically cutting off hands is ONE of the possible understandings, how can you blame anyone for doing it? [Why the fuck does god talk in metaphors anyway? "cut off their hands" is not even a clever metaphor.] If the text is so vague that every verse could have multiple meanings, i would argue that is reason enough to reject and bypass it altogether when making laws. But apparently that wont happen. The Sultan of Brunei just announced he's going to impose amputation (the literal one, not cutting off relationship) as a punishment for theft, along with the baker's choice of other "perceived" evils of islam.

outlaw: You said there are three possible ways "cut off their hands" can be interpreted. So how is any one of those possibilities a "proven fact"? That's why i use "may". I know the people who will interpret it to mean literal amputation will always be a small minority. But if literal amputation CAN be one of the possibilities, then on what basis are we going to conclude that those 2 votes are wrong and 12 right? As long as we don't have a standard interpretation to refer to, which we KNOW BEYOND DOUBT is true, there is room for all possible interpretations to exist and for people to apply them. The discussion isn't about the literary merits of Quran, it's about compatibility of its ancient laws with modern times. I am not criticizing the Quran for being what it actually is, or all religious texts are for that matter. A man-made set of ancient laws and random nonsense written in the form of poetry and bad metaphors, interspersed with divine threats and demands that the divine arse be kissed. I understand these texts have their place in literature, history, etc. I'm pretty sure Arabic is a beautiful language but "several layers of meaning" is the very thing that worries me when people try to base laws on this stuff.

outlaw: CAN is all we need over here at the theft amputation facility. CAN is closer to DOES than it is to DOES NOT. If you fire your secretary, her lawyer would tell you that her patterns don't matter at all and if you gave her permission to come back "later", she is perfectly within her rights to come back 1 week later.

outlaw: I don't consider them any more worth of respect than other works of fiction. If you find my lack of respect offensive, we can stop here. Religion teaches that if you pray hard enough and have faith, a shark CAN appear in the middle of the desert and bite your head off. Read your own post xiao, you gave me three possible meanings for the verse. It's stupid to assume that a metaphorical meaning is more probable than the literal one. Does the verse contain a footnote saying "Gods tryna be all metaphorical here n shxt. Read between the lines."? How do you decide which verse is literal and which metaphorical? Again seems to be a matter of convenience. Come on, it's hardly "plain as day" if you have to go through the entire Quran first and see how many times that exact word was used and in what context. Then once you count the number of instances to see which meaning was used the maximum number of times, you still can't be sure if THAT's the meaning which applies here. Because there's no rule that says that just because the arabic word for "cut" is used X number of times to mean "cut off relationship with", that it cannot possibly be used to mean "literally cut off", especially when it precedes the words "hands". The literal meaning is what's plain as day here, and the metaphorical one is arrived at through a lot of hard work and wishful thinking. I welcome the intention here though. It's definitely good. But eventually i hope people will acknowledge that these old texts will have to be bypassed altogether when forming laws in the 21st century. P.S. The joseph example is a good argument, but I'm not sure if there's any rule that for a quranic law to be applied a certain way, there has to be a precedent. Plus I'm not sure of the specifics. There are other conditions that have to be fulfilled so I don't know why joseph was allowed to keep his hands. Maybe he got a good lawyer. Someone like you who managed to convince/confuse the judges.

outlaw: The fact that someone took the trouble of counting and comparing the literal vs metaphorical meanings is itself proof that it's a debatable issue. I can see why this would be important to a theologist trying to work out all the possibilities. But it sounds like a weird self-invented rule that if the number of literal meanings is less than metaphorical meanings, "team metaphors wins" and we have to discard all the literal meanings. A word means what it means, even if it's 1 to 100 against metaphorical meanings.

outlaw: I guess the bottom line here is that even if the justifications zealots come up with are total bullshxt, it's easy enough for them to do this and manage to sound convincing to others of their ilk when the text itself is so vague. But the text gets its credibility as a valid basis for law from the moderate majority who have good intentions but for some reason their understanding of the religion isn't translating into actual laws. So instead of reinterpreting vague verses and trying to make them usable for this day and age, why don't the moderates make more of an effort to isolate religion from matters of state altogether? Moderates don't seem as concerned about the (alleged) misinterpretations of the extremists of their own religions, but get their panties in a twist everyone an "outsider" questions their religion.

outlaw: I can sense some annoyance in your posts. I don't take you as someone who is easily offended so I don't censor myself when talking to you. But if I said something that was disrespectful to you personally, I'm sorry.

outlaw: Send me your resume i'll hook you up with a boss that let's you go for week long vacations without notice. Once a week you'll have to stay late in his office but other than that you can come and go as you please.

outlaw: Look at you mocking the power of prayer now. I'm sure i can cite some verses from the quran here as "proof" that god answers prayers, but you just threw that right out of the window. Don't be disrespectful now, that's my department. I don't know the details of this particular example you are basing your entire argument on, after admitting yourself that the verse has three possible meanings. But let's assume for argument's sake that you are right and it is "plain as day" the meaning here is metaphorical. So how do you explain some countries using the amputation law then? You're making it sound like i am the first one to take that verse literally. But if it wasn't for muslims themselves making actual laws based on the literal translation, we wouldn't even be having this argument. And if it's only a small minority of zealots who made those laws, why didn't the majority try to stop them? I know muslim dominated countries aren't very democratic in nature, but does the muslim majority have no say in the matter? That's why i drew an analogy to death penalty earlier on. If most muslims aren't flipping their shxt over this the way they do when someone draws a cartoon of the prophet, it probably means opinion is divided and most of them are okay with thieves getting their hands literally chopped off.

outlaw: So even a suggestion by an "outsider" like me not to bring religion into matters of state is seen as "brow beating" and makes me as bad as them. Meanwhile, muslim rulers continue to make laws that undermine and twist the "real meanings" of their holy quran and it's perfectly okay, because they are their own people, their heroes. We're only scraping the surface with this amputation thing btw. You wanna talk about "brow beating into believing what the other does", let's talk about those things which you refuse to discuss every time i bring them up. Homosexuality, apostasy, blasphemy, adultery. Can these ever be decriminalized without removing religion from the picture for good? When a muslim majority country has done that, i'll accept your argument that religion isn't the greatest peril of our age.

outlaw: I can say the same about you. Have you not completely ignored my post every time i brought up the aforementioned 4 things? I actually agreed to let those go and stick only to the topic. Why do YOU have trouble accepting that what seems glaringly obvious to might not be the case at all? Like you pointed out, i was actually using words like "may" and "might be". Even to claim something is "glaringly obvious to me" about a text written in a complex language seems a bit arrogant.

outlaw: Great plan, except that things move at their own pace here and you and Xi will be well into your 80s when that cheque arrives. It's a sound investment plan for your grandchildren though. They can reap the rewards of your weekly "overtime".

outlaw: Nobody said anything about outlawing religion. Enforcing secularism is as bad as religion. Why would you consider that as the only alternative to a theocracy? People like Stalin and Mao had their own brands of religion. They were cults of personality which are indistinguishable from theocratic totalitarian regimes. But why would you jump to those extreme examples? Are you suggesting that's what happens in every case when you try to move away from a religion-based government? I can cite plenty of examples which prove otherwise, but why go far. Even India is a fine example of a large democracy that has managed to keep religion out of law-making and other important affairs that affect people's lives.

outlaw: You're no fun :/ Have you seen that maggie gyllenhaal movie, the secretary?

outlaw: I see that happening in India in the near future. I know India isn't the finest example of what i was talking about, but we did recently decriminalize homosexuality for a while. For a country like India that was a huge step. So i can see gay marriage being legalized in the foreseeable future. On the other hand, if we were a theocracy and Section 377 was an ancient verse dictated by a god, it wouldn't even be open to debate like it is now.