What A Comprehensive Fool

Never mind that the Islamic tradition helped to pioneer the figurative reading of biblical texts. ~Andrew Sullivan

Yes, what would Origen have done without Muhammad?  It’s interesting that Muslims could have pioneered something that predated their religion by many centuries, especially when they explicitly reject figurative interpretations of their own scripture, since it is taken to be the uncreated Word.  Unlike our understanding of Christian Scripture, which is one of divinely revealed truth with multiple layers of meaning, there are no other “senses” of Islamic scripture, at least not in traditional Sunnism (in other words, the bulk of Islam throughout its history). 

I only just read Sullivan’s review in its entirety today, so I had not seen this amazing statement until today.  The folks at The New Republic should be embarrassed to run something with such a manifestly false, easily checked statement as this–and Sullivan has the gall to make this statement as a way to take a shot at D’Souza.  As Dr. Trifkovic has shown, D’Souza’s ignorance about the religion of his proposed allies is impressive and extensive, but this is not part of it. 

This is perhaps the single-most ignorant statement Sullivan has ever made.  There are so many competitors for this honour, but I think this one wins by a good distance.  I welcome nominations for runners-up.