[fretelöo]

(apologies if this has been stated before, but I didn't feel like reading 3 pages of posts, that - sorry - to a large percentage will miss the finer point here)

*disclaimer: I know this sounds arrogant. Its not intended to. But the problem is, there _is_ a finer point here, one that Moderate Muslims just as the cited Catholics adhere to, while not being aware of it, most of the time. In effect, their debate with hardcore Muslims/Protestants is most of the time futile as the basis of debate isn't the same - WHICH (and that is the crux of the matter) ISN'T CLEAR TO BOTH SIDES. At least most of the time.

So here's the finer point (and again, apologies if that has been covered): Both moderate Muslims and moderate Christians (and those can be BOTH catholic or protestant) have a different understanding of scripture than their extremist counterparts.

All of those believe the Bible/Kur'an to be inspired word of god. But what that actually measn, is explained differently in both groups.
A moderate Christian will say, that the Bible tells the story of gods history of interaction with human kind. BUT written from HUMANS, full of human errors and human misunderstandings.
That doesn't preclude that there's divine truth in those writings, but that truth isn't there with no single missing dot to the "i". The bible is normative, for sure, but not in every single of its 613 comandments as they are written there, as those were written in a certain sociological-historical environment and relate to that environment. That doesn't make the bible arbitrary, but definitely open to debate.

Same, with some modifications, as for a Muslim the Kur'an isn't just a book telling about the revelation of God, but IS the revelation (so, for the Muslim, the Kur'an is kind of like what Christ is for a Christian) itself, applies to Islam.

The problem when just watching a debate between extremists and moderates from the distance is then twofold:

1) You aren't aware of this difference in viewpoint - how could you?

2) Those taking part in the debate aren't themselves, very often. They just pick a few verses from the bible to support their view, and those quotes get shreddered by the opposing team. That shreddering of course isn'T accepted by the challengers and so on and so fort.

What lies at the bottom of this is a different understanding about what divine inspiration of the Holy Bible actually means. That different understanding isn'T made explicit, most of the time, and therefore the debate can go on and on and on. If it were made explicit, both sides would agree that it's a waste of time continuing arguing whether Lev 17,x tells us that homosexuality is indeed a sin or not, until we haven't figured out in what sense we take Lev 17,x to be normative in the first place.