From: bes@cco.caltech.edu (Behnam Sadeghi)
Subject: Re: Words Feminists find Demeaning!
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 14:57:25 GMT

In article <graham.711939190@galois> graham@maths.su.oz.au (Graham Matthews) writes:
>Graham:
>>>Thus I have a single syntactic definition (the words he wrote) but
>>>many semantic definitions (interpretations of those words).
>(Behnam Sadeghi) writes:
>>Then you are really looking for the "true interpretation." 
>
>Sure I am. The term *one true Islam" cleary refers to interpretations
>as otherwise it is pretty meaningless.

That's right.  So we're talking about interpretation, not definition.

>How do I know who has the correct interpretation? Given two 
>interpretations of the same passage how do I know which one to pick?
>Lets give a simple example from english usage
>
>	"I went to the park with the dog"
>
>Now there are two possible interpretations of this sentence. By
>your reasononing above you would say that these two interpretations
>are not equally valid. Care to tell me what criterion you use for
>ascertaining the validity of the two interpretations? Once you have
>done that you could tell me why you chose those criterion over other
>possible criterion. Then you could apply this type of thinking to
>your position on the Quran.

In referring to the sentence "I went to the park with the dog" you
say "by your reasoning...these two interpretations are not equally 
valid."   Answer:  I gave a criterion for evaluating sentences from
the Qur'an and sunnah.  I didn't give a criterion for evaluating any
arbitrary sentence.  The sentence about the dog and the park does not
fall in the category of Islamic scripture.  So, my reasoning gave absolutely
no information about the two possible interpretations of the sentence
about the dog and the park.  I didn't give a definition by which to
judge arbitrary sentences.

>(Behnam Sadeghi) writes:

>Sure this is indeed the true Islam, but the problem is that no-one
>actually knows what the intention of God and his prophet is. They have
>some words in a back which purport to define that intention but as
>you admit above everyone has a different interpretation of those
>words.

How do you know "no-one actually knows what the intention of God and
his prophet is" ?  I don't think you have any logical basis for making
such a claim.  Think about it.  It may very well be that some people
know God's intention (of his statements in the Qur'an).  There may also 
be alot of people who correctly understand, say, 90% or more of the
sentences in the Qura'n.  We have no objective basis for believing 
otherwise.

>You are making a simple mistake here. To saying that some 
>interpretationsa stray from the true Islam and some don't is indeed
>true since if we have two interpretations of the same thing both
>cannot be right. But the issue here is given two interpretations
>I1 and I2, how do I chose which of them is correct? Surely to
>chose one is to imply that you have a standard by which you judge.
>But how do you know if that standard is correct?

You see, most of the Qur'an is easily understood by all or most Muslims
in the same way.  The issue of different interpretations comes up with
a fraction of the Qur'anic verses.  Your question is basically how can
we tell which interpretation is correct.  The answer depends on which
standard or method you use in arriving at the interpretation.  If the
method is correct, then the interpretation is correct.  Then the question
is how do you choose the method?  The answer is that there is a single
criterion for choosing the standard or method:  The criterion is that the
method is chosen in the way that satisfies the definition best, i.e. the
method that allows us to understand what the true intention of the scripture
is.  Now, obvisouly people will have different methods.  Some of them will
be right and some of them will be wrong.

>Oh dear - the definition of Islam is the literal words written on
>the page. These words do not have a unique meaning. The word "slug"
>for example has two meanings that I can think of. So until you
>interpret the words in the book the words themselves have no meaning.
>They only acquire meaning when you interpret them.
...
>I mean interpretations aren't unique. Obviously you only have one
>book and therefore one syntactic definition, but what good is a 
>syntactic definition? It doesn't tell you anything. The semantics
>of what these words mean gives the book meaning, but there is more
>than one possible semantic for the book!
>...
>Er and how am I to judge which is the incorrect interpretation?
>Once again you seem to think that there is one true interpretation
>of the words of Mohammed.
>...
>No that is not what I am implying. What I am implying is that there
>may only be one correct interpretation but you have no way of knowing
>what that is.
>...
>I could not agree more. What I want to know is how can you admit that
>all interpretations could be wrong and still insist that there is
>*one true* Islam? Islam is surely the interpretation of the words,
>and not the words themselves, as the words are just syntax.

I won't be able to continue with this discussion for two reasons:

1)  How in the world do I know my interpretation of your words is the
correct one?  How do I know my standard is correct?   Even if I ask
you to clarify all that you say, again I'd have the same problem:  How
do I know my interpretation of your clarification is correct?  If you
bother to answer these very questions that you're now reading,
how do I know I understand your answers correctly?  

2) I don't have the time (and the interest) to continue with this 
discussion.

Regards,
Behnam Sadeghi
Newsgroups: alt.atheism