My policy is that found in the Qur'an in this verse:
Qur'an 39.18
Who listen to speech and follow the best of it. Those are the ones Allah has guided, and those are people of understanding.
So I don't feel excluded from any group of humans communicating things, but will hear it all and take what seems best, maybe what they call "cherry picking" even, but why should one devour dirty or poison things just because they grow together or near something beneficial or grow from the same tree? Pick the best, take it all, leave off what seems to be of no help or leads towards detriment.
I take this policy in everything, meaning I exclude nothing from the potential of being of some use or extraction or conversion to some use. Fiction, religions, history, certain fields of practice and expertise, every sort of communication from everywhere, which I feel is the great heritage of all people, and even if ut weren't, a gift to the seizer and conqueror, the appropriator that is mankind and has led to their survival and improvement over time.
In the case of Islam though, I really don't like the hadith at all, and find it predicted in the Qur'an in this verse:
Qur'an 6.112
Thus have We appointed unto every prophet an adversary - devils of humankind and jinn who inspire in one another plausible discourse through guile. If thy Lord willed, they would not do so; so leave them alone with their devising;
The Qur'an to me is a great tool and one of many which any people can attempt to prosper from in various ways.
Qur'an 17.110
Say: "Call upon Allah, or call upon Rahman: by whatever name ye call upon Him, (it is well): for to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names...
If the Qur'an had said other things, it is my hope that I would have rejected it and that I genuinely hold to this policy of wide collection and use regardless of what it says or would have said.
I place the Qur'an atop all the religious scriptures as the most clear and useful, accurate and permissive or inclusive of them (contrary to popular impressions).
In opposition to Islam and what might radically be considered its Late Antiquity Pan-Paganism in the manner of Apollonian oracular proclamations such as what is mentioned in this excerpt from a wikipedia article on monotheism: "A number of oracles of
Apollo from
Didyma and
Clarus, the so-called "theological oracles", dated to the 2nd and 3rd century CE, proclaim that there is only one highest god, of whom the gods of polytheistic religions are mere manifestations or servants."
or perhaps in the case of Islam, legitimate and useable names or epithets referring to the multifarious domains of God's power and creations. God who is the God of Sea, Sky, Earth, Fertility, Destruction, Commerce, and so on and so forth. Having no qualms knowing the Lord as truly and rightfully the real Odin, the rightful Lucifer, the true Hermes, who is indeed Khaos, Kronos, Jupiter, Apollo, Ares and all the rest. The Titan, the whole of Olympus and the Aesir, the Daeva, Deva, Asura, and Ahura, who fills the lives and minds of people with various signs and images and appearances which all point back to their remote and pure controller.
It feels good, at least to me, to know Thor and that Thor has an appearance even in the Qur'an if one simply understands the meanings of various words, and that varieties of Thor in a multitude of senses can be accepted logically and thus confidently once an openess in meaning and understanding and translation is self-permitted.
So I don't deny any of those religions or languages. Where it can become an issue is usually surrounding the very specific rules and regulations and traditions which develop or taking everything in a certain very literal fashion.
Qur'an 22.67
" For every People We have appointed rites which they perform. So, let the disbelievers not contend with you over the matter but invite them to your Lord. Indeed, you are upon straight guidance. "
It feels good to feel permitted to the general use of what has been provided to people in its abstract or general form withing their languages.
The Qur'an is a somewhat unique text in its style, whereas the hadith in its fashion of talking about a religious figure and their acts and deeds seems to have been a rather popular style for the transmission of religions prior.
Now the Qur'an may largely be a lie or unknowing in what it says about things, but if its mythology, its mythology is preferable to me than what for example the Bible may say about the same intended characters.
In choosing between the Abraham of the Bible and the Abraham (or Ibrahim) of the Qur'an, even if neither or true or the former is true, I'd rather take the Ibrahim than the Abraham because of the qualities he holds and promotes.
In my very unstable assessment of reality, where time and history are as false and changeable as anything by whatever has the greatest power, or in my view, the only power, I find the Qur'an's characters better as role models than the things the Bible says in practically every case, even in the New Testament, which again is frequently stories about someone rather than what is supposed to be direct ongoing divine speech "to" the receiver, which sets the Qur'an somewhat apart overall in what it really claims to be.
So if Islam and Universal Monotheistic Pantheism and Pan-en-theism, and Pagan Monotheism is my all encompassing heresy of preference, since I can use terms rather freely from any language or religion with such an underlying skeleton or framework, the extreme opposite of such is the material literalism of the ideas of the LDS or Mormon Church, and similar extreme materialistic interpretations of religions or paganism such as one might frequently find in some young neo-pagans as well, who when questioned seem to despise monotheism and the philosophical calculations which lead to such conclusions or acknowledgment, and prefer instead to believe in "very real", to the point of being literal space monkeys or aliens, things which hide away from the direct senses of people, except in their imaginations (which to me seem like cartoons or comic books). Such beliefs may also have existed among people throughout the ages, but did not seem to be the preference of intellectuals or educated and elite classes largely.
These are the same sorts of things the Qur'an seems to abhor as well, still positioning it as the book most apparently like me and my own ideas.
Again, I wonder if its something truly rationalized by me or if it is the influence of this mind-warping (for some) scripture.
One would perhaps an enemy to a devout monotheist might be a Satanist, but Satanic and Demonic or opposites or enemy philosophies from other religions are very much compatible and useable linguistic frameworks within my belief system. Calling the One Power Lucifer or the Devil is just the same to me as calling it anything else just as true to me, as the source of Good, Evil, Lies, Truth, and everything in between and at all extremes.
So there is no issue there as much as with those who limit God to the borders of a form or body or some kind of set of information ("stuff"), when to me it is the opposite of "stuff" which is all that it generates and destroys endlessly and without entropy.
I must also have issues with authority. I have a real distaste when it comes to imagining people really having my respect, especially based on the stories told of them in these additional scriptures.
Every single character, except those described in the Qur'an, and maybe with the partial tolerance of Paul and Ananda, annoy the heck out of me. I really don't like or admire how Jesus seems to be described as behaving in the New Testament. How could I be found an ally of the unjust Jacob? The Buddha irritates me greatly as well, and reading about some of his radical intolerance towards the man who destroyed his practice by giving in to his wife's pleas for a child. Even Muhammed in the hadith seems very unpleasant compared to the version the Qur'an seems to give, and anyone who acts very sagely and knowing is probably irritating.
I guess I like Job and relate to him, probably exclusively out of the Old Testament.
I have the same sort of ill will towards "the divine" probably as well, its just that the reality, the nature, the power is so overwhelming, that it leads some (like myself) towards pitiful groveling, but where I might perceive I can dominate or overcome, then I wouldn't feel the need to ask anything or try to save myself from such a thing.
Sometimes I wonder, had I been there, which side I'd be on, but I have an anti-tradition revolutionary sort of attitude which makes me think I might join or at least lend some support towards efforts tearing down old authority structures and leading towards varieties of protestant freedom and anarchy.
The other issue is, even though any unverifiable news is perhaps difficult to confirm as certainly a lie, I consider most of the things said in these books when talking about historical matters to be unpleasant and kind of take them to be untrue and lies and slander, even if they aren't.
This goes hand in hand with a contemporary conspiratorial attitude towards reports in the news and other things like that:
Qur'an 49.6
" O you who believe, if a wicked person comes to you with any news, then you shall investigate it. Lest you harm a people out of ignorance, then you will become regretful over what you have done. "
Yikes, it looks like that book has a bunch of stuff I want to say, making it my favorite religious bashing (as in the term Bible Bashing as in using the Bible to say what one wants to say to people but with a high and mighty ancient authority, ineffective of course when one could care less what some old book from an outside faction says anyway) tool in my image.
Qur'an 6.116
"
Sahih International: And if you obey most of those upon the earth, they will mislead you from the way of Allah. They follow not except assumption, and they are not but falsifying.
Pickthall: If thou obeyedst most of those on earth they would mislead thee far from Allah's way. They follow naught but an opinion, and they do but guess.
Yusuf Ali: Wert thou to follow the common run of those on earth, they will lead thee away from the way of Allah. They follow nothing but conjecture: they do nothing but lie.
Shakir: And if you obey most of those in the earth, they will lead you astray from Allah's way; they follow but conjecture and they only lie.
Muhammad Sarwar: Most of the people in the land will lead you away from God's guidance if you follow them; they only follow their own conjecture and preach falsehood.
Mohsin Khan: And if you obey most of those on earth, they will mislead you far away from Allah's Path. They follow nothing but conjectures, and they do nothing but lie.
Arberry: If thou obeyest the most part of those on earth they will lead thee astray from the path of God; they follow only surmise, merely conjecturing. "
