The June 15 issue of Time has an essay by Robert Wright, "Decoding God's Changing Moods," (http://tinyurl.com/pxjsu6) in which he suggests a way forward for Muslims, Jews, and Christians who just want to get along. He argues the scriptures of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity contain a "code" which shows that advantages can be gained from tolerating, and even endorsing, other religions.
As a professional reader of the Bible, I would have been surprised by the notion that the Old Testament looks favorably upon other gods and religions were I not already far more well-versed than any rational person would care to be in the "higher criticism" in which "scholars" such as Wright engage. Without a shred of evidence, he deconstructs the Biblical text ("The Bible had the logic backward."), assigns it different and mythical authors, and argues its monotheism is only apparent (really, the prophets were preaching "monolatry"). It was nice, for once, to see the same nonsense applied to the Koran as well: any religion can be victimized by this fiddle-faddle.
In fact, this opens the possibility of real unity between Jews, Christians and Muslims: sharing an extreme annoyance at people like Robert Wright who treat our scriptures like jigsaw puzzles and lecture us on how we can become better practitioners of our religions by ignoring all their foundational tenets.
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