If you are a Muslim, of course you believe that the Qur'an has a single true meaning (or perhaps many true meanings - there is a sophisticated allegorical tradition of Qur'anic exegesis), and the community of believers must try to discover these. Not being a Muslim, I'm more interested in the range of meanings that the Qur'anic text invites. But even so, I don't think that the pederastic interpretation of 52:24 is nearly as untenable as you seem to suggest. The youths who are like pearls serve wine to the partakers in the heavenly banquet: an environment not a million miles removed from the pederastic environment of the ancient symposium. Even if you want to claim that the servers do not offer sexual services, they are clearly aestheticised. Beautiful boys are among the heavenly pleasures the Prophet invokes - whether or not we are supposed to imagine these boys as being sexually available. (And the general tenor of the Islamic paradise is certainly that the restrictions placed on lawful sexual activity in this world no longer apply.) Today, scholars of Islam (both secular and religious) often try to 'defend' the Qur'an against such interpretations, and it is often the self-anointed critics of Islam who leap upon the idea that the Qur'an might sanction pederasty in heaven. Neither response is necessary. I think a dispassionate reading of the text leaves this interpretation very much open - and a dispassionate consideration of Muslim history would admit that Islam has often been quite receptive to the idea of a semi-spiritualised pederasty. Not because of this particular ayat, perhaps - but I'm quite sure that many Muslims throughout history would have construed it in precisely the terms I am suggesting. |