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Notes -
This is something that's always struck me about calls for reform. Consider something like Quranism, the idea that Muslims should reject the sunnah and hadith, and this long tradition of interpretation and jurisprudence, and return to the purity of the Qur'an. As you can see, the wiki article on it is written mostly from a Western perspective and is very sympathetic to the idea, seeing it as more open and tolerant than the alternative.
It's just - did we forget the Protestant Reformation entirely?
Throwing out all tradition and interpretation and bypassing all the mediating institutions of a tradition is something that was attempted in Europe. The result was well over a century of bloody, fratricidal war and a multitude of new sects, many of which were more fanatical and violent than the order they originally criticised. Throwing out interpretation in favour of acting according to the original, pure divine revelation is a recipe for fanaticism, not tolerance!
(For what it's worth I say this as a Protestant; I don't mean that the Reformation was 'wrong', whatever specific claim you might attach to that. But the Reformation certainly had a price.)
Yes. The post modernists told us that the past didn't matter and "the intelligentsia" believed them.
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