Isn't everyone's - or did God put it in the wrong place?
Everyone's is. But to a greater or lesser degree, we all lack self-awareness which is the only reason we get stuck between the dichotomies of "good" and "evil". So say the mystics.
Tailor ... we really need to talk privately. ;-)
I will say though that I sympathize with the skepticism of the atheists/agnostics/irreligious deists, etc. here because you really need to explain to them how you're arriving at your conclusions about the "transmission of esoteric symbolism" in the Judaic-Islamic tradition (which is what I think you're trying to argue ... it's a very interesting idea and I can see you're employing some of Ibn Arabi's ideas about imaginal worlds here). I know I've said this before, but you'd need to explain your metaphysic, your cosmology, epistemology, your psychology of the human, what spiritual experiences are and what is the known phenomenology and classification of such experiences, the difference between transformative spirituality vs. translative religion, where the current ongoing global science/spirituality dialogue stands and what its history is, how your own vision is developing, etc. etc. This is a tough crowd!
The thing is, really anybody can spin any kind of story based on scriptures -- there has to be some method or some way of testing one's vision and ensuring that it does in fact express an inner spiritual integrity, otherwise it's just an undisciplined mental hodge-podge. In the Eastern traditions, these methods involve incredibly rigorous methods of yoga and meditation as you know -- there are proper methods for self-purification, for healing internalized emotional pathologies, for integrating the psyche, widening one's perceptions, all that sort of stuff, without which any mental philosophy is really just something kind of arbitrary. And experience is considered vastly more important than the words of any text or philosophy, of course ... the key is self-transformation, not holding this belief or that belief, or unbelief even. There are so many mystics who expressed their experiences in negative terms, and if you don't know what a mystical experience is like you would read them and think they were skeptics although they were God-lovers ... there are even so many Sufis (mostly Indian AFAIK) who wrote poetry about how they couldn't figure out if God is in belief (imaan) or unbelief (kufr), such as Khawaja Ghulam Farid.
This whole topic is really extremely complex and difficult to express in words.
I personally separate faith and belief. For me faith has little or nothing to do with belief ... it is a way of being, a mode of perception, and an inner striving toward self-sacrifice. Beliefs are at best a guide or a pointer that facilitate that inner transformation. Believe me, I'm a big fan of mythopoesis as an agency that facilitates self-transformation, but I don't fetishize any one system of symbols or get too attached to it (I'm grounded in Vedanta but fairly open to any other tradition as well) -- there are higher stages of spiritual growth in which it is impossible to hold on to any system of beliefs whatsoever because the mystic becomes so detached from the rational mind.
And this is also why I am so unimpressed by orthodox Sufis like Nuh Keller, etc. As far as I can tell, they have absolutely no experiential idea about spirituality, and are as dogmatic, cultish, etc. as anybody else is. They have no understanding of the relativity of mental beliefs compared to the actual development of an inner spiritual vision. This might sound really harsh but I would go so far as to call them charlatans who are essentially running cults. Understanding the limitations of mental beliefs is practically Spirituality 101, and if they haven't grasped even that they couldn't be more deluded if they think they have anything deserving the name of gnosis (inner knowledge of the Divine or supraphysical realities).
Another point I want to make is that I personally think in your symbolic re-reading of the Quran you should just admit up front that no religious scripture is perfect. Some verses aren't symbolic or capable of symbolic re-interpretation -- they are just reflective of a premodern ethos and have to be scrapped. Ditto for the vast majority of the hadith. I don't know why Muslims are so reluctant to admit this. Most modern Buddhists, Vedantists, Taoists, etc. are perfectly content to take this position w.r.t. their own scriptures. The Hindu reformers essentially scrapped all the premodern shastras and smritis. Because otherwise one has to do some really silly mental gymnastics to believe that what is actually a cruel and harsh verse is something profound. I mean one can certainly do a kind of "poetic transmutation" as I mentioned before but it is rather silly to suggest that this is what Muhammad intended *at that point in space and time in which the verse was uttered by Muhammad*.
I read your post on historicity and I liked it very much but then you have to say your interpretation is a "transhistorical" one -- which is consistent with spiritual metaphysics and phenomenology according to which it is possible to transcend time/history in identification with the Divine.
I personally think that the dogmas that have crippled the evolution and development of the Islamic tradition, and especially its rationalist and mystical traditions, are:
1. that the Quran is the *literal* word or speech of God (come on, man ... that makes no sense even metaphysically ... even the Mu'tazilites figured that much out);
2. that the revelation ended with Muhammad and is not something ongoing and evolutionary (well, to be fair, this dogma is also found in Christianity, but Christianity has also got some major pluralistic spokespeople like, e.g., Raimundo Panikkar, who says he is both a Catholic and a Vedantist mystic and experiences no contradiction between the two);
3. that all religions that came before Islam are rendered null and void by it and thus everyone must some day embrace Islam ... I have been amused to meet or dialogue with conservative Sufis who have tried to convince me to abandon the highly developed evolutionary Vedantic tradition because Vedanta was replaced by Islam 1400 years ago ... it's like they have no idea how much philosophical work has been done by modern neo-Vedantists.
Topic: Hagarism and the Historical Muhammed