Can't you at least explain how the Koranic commandment to flog adulterers can be interpreted "non-literally"? Here it is:
the adulteress and the adulterer, flog each of them, a hundred stripes, and let not pity for them detain you in the matter of obedience to Allah, if you believe in Allah and the last day, and let a party of believers witness their chastisement. (24:2)
Oh, this is quite a straightforward thing in Sufism (a branch of Islam that specialises in what you might call "non-literal" interpretation, but that considers itself to be the MOST literal of all interpretations).
As the (literalist) apologists occasionally like to bring up -- it is implicit that four witnesses should be produced before the verdict of adultery is laid down. This is often taken to be a sort of defense in that it a rather difficult thing to witness.
But speaking as a Sufi, my whole GOAL in life is to produce these four witnesses.
In Sufism, the human self/soul is considered to be divided into four "levels" of reality: nafs (ordinary, literal life), qalb (kind of like a self-reflective ego), ruh (a sort of aspect of divine breath running through us all) and the sirr (the secret self that ties us back to the ultimate meaning of life). These levels are tied to the rivers of water, milk, wine and honey. They are also tied to the "four wives" that the Qur'an says are possible in marriage. In modern computer science, we'd call them running programs, models, metamodels and meta-metamodels. There's lots of ways of looking at them, but maybe just think of them as 1) your normal daily life of attachments, 2) the language games (cultural, historical, personal) that provide the rules and structure for your normal life, 3) the overarching meaning behind THOSE games and 4) something secret Truth that is internal to you, structuring 1-3).
The adulteress occurs as an archetype throughout the Bible and Quran -- she represents an aspect of the self that is unfaithful to God, essentially. The Kabbalists called her Lilith. The adulterer is also an archetype -- he represents a sort of false God -- the kind of God that would tell people to "LITERALLY" stone and hurt people in his name. He is known as Samael in Kabbalah, as Iblis in Quran, as the Demiurge in Gnosticism. Unfaithfulness to God commits adultery with this Demiurge -- by turning away from Love and instead
fixating on a particular power regime (fixation is what psychoanalysis would call it, idolatry is what it is known as in Qur'an). This is precisely what happens in any kind of fascist discourse (political or personal): some idol sets itself up as the "be all and end all" and our inner adulteress sleeps with him. It's what happened to a lot of people in Nazi Germany with Hitler as Demiurge. And yes, it has happened to quite a number of people in the culture of Islam, setting up a false image of Allah as an "Despotic Father figure" Demiurge.
So yes, 100 lashes are in order,
withholding mercy, as the verses order. What happens when these lashes are inflicted is what the Sufis call "fana" -- the dissolution of the adulteress/adulterer complex -- the dissolution of internal faithlessness and internal fascism of the self -- and the emergence of the 4 witnesses. The 4 witnesses emerge as the "real you", purged of the faithlessness and fascism.
I could explain the meaning of "why 100" lashes -- that gets into Arab numerology, but I've probably bored you by now.
Anyway -- this is standard stuff in my part of the world. Kabbalists have an almost identical reading of the stoning law in Judaism. One of their main sources, the Zohar, has this amazing reading of the four letters of the name YHWH moving together to assert the unity of God and, in doing so, literally throwing stones made of the letter "Y" onto Samael and Lilith. It's pretty trippy stuff.
Incidentally, this is very tangential, but Kabbalist Leonard Cohen has a great song about how the witnessing of the lower levels relates to the upper, secret level of the soul called "In My Secret Life":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyMC5MJYOZ8There's a little bit of stuff about the self (actually the second level of the self) and inner adultery being "turned" in his earlier song "Last year's man":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW3_j6SoHXMThe point of Sufism is to discover our four witnesses and destroy the adultery within ourselves. If this helps more, I'm perfectly happy for folk just to listen to Cohen if they can't understand what's going on in the Qur'an. Actually, what I am saying is very straightforward and obvious, if certain assumptions about the Qur'an (and life) are abandoned -- specifically, the assumption the human body and self is what it appears to be -- and I freely admit a lot of Muslims are not prepared to do that (despite claims to the contrary).
Pleased to meet you, DH, by the way, I think we haven't met before. Hope you guessed my name.
Love and Light,
The Tailor (chairman of the Verandah Vanguard, the Tailor of the True Garment of Prayer, caller of the Cosmic Athan, the Renewer of the Body's True Science, the perfume sniffing, womanizing Sheikh of Submission, the Nerd of Namaz and the Doctor of the Deen.)
PS: If you require more detail regarding lashings, see here:
http://thegoodgarment.wordpress.com/2010/04/18/lashings-and-the-four-witnesses/
Topic: Can you attend "The Big Question" Sunday Morn Birmingham?