Why is it that so many Islamic apologists revert to excusing the most immoral preachment's in the Koran (we all know which ones we're talking about since they're pretty much the same ones in the Bible) by claiming that you can't properly understand the "context" unless you read and speak Arabic fluently. This, of course, is a blatant attempt to distract (i.e. quick, look, a flying horse!) the real problem is the ambiguity of the content and the myriad layers of interpretation and alteration that have been imposed upon it over the millennia; it's like a cake recipe that's been re-written by so many different chefs that it's now a complete "dog's breakfast" (I wonder what the Arabic translation of that phrase is :). Most of these related texts ancient and not so ancient have been translated into many languages including English by scholars who read and speak Arabic (particularly ancient Arabic) better than the vast majority of Arabs can. Whenever you hear this excuse, simply apply the same logic to something the speaker would reject, i.e. ask them if it's true that you can't criticise the Bible unless you read and speak an archaic version of Hebrew or you can't reject Phlogiston theory unless you speak fluent German?
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