Of course you can have an opinion about Islam without having read Qur'an. You don't have to read Mein Kampf to have an opinion about Nazism.
Interpretation
You can form opinions on subjects without in-depth knowledge of their foundational texts.
Richard Dawkins emphasizes that individuals can hold views about complex ideologies, such as Islam or Nazism, even if they haven't engaged with their key texts. This statement challenges the notion that one must be thoroughly informed about a subject to have a valid opinion, suggesting that opinions can be formed from broader societal understandings and personal interpretations.
In practice
During a debate on religious freedom, this quote could be used to illustrate that a lack of familiarity with a text does not prevent the formation of opinions.
No educated person believes the Adam and Eve myth nowadays, but it's surprising how many parents think that it's somehow fun to pass on this falsehood to their children...I would want to argue that the truth of evolution is more interesting and more poetic
If the history-deniers who doubt the fact of evolution are ignorant of biology, those who think the world began less than ten thousand years ago are worst than ignorant, they are the deluded to the point of perversity.
The population of the U.S. is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the U.S. leads the world by miles.
When you make machines that are capable of obeying instructions slavishly, and among those instructions are 'duplicate me' instructions, then of course the system is wide open to exploitation by parasites.
Even if not a single fossil has ever been found, the evidence from surviving animals would still overwhelmingly force the conclusion that Darwin was right.
The bitter hatreds that now poison Middle Eastern politics are rooted in the real or perceived wrong of the setting up of a Jewish State in an Islamic region. In view of all that the Jews had been through, it must have seemed a fair and humane solution. Probably deep familiarity with the Old Testament had given the European and American decision-makers some sort of idea that this really was the historic homeland of the Jews.
It is for us and our time...to say the right makes might.
maybe she had become tired of being the girlfriend of a condemned man. It also occured to me that maybe she was sick, or dead. These things happen. [...] Anyway, after that, remembering Marie meant nothing to me. That seemed perfectly normal to me, since I understood very well that people would forget me when I was dead.
The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall.
In real life as in grand opera, arias only make hopeless situations worse.
If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
The whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.