This is only the tip of the iceberg of mindsets in the Qur’an (and the Hadiths and so forth) which may interfere with the modern rights and freedoms of both secular and religious. The Qur’an approves of slavery “So enjoy what you took as booty: the spoils are lawful and good” (8:69) and religious intolerance “O you who believe, take not into your intimacy those outside your religion. They will not fail to corrupt you. They only desire your ruin. Rank hatred has already appeared from their mouths. What their hearts conceal is far worse. When they are alone, they bit off the very tips of their fingers at you in their rage. Say unto them, ‘Perish in your rage.’ ” (3:118). It approves of the killing of someone who ceases to be a Muslim “if they turn back from Islam, becoming renegades, seize them and kill them wherever you find them” (4:90) and holds that women are inferior to men (2:228), should only receive half the inheritance of men (4:11), are only half as valuable as a male witness in court (2:282) and are unclean to the touch (5:6).

It would be a mistake to equate in degree the impact on a secular state of Christian teaching on non-Christians with the potential impact on a secular state of carrying out the teachings of the Qur’an. Only a relatively small sphere of non-pick-and-choose traditional Christian teaching would need to be “radically sanitised” to make it more akin to modern secular law (most notably in relation to abortion and homosexuality). In the Qur’an, many more additional radical changes in non-pick-and-choose moral law would be required (most notably in relation to war, torture, sex slavery, slavery in general, women’s nature and rights, religious liberty, the democratic rights of the dhimmi, treatment of criminals).

“And anyone wanting to argue that most of the barbarous ideas posited in the Old Testament have since been superseded in the New, should go away and read Matthew 5:18 and John 15:6 before they try it.”

“If your argument is that Islam will not be able to modernise because ideas that violate human rights and freedoms are codified in the Quran, then the West should not have been able to modernise either.”

Picking and choosing which rules or laws to follow is of course widespread in society which is why the phrase “you can’t just pick and choose” is said with reference to so many different legislative contexts in society, not only religious law. With some Christian teachings, it is a case of picking and choosing between apparently contradictory texts, one notable example being women being silent in the churches (I Cor 14) versus women praying and prophesying (1 Cor 11). However, many Christian teachings do not entail having to pick and choose scripture and the same is true for Islam.

The John 15:6 reference is part of a spiritual metaphor where Jesus is a vine. A literal interpretation is not intended by the textual context and that is why no church could justifiably teach people to burn apostates, either today or in the past. For that reason, there is no record in the New Testament of any Christian burning an apostate. Even the Inquisition could not actually validate from scripture the torturing or burning of apostates; the responsibility for punishment was transposed to the secular authorities so that the church authorities could wash their hands of their complicity. Therefore, it appears that burning apostates would be not merely be “picking and choosing” between contrasting passages but an abuse of the passage concerned.

Matthew 5:18 must be taken in tandem with Matthew 5:17. While not one jot or tittle of the law might pass away, the idea that Jesus was the “fulfilment” of the law actually involved what would be seen in Jewish eyes as producing abrogations of Mosaic law, the most well-known of these “fulfillments” perhaps being “turn the other cheek” which, for Christians, supersedes “an eye for an eye”.

Gentile Christianity in fact originally only had four Mosaic obligations laid on it by the original Jerusalem church – to abstain from pollutions of idols and from unchastity and from what is strangled and from blood (referring to food offered to idols) (Acts 15:19-20). However, even the latter two obligations were removed by a dream St Peter had (Acts 11). Gentile Christianity was therefore given an ancient right to make its own decisions on what of Mosaic law was considered worth applying to non-Jews and what not. This led to the immediate development of a form of religion which was in many respects different from ancient forms of Judaism. A lot of teaching in the Old Testament has indeed “been superseded in the New” and any Orthodox Jew can enlighten you to numerous Mosaic laws that Christians, following traditional teaching, do not obey.