"This is an aberration," he said. Apostasy was seen as treason during the turbulent early years when Islam was expanding and faith was equivalent to citizenship in the new empire. This no longer applied in the modern era, he said.
Among Meyer's examples was the command in the Torah to the Israelites to wipe out the rival Amalekite tribe, which amounted to asking Jews to commit genocide.
Two other "painful verses" were God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, which seemed to justify killing in the name of religion, and a Talmudic text allowing Jews to steal from non-Jews, he said.
"There is no text without interpretation," said Meyer, who in the book cited several other Jewish writings to provide a wider context that weakened their impact.
ISLAM'S TUNNEL PERIOD
Simoens argued the Gospel of John, the Evangelist accused of being a source of Christian anti-Semitism, was not anti-Jewish and closely examined many of his verses to illustrate his point.
"There are the effects of a vulgarisation of exegesis," he said. He called the view of John as anti-Semitic "an ideology".
Asked how widely his liberal views were shared in the Islamic world, Bencheikh said many Muslim states kept tight control over religion and blocked reforms.
But he said rigid readings of Islamic texts would give way to deeper interpretations. Islam was in a "tunnel period", he said: "Our generation has lost the erudition of old without replacing it with modern thought."
Meyer said the trio hoped the book would be translated into other languages to help dialogue elsewhere in Europe. "It's important to get beyond the French-speaking world," he said.
Asked if they planned another book, Meyer was wary of tackling a new project or hitting the usual conference trail.
"If we're invited for conferences with dialogue groups, we'll just be preaching to the converted," he said.
"The problem is to transmit this message in one's own community," he explained. "We need to communicate this to people who need to hear it. We're thinking how to do this now."
