A N Wilson, Rabbi Sachs, Karen Armstrong and Reza Aslan  are all fans of established religious institutions, and for reasons which I fully feel and understand. I love, for example,  the Anglican music tradition; I am also an admirer of the Church of England's latterday lack of certainty, indeed its celebration of doubt. I have enjoyed, as a tourist, visits to magnificent mosques in Istanbul and Sarajevo. My Orthodox Jewish uncle and aunt were a very kind and hospitable couple.The commitment of  members of all three Abrahamic branches, lay and clerical, seems largely concentrated on this earthly life, the only one we know, as opposed to some post mortem ethereal eternity for the faithful few. And as A N Wilson and others point out, the stories of the Flight from Egypt and the Jews' release from exile in Babylon have been the inspiration for worthy political campaigns like slavery's and apartheid's abolition as well as Martin Luther King's work for Civil Rights in the United States. As for hellfire and damnation for unbelievers, they seem long consigned to the history books.

Where I take issue with the four writers listed at the top, the two Christians, the Jew and the Muslim, is that they seem unaware of the potential danger of venerating old books.  This veneration is a fundamental feature of the three Peoples of the Book.

Youssef Choueiri  summed up this danger very neatly in his  book 'Islamic Fundamentalism' : http://www.amazon.co.uk/Islamic-Fundamentalism-3rd-Islamist-Movements/dp/0826498019/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1441889878&sr=8-1&keywords=Islamic+Fundamentalism+-+Youssef+Choueiri

'So long as revealed text is constatnly judged to be the final arbiter of human affairs, or of truth and falsehood, fundamentalism is bound to apear under various labels and systems of thought'.

It is all very well to point out, or indeed live by, the relatively peaceful Koranic verses from the early Meccan period after Mahomet's initial revelation, but vaunting the entire Koran as the incontrovertible word of the Almighty is asking for trouble.  Attempts to redefine Jihad as an inner spiritual struggle as opposed to forcing a new creed upon the world at the point of a sword will not convince everyone. 

'Hermeneutics' and 'Exegesis' are fancy words whereby benign theologians from all three Abrahamic branches try to convince themselves, if nobody else, that the Koran and Hadiths, as well as the Bible do not mean what they say.  They have come in handy in the last 25 years in the Church of England, for example, which has defied its founder,  St. Paul's edict that women in church should stay silent. The church now has women bishops.

The retired Chief rabbi of Britain's Orthodox Jews acknowledged in his latest book, 'Not in God's Name' that without elaborate and tortuous 'interpretation' (he could not bring himself to write denial or distortion) Bible study can lead to violence.

The Publicity vids of ISIS justify, indeed glorify, every barbarous action of their 'Caliphate' with quotes from the Koran and Hadiths.

Clerics of all three Abrahamic branches need to take several steps bolder than 'exegesis' and 'hermeneutics' and knock their Holy texts off their divinely issued and infallible shelves. There are precedents for acts equally radical. Catholics have acknowledged that Galileo was right, and have jettisoned the Limbo idea. Jews, for all that they ceremonially venerate the Torah, have no plans to implement its law code. It is only relevant, some say, when a Temple stands in Jerusalem. There have been attempts, since the Temple's destruction in A D 70, however, to rebuild the thing, so the Jews had better be prepared for something more fundamental.

That leaves the Muslims. Their Koran and Hadiths are  currently a much bigger obstacle to peace than is the Bible.  Sure there are plenty of clerics prepared to do the necessary semiotic contortions to try and make the sacred texts of Islam messages conducive to peace and harmony. Who in the world, though,  is there that could persuade them that their old writings are an obstacle to any such mission?