I agree with you, there are so many places in religious texts where we would be ridiculous and possibly have some evil agenda to read the text literally. But in other places, we have 'proof' (if you will) from the "Sunnah" (way) of the last Islamic Prophet regarding those exact things, so there's no debate nor room for interpretation. For this particular point, we have too much "proof" (in the same regard), so that's why there's no room for interpretation here and the question of reading things literally is irrelevant.