The Dilemma of Qur’an Burning & Violence: Hyper radical reaction or mere Hypocrisy

For the past few days we have been hearing news from Afghanistan regarding riots to protest the burning of a Quran in Florida. The results of these riots were the killing and injuring of tens of people, all for the sake of one book. Although, no one should condone acts of burning the Quran or any other books for that matter, the puzzling question remains, why is it such a big deal when it comes to the Quran? In order to answer this question one must understand the Islamic view concerning the Quran.

Perhaps the most sacrosanct belief of the Islamic faith is that the Qur’an is a miraculous book. It is believed to be the ultimate miracle of Islam: not only a book sent down from heaven but a perfect book in language and structure that could never be replicated by mankind.

As such, the Qur’an is not to be challenged. When questions arise, most Islamic scholars deal with them only from the perspective that the Qur’an is a miraculous message from Allah. If, in fact, this assumption could be proven to be in error, Muslims would be empowered to subject the Qur’an to true critical analysis, in the same fashion that all other religious texts in history have been analyzed.

Though Islam uniformly claims that the Qur’an is a heavenly book, Muslim scholars hold different views regarding the actual mechanism of its “revelation.” The most popular view is that the Qur’an was recited by the angel Gabriel to Muhammad verbatim as the words were recited to the angel by God himself.

For Muslim scholars, the above view is much safer than to say that the angel Gabriel came with the content of the Qur’an to Muhammad and the latter expressed these revelations in his own Arabic language. Such view would have been considered radical and would be potentially dangerous as it would open the door wide to the critical analysis of the Qur’an, because it would consider the Qur’an to be Muhammad’s text and not a divine book. It would mean that the Qur’an is a man-made book, subject to research and criticism. However, although there is great danger, and for obvious reasons,  in expressing such a radical view, it remains true that such extreme  view could have helped scholars, both Muslims and non-Muslims, to analyze and critique the Qur’an free from any restrictions.

Almost all Muslims do not tolerate any attempt to examine the Qur’an, even though, it is claimed to be the guide for humankind (Q 3.138; Q 10.57), the Criterion (Q 2.185; Q 3.4; Q 25.1) by which mankind can separate between right and wrong, and a healing (Q 17.82; Q 41.44), not to mention that it is considered by Muslims to be a divine revelation (Q 21.45). Therefore, if a book such as the Qur’an labels itself with such powerful claims and demands people to follow its commands and path to salvation, and dictates on its followers multitude of doctrines, then one is left with no choice but to analyze the contents of this book, critique it, and even judge it.

Yet the sad reality is that Muslims expect no one to dare to critique or even question their so called “divine book”. If such a view restricts any form of analysis of this book, the Qur’an, then the burning of such a book would definitely be forbidden. It becomes clearer now that a reaction as the one we have been experiencing in the past few days is based on such view. One is left with a dilemma to resolve concerning the act of burning the Qur’an.

The dilemma stems from the very act of compiling the Qur’an as a book, which dates all the way back to approx. A.D. 645, during which time one of the Islamic Caliphs, Othman (thirds Caliph), who ordered a second and final collection process of the Qur’an to develop what is called today, the Othmanic Version. Not that many Muslims or even others know that the current Qur’an was never compiled as one book until after the death of the prophet of Islam. Up until that time, memory was the most prominent form of preserving the Qur’an, human memory that is, along with a handful of individualized codices of the Qur’an. Just this information alone should make one wonder if the current Qur’an is truly the same one revealed by the prophet of Islam. Indeed, it was the presence of multiple codices and variant readings which escalated conflicts among Muslims which prompted Othman to order the collection of the Qur’an into its final form, to help reduce these tensions and unify the different Muslim groups by establishing a compilation committee to create one standard Qur’an for all. In fact, it was due to such shocking revelation that Othman ordered the burning of all other codices of the Qur’an to eliminate any discrepancies and unify the form, dialect, and language of these Qur’ans into one.

Although our intent here is not to analyze the process of compiling the Qur’an by Othman and his committee, one must at least acknowledge that Othman, one of the Islamic rules and a close companion to the prophet of Islam, made a single handed decision to burn copies of the Qur’an that could have been the original or the true ones. This action was reported in the pages of many classical Islamic literatures and is widely accepted by Muslim scholars. Yet, despite all of this, we never read of any riots or acts of violence by Muslims back then or today, denouncing the action of one of their historical characters. Such silence can only be labeled as an act of ignorance of one’s own history of the collection of his/her divine guidance, or a pure act of hypocrisy.

It is confusing to hear of the ongoing riots by Muslims over a book that contains a multitude of contradicting facts and tangible dilemmas worthy of examination, yet at the same time, such violence was never directed against the act of burning the Qur’an by one of their own at a very critical time, when the Qur’an was being collected and compiled as a book.

In my humble opinion, it is these acts of violence that keep moderate Muslims at bay out of fear of retaliation, and keeps scholars in general hesitant of conducting one of their simple rights, the right to examine a book and judge its content.

We have heard it said before; Do Not Judge The Book By It’s Cover. Yet when it comes to the Qur’an, one can’t pass its cover never the less, judge its content. Such dilemma leads us to ask the following question: If the Qur’an is truly a divine book, why do Muslims feel the need to protect it through extreme violence when Allah, the mighty deity of Islam, should be expected to protect that which is His? However, such expectation apparently has no place in Islamic theology in general and among radicals in particular, as radicals seem to take it upon themselves to protect the Qur’an, the word of their almighty god, by all means necessary, including threats and violence. Such actions which contradict the popular view that Islam is a religion of “Peace,” especially when we  are dealing with a version of the Qur’an that was compiled and custom tailored by a mere human, namely Othman. Ironically, the Qur’an stated clearly in one of its verses that “. . . If the whole of mankind and Jinns were to gather together to produce the like of this Qur’an, they could not produce the like thereof, even if they backed up each other with help and support.”  (Q 17.88). Yet it took only the order of Othman and his committee to put together the current Qur’an, a text that without a doubt does not match the other burned copies. Hence, we wonder then if it would be SAFE for us to the present day Qur’an “The Othmanic Revised Standard Version”!

It is dilemmas such as these that prompted The Quran.com Group to write and publish our new book “The Qur’an Dilemma” (www.thequran.com) for the purpose of examining, analyzing, and critiquing the Qur’an in order to bring its imperfection to light.