Book burning has never been a good idea. In fact, it's downright maddening, and that's why I can sympathize with the anger that has erupted across Afghanistan at news that Americans have once again burned copies of Islam's most sacred book – the Qur'an. The burning of the Qur'an is not just a slap in the face of a particular religion. It's an insult upon a rich and vibrant culture and the civilization that sprang forth from it. It's like stabbing the soul of a follower of Islam. Plus, it's just plain mean and insensitive.
Consider how Americans would feel at the sight of mobs burning the American flag. Imagine the outcry in this nation if Bibles were burned. For Muslims, the burning of the Qur'an carries the same sentiment.
Book burning as a political or religious tool has a long and storied past. The Chinese Emperor Qin did it in the 3rd century BC. Egyptians monks did it in the 4th century AD. A Spanish king ordered it done 200 hundred years later and included the homes in which the books were found to underscore his point. When the Turks invaded India near the end of the 12th century, they made a bonfire out of the great library at the celebrated Nalanda University. During the later 15th and early 16th century, the Spanish Inquisition took its turn by destroying thousands of Qur'ans and other Arabic manuscripts. In the late 1800's, New York's Society for the Suppression of Vice undertook a massive purge of the written word by fire (along with lewd pictorial representations). In the 1930's Germany's Third Reich torched millions of volumes at the Opernplatz in Berlin and, of course, American idiots in these earliest years of the 21st century have taken to burning the Qur'an again. Some people never learn, and the ignorance continues.
No comments:
Post a Comment