Dude, you have no Quran

I'm sure we all remember the Quran book burning threat from a couple of weekends ago. I wanted to comment at the time but other commitments got in the way. Now I have a quieter day so here we go:

Burning books is stupid and ignorant.

Note, I am not saying that all books are sacred, or that any are. Nor am I saying that an individual is forbidden to destroy a possession, so long as it is legally their own or they have suitable permission. But each book has a value greater than that printed on the cover and the combined writings of humanity have a value greater than the summed content of the individual books. That value is context.

Important texts from times past are often difficult to interpret without contemporary texts to set things in a social or linguistic structure. Structures which, 2000 years ago say, have no modern counterpart for comparison. We need the legacy of books from all ages to understand ourselves and how our societies have developed.

Burning any book has the potential to rob the future of a storehouse of historical knowledge. Just think of the attacks on the Library of Alexandria where humanity lost forever texts which, even then, were of great antiquity.

Of course the unadulterated word of Allah has been a previous victim of book burning, and surprisingly Moslems themselves were responsible, as this news report from 653AD informs us. An incalculable loss to religious scholars and historians of every generation since.

So I am glad that the September 11^th Quran burning fizzled out into a non-event: except for one incident in Amarillo, Texas.

Some religious nutter was planning to burn a copy in an Amarillo park when Jacob Isom rescued the kerosene dowsed volume from a barbeque and ran off. In an interview for the local News Channel 10, Isom said he snuck up behind the organiser, David Grisham, liberated the book and said “Dude, you have no Quran”.

The book was delivered unsinged to a local Muslim leader and Jacob Isom is now an internet hero. Well done Sir!

Dude You Have No Quran AUTOTUNE REMIX

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Via Unreasonable Faith