Horrific Tales of Koran Burning

Some days ago, the members of a small Christian church in Florida announced that they would burn copies of the Koran and would also set Sept. 11 as the anniversary of destruction of all Islamic work. Pastor Terry Jones, undaunted by international pressure, created a link on Facebook which had the name International Burn-a-Koran Day, where he invited people to participate in the Koran bonfire planned for Sept. 11 in Gainesville, between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.

From the re-conquest of Granada to the Bosnian War, the Koran was sentenced to burn at the stake many times. These sad and tragic incidences have always given rise to bitter consequences. For example, as the German writer Heinrich Heine wrote in his play “Almansor,” from 1821: “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” Although this phrase is often quoted, people have forgotten (or maybe it is bad faith) that this quotation concerned the burning of copies of the Koran in Granada after the conquest by the Catholic Monarchs. In 1500, Cardinal Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros ordered the gathering and burning of all Arabic manuscripts. More than 5,000 Arabic texts were consumed by flames; however, the Cardinal went down in history as the founder of the noble University of Alcalá.

In 1109, during the capture of Tripoli, the Crusaders sought out any copy of the Koran in order to burn it. They thought it was the work of the devil and deserved to be burned. A mysterious copy of the Koran from 1537 was destroyed by a straightforward order from the Pope. Until a few years ago, it seemed that there were no copies left, but, in fact, there is only one copy in the world, which was discovered by Angela Nuovo in the Biblioteca dei Frati Minori di San Michele in Isola, Venice. The book may be considered as one of the rarest of all time.

On June 11, 1992, the execution of four people was announced in the holy city of Mashhad, capital of Khorasan. Their names were Javad Ganjkhanlou, Golamhossein Pourshirzad, Ali Sadeqi and Hamid Javid. All were arrested on May 30, 1992, in connection with the riots in the city of Mashhad. They were indicted with many charges. Ali Sadeqi was also convicted of burning thousands of copies of the Koran, having been the leader of the attack against the Islamic Propagation Organization building, in which a huge library was burned.

It is believed that from 1992 until the end of the Bosnian war, the Serbians damaged 188 libraries – 43 of them were completely destroyed – and devastated 1,200 mosques, and that number is still incomplete. Thousands of copies of the Koran disappeared or were purged.

In 1998, a French librarian, whose name the European media does not want to remember, was suspended for two years for destroying Arabic and Muslim books in an important library in Paris. The fanatic used to hide the Arabic books and take them to his house, where he burned them in order to prevent others from reading them.

In April 2003, during the conquest of Baghdad by the U.S. troops, hundreds of copies of the Koran were destroyed in the fire at the Baghdad National Library and at Bayt al Hikma.

Why do people want to destroy the Koran? Why is there so much discrimination against this book? In an attempt to understand what is happening, one should point out that the attack responds to the religious and cultural meaning of the writing. Islam, with over 1.2 billion adherents, modified the world with a message that is still alive: “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet.” Islam upholds that the Koran — which consists of 114 suras, or chapters, and each of these suras, in turn, contains 6,236 verses — was revealed from Allah to Mohammed orally through the angel Gabriel over a period of 23 years. As years went by, the Koran, whose name alludes to the recitation, became holy.

Suffice it to say that is not possible to recite the text of Islam without being purified by God, that the Holy Quran is carefully kept in silk cloth and placed in an elevated position and that the greatest glory for a Muslim is to memorize it. Those who do so win the privilege of using the title “Hafiz”.

It is believed that if it is recited in a certain way, it can make miracles happen. The perfection of the calligraphy in which it is written alludes to a devout act. Before being transcribed by Zhaid ibn Thabit, it could be found in palm tree leaves, camel bones or parchment paper.

It is impossible that the reader has heard talks of a sacred computer or a sacred car, but he knows (as Borges knew it) [a reference to Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentine writer] about books considered sacred. For many societies, the book represents a divine manifestation of a superior spirit and a monument to the memory — as is evident in 56 tunnels of the Chiltan Mountains in the community of Quetta in Pakistan, where a group of servants did their utmost to guard a cemetery with 70,000 bags protecting damaged copies of the Koran. These places are called Jabal-E-Noor-Ul-Quran.

Nevertheless, the Koran — as a sacred book — paradoxically acquires the condition of being considered a symbol. Those who nowadays want to burn it, like their predecessors, know what they are doing: they are trying to change the meaning of 9/11, and provoke the most violent religious persecution of the 21st century.