All of Them Burn the Quran

I sat in a Washington, D.C., hotel located between the White House and the Capitol Building, leafing through the guest services book. The phrase “Religious Services” caught my eye and, curious, I called the front desk to inquire about it. Michael from the front desk responded by asking me the religion whose services about which I was inquiring. I told him that I wanted to know about services provided for Islam. He told me that the hotel has a transfer service to a mosque located five minutes from the hotel. I asked him whether he knew about the direction of prayer, making sure not to say the words “Mecca” or “qibla” so that I could evaluate the extent of the hotel administration’s knowledge of the details of Muslim prayer. He excused himself for half a minute and then promptly returned to explain to me, in his own words, the direction of the city of “Holy Mecca” in relation to my hotel room. Even if I had said that I was Jewish or Buddhist, I am certain that I would have received the same attention.

The reader may think that all the inhabitants of the United States are like Michael at my hotel, possessing a high degree of openness and respect for other cultures. This, however, is unfortunately not the case. The United States is like any other country, with some extremist buffoons from all religions and from various political and cultural tendencies, among them hawks, doves and flocks of crows.

These days, American politicians are condemning the plan of a church in Florida to burn copies of the noble Quran, stigmatizing this action as foolish, shameless and dangerous. Moderate religious leaders — among them Jews and Christians in Europe, the United States and the Arab world — are dissociating themselves from this action. The Vatican is condemning it, and the European Jewish Congress of Germany has expressed that this plan is inflammatory and an insult to a sacred book. At the same time, extremists are preparing to burn the Quran in remembrance of Sept. 11. While there are always some bad apples in the bunch, I do not understand why they did not celebrate the first anniversary of the events of September by burning the Quran. Or why they are not waiting until the coming year to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of this important event; why the rush to burn the Quran this year?

Threatening to burn the Quran is a crime even before the threat is executed because it inflames the emotions of more than a billion people, just as the project to build a mosque in the location of the Twin Towers in New York inflames the feelings of even moderate Americans. The plan to build a mosque near ground zero incites extremism even in the souls of the silent majority — just as what has happened with Pastor Jones. Jones has tied any halt to his plan to burn the Quran to a change in the site of the mosque from the land adjacent to the site of the Sept. 11 attacks. Clearly, the idea to build this mosque has incited heinous acts even before it has been built, and as such, it has harmed the interests of Muslims.

Just the threat of building the mosque is enough to do this in the same way that the mere threat of burning the Quran does. This project will continue producing calamities in its wake unless the idea is called off altogether. One of the Americans upset with the building of the mosque told me: “The leader of the Muslims proposed a project to build a center for interreligious dialogue to attack the idea that extremism exists in a place that has already witnessed the full ugliness of extremism that exists today.” I told him there is no need to build anything. Why not leave the place empty from the tumult of argument and conflict so that the families of the victims will have a place to put bouquets of flowers every year without their feelings of sorrow being mixed with any ill-will? One should not deny them a place of remembrance. The construction of the forthcoming Islamic center will transform it into a center for the defense of Islam, but it will be a weak defense because it will be as though a lawyer is standing before a judge and presenting a defense while standing atop the corpses of the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.

In the Quran, there is a verse that contains a valuable lesson in diplomacy and political matters, especially when dealing with controversial issues. This verse ought to be remembered by the imam of the mosque in New York and by agitated Muslims around the world. God said: “Revile not those unto whom they pray beside Allah lest they wrongfully revile Allah through ignorance” because the punishment for reviling others is severe — something that one who comprehends the full dimensions of this verse would know.

It is shameful that the ones who truly desecrate the values of Islam are Muslims themselves, as Islamic history is full of instances of killing and intimidation that have happened in mosques. This includes the murder of innocents, irrespective of the sanctity of the place and the inviolability of worship. In contemporary history, tens of mosques in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Somalia and Yemen have been blown up, together with the worshippers and copies of the Quran within them. Almost all of this has been at the hands of Muslim extremists. It is unpleasant that news like this comes periodically without being met by any condemnation of these horrendous actions.

Meanwhile, the threat of extremist Christians burning the Quran in a church merits the vicious wrath of Muslims. This is despite the fact that there is no difference between the one crime and the other. The ultimate result is the same, and that is the desecration of the values of a religion. Yet one who follows the news finds a large degree of schizophrenia attending the reactions of Muslims to these two issues. Pakistan witnesses bombings that are answered by nothing but silence after every Friday prayer, despite the fact that many of the targeted places are mosques filled with worshippers and Qurans. Yet people exit some of these same mosques that were once targets for bombings by Muslims, congregating in the streets after Friday prayer to condemn the plan of Pastor Jones for burning the noble Quran! This is a clear demonstration that such attitudes are not religious at all, but are in fact political in nature.

Pastor Jones may proceed with his plan or back down. In either case, another person may well appear and suggest the same idea. Vicious people from the Muslim community may well threaten to bomb churches or threaten American forces, responding to Jones’ provocation with spurious pretensions of revenge. It is regrettable that we must accept the idea that there are extremists in every religion and in every society who appear by surprise with a frightening vision, following it up with some dastardly act. We see them today carrying out bombings in Pakistan and preventing aid from getting to those afflicted by the floods. We see them threatening to burn a holy book or committing massacres in mosques or raising their voices to implore that a ruinous plague descend upon those who work for peace.

There is no difference between an extremist Muslim, Jew or Christian. All of them are axes of evil.