Lately someone tried to burn a Quran again, and of course that one person took center stage of the entire debate.  But regardless, I want to go on record and say that I don’t believe public Quran burning is good.  Or the answer.

Yes, it is disrespectful.  But there’s more to it than that.

To understand why it is so inflammatory one must understand how a muslim sees the Quran.  For them it is not just paper and ink, but rather an actual extension of Allah himself.  That the words are the eternal words of Allah, and a part of himself.  It would be like burning Jesus for Christians, the Word incarnate.

This is interesting in and of itself as muslims are quick to deny the trinity, yet they have a biunity in Islam.  The Quran is not Allah but it is part of Allah, so there is a plurality there.  But that’s a different topic for another day.

The reality is that you do not win hearts this way when you desecrate what they perceive as a part of God himself.

Did they destroy altars in the Bible?  Did they burn things in Scripture?  The answer is…yes.

When Israel repented, God commanded them to destroy the high places among themselves.  When they did not, they aroused the anger and jealousy of God.

And in Acts 19, we see Christian burning false idols (Acts 19:17-20).

And this became known to all the residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks. And fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled.  Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices.  And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver.  So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.

What happened?  People came to the Lord.  And in their repentance, they saw that they had worshiped and trusted in magic and other things dedicated to idols.  To demonstrate their repentance, they burned everything false.

But do you see the theme in both of these instances?  It was believers removing from themselves books and evil things that they had.  It was believers doing this with their own possessions as an act of repentance.  It was a total cut from the things of the past.  Not a taunting to the face of their former practitioners.

So muslims, I do not agree with your faith.  I cannot find even one good reason at all to follow Islam.  If you want to discuss (respectfully), there’s a contact form for that.

But while I cannot see for any reason that these books would be of any form beyond man, I do not advocate the burning of your Quran.

In fact, I want you to have a Quran.  Why?  Because I want you and everyone else to read it in a language that you understand.  I know you are told you can only read it in the ancient Arabic, but read it in a modern day translation like Yusuf Ali.  And then decide, is this what you want to follow?  I think you will be surprised.

So yes, I am against Quran burning.  More than that, I wish all to read the Bible.  And for those interested, the Quran as well.

There is no comparison.