One of the questions that many people ask is: Why did the third Caliph, `Uthman, burn all copies of the Quran during his reign? This is viewed as something sacrilegious or indicating that the Qur'an was wrong.
There is cultural misunderstanding here, because from the Islamic tradition when you burn the Qur'an you are not disrespecting it; in fact this is the way to respectfully dispose of it, which is the exact opposite from the Western tradition.
Our religion teaches us that when you have a copy of the Qur'an that is worn out and you have to dispose of it, you don't just throw it in the trash; that is disrespectful. Rather, you disintegrate it. They didn't have paper shredders back then so how would they disintegrate the Qur'an respectfully? Simply they would light a fire and burn it because they didn't want people to trample on it; they didn't want people to throw it in trash can. They wanted to get rid of the sacredness of the Qur'an in a manner that is not intentionally disrespectful.
No comments:
Post a Comment