The Book is also Just a Book

Forget about killing myself. I felt no anger, no hurt, and no disgust when I read about the furore over the Newsweek report regarding the ‘desecration’ of the ‘holy Quran’.

The single quotes I have used underscore a couple of points: You can desecrate only what you believe in and feel for. And the holy Quran is tautology, unless someone knows of an unholy one. Semantics aside, I tried to gauge the rage among the people supposedly most affected. During the controversial time, I was in an Islamic country – the United Arab Emirates. And there were no protests. Nothing.

Arab families on a Friday afternoon, presumably after the jumma prayers, were heading towards the KFC, Dunkin Donuts, Starbucks sections in shopping malls. Where was their hatred for America? Chances are that if you told a wealthy Arab about Guantanamo Bay, he might look skyward and say, “Inshallah, next month I will take my family there for a holiday.”

Those 17 people who killed themselves in Afghanistan probably just wanted to die – they were not sympathising with the prisoners, they did not kill themselves for their fellow human beings and perhaps fellow sufferers. The flushing of the holy book down the toilet was an excuse.

Let us examine why it is no big deal.

* Does anyone imagine that some of the eminent Western analysts of the Quran were lighting agarbattis and shaking their heads up and down while translating/interpreting the text? They were in all probability sitting in their charming study with a single malt for company.

Would this qualify as desecration?

* There is a strange notion that prisoners who have committed the most heinous crimes want to read religious books. The fact that most of them are buggering one another seems to have escaped us. They would be happier with pornography. But, no. We believe reform is possible only with religion. If religion is such a powerful force, then why are there crimes committed at all?

Now you have a situation where die-hard mass murderers, paedophiles, abusers of all kinds, are given the Quran – people who have gone against every tenet of the Book.

Would this qualify as desecration?

* A man and his wife have a quarrel. She accuses him of cheating on her. He says he is innocent. “If I am guilty, then I will die this minute. I will turn blind,” he says dramatically. The woman does not want to become a widow nor does she have any use for a man who will not be able to appreciate her visible charms, so she feigns dissatisfaction with the response: “Nahiiiiinn! You must swear on the Quran if you are speaking the truth.”

The book is brought out of its green cloth with an unbecoming ferocity; the man places his hand over it and says, “Kasam se, I am not cheating on you, I care about you.” The wife smiles victoriously. Next day, he goes and places a chaadar on the tombstone of some pir to atone for having half-lied. Or better still, he makes plans for the Haj to throw stones at the devil. Both, husband and wife, have misused the holy book.

Would this qualify as desecration?

* Sunnis and Shias routinely violate each other’s existence and they follow the same Book.

Would this qualify as desecration?

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It is ridiculous to imagine that people who have been imprisoned for allegedly terrorist activities or intentions, having used the Quran as their inspiration – however lopsided their perception of it may be – could be forced to confess to their involvement by annoying them with the tearing of the Book.

It makes no sense. Religion for the Islamists is a political entity; the Quran is incidental to it. Quranic injunctions are fabulist in their probity; it is the Sharia that lays down the rules of law. Daniel Pipes made a pertinent observation, “Fundamentalists read the Quran and the Hadith reports in novel ways and found political instruction where none was originally understood. The Quran exhorts Muslims to ‘conduct their affairs by mutual consultation’; fundamentalists interpreted this as a command to practice democracy; the Quranic call for Muslims to ‘give their due to relatives, the poor and the wayfarers’ they understood as a call for socialism.”

He quotes the secularist Duran Khalid who wrote, “…a large part of the Islamic world never knew the Shari’a and despite this developed a rich religious life and identified itself with the transnational community of believers; thus the assertion of the jurists (Ulema), that without the Shari’a Islam does not exist, is not tenable.”

Col. Muammar Qaddafi did his own little thing with ‘The Green Book’ by claiming, “In the Third Theory, we present the applications of Islam from which all mankind may benefit”. According to Pipes, “it diverged widely from the Quran and owed more to Jean-Jacques Rousseau than to any Muslim thinker”.

These examples emphasise the point that the Quran is at various levels merely a symbol, and an individual one at that. Each Muslim uses it in his/her own way. It truly is a personalised copy and pretty much in the private domain of worship.

This is the reason that there are fewer people agitating than there were against ‘The Satanic Verses’. Salman Rushdie did not tear the Book or tear it apart; he violated a belief system, somewhat like abusing your favourite fairytale. Like portraying Santa Claus as Count Dracula. Most Muslims have a more fable-like relationship with the Quran – there are passages they like and repeat. It is that simple.

* * *

The ones complicating matters are really not fit enough to comment.

It started with Imran Khan who flaunted the copy of the magazine. As a born-again Muslim, he needs to prove he is on the right side of the ‘right’.

Then there was Pakistan’s foreign minister Khursheed Kasuri who called the act “debased, inhuman and depraved”. Besides being a good thumbing through the thesaurus, I would be curious to know what he has to say about those who burned a wooden cross in the streets of London.

A hundred demonstrators, who should have been at the pub or sipping a cuppa, were screaming, “USA watch your back, Osama is coming back”, “Kill, kill USA, kill, kill George Bush” and “Desecrate today and see another 9/11 tomorrow”. This is so utterly sophomoric, more Hyde Park than evangelist. And among this group was the spokesman of the ‘Supporters of Sharia’, Abu Musa. He said the retraction, “makes no difference, we have first-hand testimony…America is quite happy to desecrate the Holy Quran all over the world.”

So why did they keep quiet all along?

Another puff-pudding, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, the mufti of Egypt said, “The Muslims will not remain silent in the face of an aggression on their sacred values.”

Sacred values? Values are what people practise, what they believe in. Values do not come packaged in books or Books to lie dormant and vanish the minute a few copies are torn. The problem is that we do not as yet have the capacity to make that fine distinction between decency and morality. Everything decent is moral. All that is moral is not necessarily decent.

How many Islamic nations put their wealth and manpower to fight the Western forces against their aggression towards their own? Where is the Islamic revivalism one hears about? With the exception of token gestures -- people fighting for the right to wear the hijaab or say their prayers in public places, or a 15th century Egyptian Quran being sold for $140,000 at an auction in London, or an Italian publisher making copies of a limited edition Quran from the Ottoman period for $3000 a piece – where is the unified, self-respecting, self-sufficient Islam?

This is not about piety, but about superficial assertion and wealth. The West has created the bugbear about, and thrown the bait of, pan-Islamism. The Islamic world spotting this mirage in the desert goes for it. They call out the name not of Allah, but Osama. What has Bin Laden got to do with the Quran? They have been trapped, and they did not even realise it! The strategy has worked beautifully – get the Muslim world to talk about Islam and Osama in one breath and then declare a general war on terror. And these naïve Muslims want the US to conduct an enquiry into the behaviour of the soldiers to prove the West’s intentions towards Islam and Muslims. Really!

Soldiers go to war. They kill people they do not know and fight a cause they do not care much about. But they listen to rap music, get a rise and jerk off some bullets. This happens everywhere in the world. The idea of following dictums of human rights violations is a bit silly. How can you draw the line when you are walking the razor’s edge?

If Islamic societies want to worry about desecration, they should start looking at how they treat their own people. Then they should, if they must, consolidate into a progressive conglomerate with diverse schools of thought adding dimensions to their ideology. It is time to give up the pretence that there is one Islamic whole. Amazingly, this imaginary bloc has resulted in the West trying to ape it. The West uses religion during elections today; it uses morality; it uses terrorist tactics to purify society. It is an interesting turn of mores, but not desirable.

The Muslim world could with its wealth and heritage easily take on the West in one fell swoop – reject it. Why can’t those Arabs learn landscaping, oil drilling? A friend who teaches at the American University in UAE told me that his task is tough. Most of the men are sons of sheikhs and aware that they will not have to work, so they take absolutely no interest in the classes. Whereas some of the women may wear traditional dress, but are extremely enthusiastic and talented. They could contribute a great deal to society.

And if Muslims cannot outright reject the West, then they ought to treat it as the pariah it is in their part of the world. A barking dog will bite only if you let it come too close.

Desecration is when you allow yourself the torpor for your core to be tarnished. And if you are a true believer, then the Quran – or any ideology that enlightens you -- ought to have seeped into your soul. Save that.