A Shiraz July 29, 2005

Tags: Quran , analysis , religion

Idolatry Springeth From Adoration

href="/tag/God">God. The Hindus are accused of engaging in such idol worship to the promiscuous point that today they have innumerable Gods. Shiite Muslims are accused of idolatry when they elevate the status of Ali to an unusual degree. But there is an idolization common to most Muslims: idolizing the Koran.

Words printed on paper are elevated to such a height that they are folded into “Tawiz” and hung around the believers to protect them from disease and the ‘evil eye’. Such are the abnormal expectations attached to the printed Koran that believers often dissolve it in water and drink it as medicine. Unfortunately it is often the case that the wearer and the one who prepares this ‘holy paper’ or ‘medicine’ are quite often unaware of the meaning of the words.

Other examples of this exaggerated respect as demonstrated by some is kissing the Koran, pressing it against one’s eyes, avoiding pointing one’s feet towards it and sitting below the position of the book. Lastly an act I often found irrational is the elaborate measures taken to burn or discard all Arabic words that look even remotely ornate or Koran like.

It is not like the scholars of Islam have been ignorant of such idolatry. Many shake their heads over it, shrug their shoulders and exclaim with consternation and blame it in on the times. Others have waged righteous war against all idolatry. Illustration of such valiant acts is their prohibition of approaching the Prophet’s tomb. This was enacted to prohibit people from praying at the tomb, kissing the tomb and to prevent tying threads and prayer requests.

Another desperate action is the bulldozing of “Jannatul Baqi” (a graveyard holding the greatest martyrs and saints of Islam) to prevent people from kissing tombstones or stealing the sand for purposes of selling them as holy relics and remedies.

Some may say, ‘but what is the harm in such acts of devotion?’ Besides the fact that this is idolatry and therefore a sin, historically Muslims have suffered gravely because they have elevated their Holy Book to irrational heights.

Case in point is the day when a prototype of the Gutenberg press was presented to the Caliph of Turkey for purposes of printing the Koran. The Gutenberg press as we all know is responsible for the resurgence of Europe from the Dark Ages more than any other invention. When such an opportunity was presented to Muslims before it ever made an impression in Europe the scribes of the Koran rejected this machine and denounced it as an “instrument of the devil”.

The rationale of the scribes was that since the printing press did not perform ablution before ‘writing’ the Koran it was therefore unfit but moreover it was devilish for printing the Koran without performing an ablution.

One sees countless more side affects of such adoration with the riots and public unrest that erupts throughout the Islamic world. Most recently there was the incident of a village Doctor in Pakistan who was lynched because someone accused him of throwing a page of the Holy Book in the sewers. After the lynching the crowd went about destroying public infrastructure, looting shops and vandalizing taxpayer-sponsored property.

Remember idolatry arises not from hatred but an extreme of adoration and devotion. It is when you begin to love a human being more than you love God that you begin to commit idolatry. It is when you begin to love money more than God that you commit idolatry. It is when you begin to associate irrational zeal and passion to an aspect of religion or a religious icon is when you begin to commit a sin. It is when you misplace the source of your salvation be it money, the saints, books or the Prophet’s family when you begin to elevate something to the status of a God.

Besides it being a sin irrational zeal is a weakness that your foes will most certainly exploit. You have already seen evidence of self-destructive behavior amongst Muslims when a few socialists drew a picture of a pig and wrote “Mohammad” underneath. The resulting youth riots destroyed the fledgling and meager economy of that region. If you provide sensitive areas and “buttons” that are rooted in an unnecessary reverence your foes will most gladly press it and then watch with glee as you dance towards your destruction. Most importantly it is very easy for your foes to set you against your friends if you provide the world with simple interfaces into your psychology.

What then is the solution and what is the way forward?

As it is the Koran might as well be placed on an altar and worshipped or placed in a museum and admired from afar because few Muslims bother to understand it. I advocate reading the Koran and devouring it, use it like a Japanese citizen employs his English dictionary – let the pages get dog eared, let the cover become tattered, carry it everywhere and read it whenever you get the chance, be it at a bus stop or an airport terminal.

Currently Muslims bathe before touching the Koran, women undergoing their menses are not allowed to touch the book and if you accidentally break wind or have to rush to the bathroom then you must bathe all over again before touching the Koran. These are the symptoms of a reluctant student not the ways of a passionate seeker of revelation. Whoever has taught you these ways only wishes to formalize and ritualize your approach to a message that runs through your veins. Do not let them distance you from your salvation!

Such is the fear amongst Muslims of the Koran that they are afraid of attempting to understand it on their own lest they are misled. They feel that if they must understand the Koran they must only do so through the help of the oft-controlling scholars and oft corrupt Imams of the Islamic world. Because they fail to take the initiative and explore the wonders of the Koran on their own they have come to the point where all understanding trickles down from a few blind (or partially blind) men. If you are going to be misled by reading the Koran you will be misled whether you go through an Imam or the Shaikh of the Harimain Sharifain. Why wait then for an Imam to lead you to what is the most important thing in your life? Pick up and read the book. Then honor the message not the papyrus, not the binding, not the elaborate illustration but the message for it will be your understanding of the message which will save you not your elaborate displays of devotion.

Muslims need to understand that the meaning of the words in the Koran is more important than the words printed on paper. The understanding of the Koran is more important than reciting the Koran with elaborate ululations (recited often without understanding). The translation of the Koran is of greater importance than memorizing words one does not comprehend.

Perhaps of paramount importance is translating the Koran into the local dialects of the Islamic world because the message of the Koran should be transmitted and understood by everyone from the native Arabic speaker to the most pathetic farm boy in the Indus valley. This is precisely what Luther and William Tyndale envisioned for Europe and this is the secret to Europe’s resurgence. Christians, particularly the Protestant Christians read their Bible, understand it and discuss it with their fellow believers. They carry their Bibles as they carry their wallet, close to their hearts an ever-ready savior.

A hurdle to understanding the Koran is its arcane Arabic. Some may argue that it’s better for people to learn Arabic rather than corrupting the Koran by translating it into a native dialect. The truth is that there is no end to claiming that “translating the Koran will corrupt its meaning”. God has so sealed the hearts of Muslims that they refuse to understand the Koran, even in Arabic. For it is an oft-heard claim of Arab speakers that they don’t understand the Koran because the language is ancient and therefore beyond comprehension. If this is the case then the Islamic world has lost the message of the Koran even for the native Arab speaker.

But even if we were all one billion of us to learn ancient Arabic as spoken in the dialect of the tribe of Quraish, instituting Arabic as the language of the Islamic world also poses the threat of squashing all innovation and creativity and personal respect, identity and pride of all the nations under Islam from the Bengali to the Turk.

When the words of the Koran become alive for her people, nay when the words come alive for all people then Muslims may expect a revitalization of their fortunes and a return to the glory days of the Companions of the Prophet Mohammad. Moreover when Muslims dare to understand not just the Koran but the Torah and the Bible they will most certainly regain what they seem to have lost and cannot attain. May we all attain our heavens!