You can’t burn the word of God!’ Public desecration of the Quran has become the primary weapon of far-right politicians to incite violence. It also manifests centuries-old European suspicions of Islam
In the 1980s, Maurits Berger studied Arabic and Islamic law in the Middle East for eight years. He frequented mosques in Egypt and Syria to understand the message of the Quran. Born in the Netherlands, he aspired to be a lawyer. He says that learning about Sharia legal interpretations was like trying to grapple with ancient Roman law.
“The Bible is treated with respect but differently than what’s accorded to the Quran ,” says Berger, now a professor of Islam and West at Leiden University in the Netherlands. This difference in how communities approach matters of their faith is being routinely exploited by far-right politicians, who burn and tear pages of the Quran to rile up Muslims. It’s an incitement to violence.
A few month later, Lars Thorsen — a Norway-based anti-Muslim bigot and leader of Stop the Islamization of Norway , which gained notoriety for desecrating the Quran in public places — set fire to the Quran in Mortensrud, a predominantly Muslim neighbourhood in the suburbs of Oslo, proclaiming that his act was “a protest against the political content" of the Quran.
For instance, Eurabia, written by Ye’or in 2005, promotes a conspiracy theory that the European political elite and the Arab world are secretly cooperating to convert Europe into a bastion of Islam.
"A petition was signed by over 4,000 people, demanding the attorney general to take action against the Quran burning,” Qureshi tells“But nothing happened. They are still burning the Quran and we have realised that the Norwegian government will not do anything to stop it.”Children in observant Muslim households are taught to handle the Quran with care from an early age. They kiss and press it to their foreheads once they are done reading it.
“Secular Europeans know the Quran is important for Muslim believers, but fail to grasp their deep devotion to the word of God,” he says. He says the fact that the two religions share similar themes, yet are practised in such different ways, left Europeans puzzled.“In medieval Europe, water quality was really bad. Beer or wine was much safer to drink. So they wondered why Prophet Muhammad prohibited alcohol. To explain this, Christian folklore mixed up stories they knew from Sirah-e-Nabwi ,” says Berger.
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