Re: [asa] Nailing sacred things to the wall... and idols

I'm not so sure, David.

There doesn't, to my knowledge, seem to have been any negative response
to the Quran (or the Hadiths etc) being available online. And I would
imagine this to be a pretty close analogue. However, that said, I do
acknowledge this to be a curious instance: Muslims hold that only the
Quran _in Arabic_ is the word of God - so I don't know how they process
the idea of the Quran in binary form. Technically would it be (as all
translations are taken to be) a commentary on the Quran rather than the
Quran itself? I have no idea.

Such musings aside, I think a Muslim would get upset at despoiling the
Quran, but it has to be remembered that the Islamic view of the Quran
does not properly parallel the Christian view of the Bible. Muslims hold
the Quran to be the primary incarnational form of God's revelatory word.
Whereas for Christians the primary incarnational form is Jesus himself
and the Bible is in some sense secondary. So driving a nail through the
Bible is not quite the same as driving a nail through the Quran.

What IS (I think?) similar to driving a nail through the Quran is
driving a nail through the consecrated host (assuming if one is a Roman
Catholic and holds to transubstantiation). So I can imagine that Muslim
responses to the first, and Roman Catholic responses to the second would
be on a par. They would both see such acts as despoiling the primary
locus of God's revelatory activity.

All that said, I reckon Myers could have predicted the outcome of his
actions and, if he's big enough to make a socio-religious statement in
such a manner, then he should be big enough to take the consequences.

For anybody to think otherwise is like a Creationist thinking they can
get away with trying to make a socio-religious point by despoiling the
tomb of Darwin in Westminster. But I imagine that if this happened we
would consider the outrage of the scientific community to be reasonable
and justified.

It's funny how bias works...

Murray Hogg
Pastor, East Camberwell Baptist Church, Victoria, Australia
Post-Grad Student (MTh), Australian College of Theology

David Opderbeck wrote:
> A Muslim would be upset by the very fact of the Quran being on CD or
>cassette, because they have a unique and very high view of the actual
>words of the Arabic text printed on the page.--

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Received on Tue Aug 12 19:09:35 2008