Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - More Quran burning in Sweden in the name of "Freedom of Expression " 2

dear cornelius, toyin,

i don't want to offend other people. if i disagree with them, i still will respect them, as long as their own beliefs and actions are not offensive to me or others.

so, no qur'an burning. ok. why not? we actually are taught to bury any papers marked with hebrew religious content, rather than to put it in the garbage or recycling, like copies of texts you might be working on and which contain sacred texts. in the past such manuscripts or scrolls would be buried in a geniza, and amidav ghosh wrote a beautiful novel on just the materials and stories that emerged from one such egyptian geniza after hundreds of years had gone by and an anthropologist student came upon them. It was called, In an Antique Land (1992).

the genizas were actually ancient trash bins. what irony, sacred trash becomes archival material of inestimable worth.

We don't have to agree on what is sacred and what is haram, what is to be revered and what disrespected, as long as we can be tolerant of each other.

in spain the best jamon in the world is to be found; in brooklyn it might be considered treif or harmful garbage. but don't spit on my food, don't burn my sacred texts, i won't burn yours.

when the taliban destroyed the giant buddhist statues in afghanistan, even after the buddhists were all gone, whose statues were they destroying? yours and mine. ours, all of ours.

i claim them for us; i claim the benin bronzes for us; i claim the original declaration of independence for us; i claim the magna carta for us; i claim the dead sea scrolls and the codex sinaitucus for us.

so toyin is right, in a sense. we do not want to treat the buddhas or qur'ans or bibles or statues as holy idols which belong to just one people, and whose harm is felt by its owners. we are all harmed by the violence and disrespect, not because the idol is sacred, but because we are holy ourselves.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

harrow@msu.edu

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From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelberg@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, July 1, 2023 12:05 PM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - More Quran burning in Sweden in the name of "Freedom of Expression " 2

 

Shalom

After Mao and the Communists took over in China, at the age of thirty-five ( 35) my late best friend and erstwhile mentor  Mikhail Tunkel  - very Jewish, of Lithuanian ancestry - a disciple of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, a great admirer of the Chinese people, a friend of Ehud Olmert's father, etc, moved from Harbin, China, where he was born and bred, moved to Israel In 1953 -and to Sweden circa 1988. Back in his dear Israel, one day, when curiosity got the better of him, he entered Al-Aqsa Mosque, so he tells me, and with increasing excitement, as he was making his way to the minbar which he imagined was the mosque's holy of holies, he espied the Quran and was about to take hold of the book when a loud voice - which he thought was coming from Heaven, shattered the silence with these words:

" Only the pure shall touch it! "

He says that his heart almost stopped and he almost fell down with fright, he thought it was the voice of the archangel Gabriel, but it turned out it was only one of the custodians of the mosque shouting from the balcony that he should not touch the Holy Quran, that he must be in a state of wudu - (ritual purity) to touch the Holy Quran …

I Have only one question in response to all that you have said in this thread: Does Hillel's dictum not apply to Quran burning? 

Hillel the Elder: "That which Is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow! That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary"

On Saturday, 1 July 2023 at 03:16:00 UTC+2 Harrow, Kenneth wrote:

i'm like toyin adepoju in thinking the value of the book doesn't really lie in its material properties. and i wouldn't let the haters bait me.

on the other hand, there's lots of burning i would really mind a lot.

i recently read of the various statues and scrolls etc destroyed by the various goons during the iraq war—priceless heritage of all human kind. and the taliban destruction of the buddhist statues.

if it were a 8^th century qur'an, i'd be upset; if it were an early christian relic, i'd be upset.

etc etc

the nazis burned everything jewish they could get their hands on, or sold them. i don't like that.

toyin is right: we don't want to go to war over idolatry of this or that manuscript; but we do want to give value to humanity in our veneration of objects we treasure....like, for instance, the benin bronzes, or ifa heads or yoruba masks etc. when the missionaries burned them they were the same as the foolish iraqi man in sweden who delighted in desecration of the qur'an.

i'm with anthony appiah on this: the relics of each of us are relics for all of us.

ken

kenneth harrow

professor emeritus

dept of english

michigan state university

517 803-8839

har...@msu.edu

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, June 30, 2023 7:54 PM
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - More Quran burning in Sweden in the name of "Freedom of Expression " 2

 

If it were my own holy book being burnt I would not care

On Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 2:22 PM Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com> wrote:

A copy of the Holy Quran was burned outside a mosque in Sweden on Wednesday during the  Eid al-Adha celebration 

Saudi Arabia condemns extremist who burnt Quran outside Stockholm mosque during Eid

Holy Wrath 👍

Turkeye's President Erdogan reacts to the burning of a Quran outside a mosque in Sweden :

""We will eventually teach the arrogant Westerners that insulting Muslims is not freedom of thought; We will show our reaction in the strongest possible terms, until a determined victory against terrorist organizations and Islamophobia is achieved, Those who commit this crime as well as those who allow it under the guise of freedom of opinion, those who tolerate this despicable act will not be able to achieve their ambitions"

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