Muslims' reaction to flushed Quran is understandable

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Noor Abualnadi, 14, keeps her Quran on the top shelf of her desk at home.

Nothing ever sits on top of it. She never places it on the floor. She never writes in it. Before reading it, she performs a ritual cleansing. And she never carries it into the bathroom.

So when the Kansas City student heard about a Newsweek magazine report of U.S. interrogators flushing the Quran down a toilet, she said she thought, "How can someone be so cruel and hateful to do something as disgraceful as that?"

Despite the magazine's retraction, the aftershocks still are being felt throughout the Muslim world, including in the United States. At least 15 people died and many were injured as a result of anti-American rioting in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia.

Non-Muslims still are reeling from the violent response of some Muslims to the initial report that interrogators of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Quran "in an attempt to rattle suspects."

Why such passion? If the players had been reversed and a Bible had been flushed down a toilet, would Christians have had a similar reaction?

Muslims say it is important for people of other faiths to understand how they regard the Quran to understand the explosive reactions. For the world's 1 billion Muslims, it is not only a holy book. It is much like Jesus himself for Christians, said Muzammil Siddiqi, president of the Islamic Law Council of North America.

"Muslims believe the entire Quran is the word of God verbatim as dictated by the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad," said Jamal Badawi, Islamic scholar at St. Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. "Muslims believe the Quran has been preserved exactly as it was given to the prophet, so that gives it special status."

It is considered the literal word of God, said Margaret Rausch, who teaches about Islam at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. In other words, God transmitted those exact words.

"It is therefore the main source of knowledge about Islam coming directly from God," she said. "The primary way in which one can feel close to and connect with God is by reading, reciting or chanting or listening to someone else read, recite or chant God's words, the Quran."

Muslims believe the words are not just inspired words — the prophet was not just inspired with certain ideas and put them in his language — but they are revealed words, Siddiqi said. The language in which the Angel Gabriel dictated to Muhammad was Arabic; therefore, the Arabic text of the Quran is sacred.