Another sidelight to the Qur'an desecration stories. From CNSNews.com, with thanks to DB:
"The Muslims respect the Koran far more than Christians respect the Bible," says Danny Nalliah, a Sri Lankan-born evangelical pastor now based in Australia.During the 1990s, Nalliah spent two years in Saudi Arabia, where he was deeply involved with the underground church.
"It's a very well-known fact that if you have a Bible at customs when you enter the airport, and if they find the Bible, that the Bible is taken and put in the shredder," he said in an interview this week.
"If you have more than one Bible you will be taken into custody, and if you have a quantity of Bibles you will be given 70 lashes for sure - you could even be executed."
Nalliah had not himself seen a Bible being shredded but said the practice was widely acknowledged among Christians in the kingdom.
Abuse of Christians and their symbols was not restricted to the destruction of Bibles, he added.
A friend of his, a fellow Christian in Saudi Arabia, told him of witnessing a particularly unpleasant incident involving a Catholic nun.
The man had been in the transit lounge at the airport in Jeddah - the gateway to Mecca, used by millions of Hajj pilgrims each year - when a nun arrived at the customs desk.
"Some fool [travel agent] had put her on a transit flight in Jeddah. You don't do that to a Catholic nun, because she's going to be tormented."
"They opened her bag, went through her prayer book, put the prayer book through the shredder ... took the crucifix off her neck and smashed it, tormented her for many minutes."
Eventually another Muslim official objected to their conduct, came across and "rescued" her, pointing out to the customs officials that she was not entering the country but only in transit and would be leaving on the next plane.
Briefed beforehand about the risks, Nalliah said he did not carry a Bible when he arrived in the kingdom in 1995.
Subsequently, however, he took possession of hundreds of Bibles that had been smuggled into Saudi Arabia to be used by believers there.
Nalliah said he had a close call one morning when armed members of the notorious Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice - the religious police, or muttawa - hammered at his front door at 1 a.m.
With 400 smuggled Bibles "sitting on the dining room table," he believed his life to be in serious danger. "That was a crime equal to rape, murder, armed robbery, and in Saudi Arabia you get the same punishment," he said - the death penalty.
Nalliah said he had prayed earnestly and, in what he could only describe as a miracle, the men left without entering his home....
According to author and Islam scholar Robert Spencer, "a devout Muslim might very well mistreat a Bible, because traditional Islamic theology regards it as a corrupted and unreliable version of the genuine revelations that were given to Moses, Jesus, and other Prophets."
Spencer noted that in sura 9:30 the Koran says those who believe Jesus is the Son of God are under Allah's curse.
"Throughout history, most Muslim theologians have held that the New Testament has been tampered with since it teaches that Jesus is the Son of God."
"Saudis Shred Bibles, Rights Campaigners Claim"
But where are the riots and massacres of people over this then? Oh!!! Tolerance, basic civilised behaviour and the valuing of human life as infinitaley more sacred than books. I get it!!!
oops/typo..infinitely
In the 80th sura of the Koran, Mohammed says of the Bible 'It is set down on honoured pages, purified and exalted by the hands of devout and gracious scribes'.
It is important to recognize that the earlier Meccan suras differ in lots of ways from the later Medinan ones. In the beginning Mohammed tried to woe Christians and Jews calling them 'People of the Book' (Ahl al-kitab). However because he was unsuccessful, and because he tried to buy stories off the Jews in Medina but he got them mangled up so they laughed at him, and because he managed to recruit in Medina enough thugs for his desert-pirate army, he condemned Christians and Jews and claimed that the Bible was a corruption.
To understand Islam it is vital to know that when there is a contradiction in the koran, the later suras abrogate the earlier ones.
In yesterday's FrontPage Magazine, Dr. Walid Phares points out the outrage over desecration is selective and motivated by other factors:
"One element lost in all the coverage of the jihadist-inspired riots is the rioters' utter hypocrisy. Their concerns for the Muslim holy book did not manifest when they burned mosques to the ground in Pakistan over the past few months. Nor did they launch demonstrations after they destroyed mosques in Iraq throughout the year. There were certainly hundreds of Korans burned into ashes. (It didn't hurt that the owners of these mosques were Shi'ites.) A couple of decades earlier, Hafez Assad's brutal brigades leveled off the mosques of the city of Hama. Thousands of Korans were destroyed (along with 20,000 Sunnis). Yet, the Arab and Islamic world didn't raise a ruckus. The selective outrage over the destroyed Korans is not theological but political. It is only when the Islamists want to wage a jihad for their holy book that infractions begin to make any difference to them. When Arab militias raids black Muslim villages in Darfur, and destroy them, along with their holy books, that is acceptable, but one sentence in an article published in a U.S. magazine deserves a whole holy war? Who are we kidding here?...
It would be interesting to hear an explanation from Muslims whose faith is based on the premise that Jews and Christians corrupted Scripture as to how, when and by whom this was done.
We have the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament dating from at least 200 BC and the Dead Sea Scrolls which testify that no such corruption happened.
Neither Mecca nor the Ka'aba are mentioned at all in the Bible, so how do Muslims explain their omission?
If the name Danny Naliah rings a bell it is because he was one of the two Daniels recently prosecuted in Victoria, Australia for something like showing disrespect for other religions simply by quoting certain passages from the Koran.
I am a Christian. When I hear of shredded Bibles in Saudi or elsewhere, I do not become inflamed with hatred toward the desecrators. Instead, I pray for them.
For the most part [And before you jump all over the actrocities committed by Christians during the Crusades, check your facts!], the reactions of the followers is a reflection of their faith's teachings.
I've learned a lot about Islam in the last week, and what I've learned is ugly.
Meanwhile, I've read somewhere that May 27 is a worldwide Muslim protest today. Never mind that this protest is targeting an ALLEGED desecration.
PS: If you respond to this post and I don't get back to you right away, please understand that I plan to return. I do not practice hit-and-run tactics. I have a crazy schedule.
What reasonable, intelligent, or mature person would hold an object in higher esteem than human life? Muslims are saying that they are rioting and murdering over a perceived insult to a common, easily reproducible, and inexpensive object. How could this be true? Is programmed into them via religion and culture? It must be. How can a religion or culture that values a “copy” of the Koran above human life be good to belong to or to even tolerate?
Islam is a system of barbaric social control and little else.
f.g.
Have you noticed that the Bible is disappearing from public view? Once it could be found in hotel rooms, university dorms, and even prisons. It has been removed from many places because it offends Muslims.
No arm twisting is used to require anyone to read the Bible. Just leave it in the drawer for the next person.
Posted by: epg, Yes epg, I have noticed. The history of our country is being revised before our eyes. Now we hear that none of our Founding Fathers were Christians, that would have surprised them. Prayer is forbidden, when I was a little child,I learned the 22nd Psalm in public school. I also sang Christmas carols in public school. We had a prayer over the PA system every morning. It is hilarious to hear the secularists screaming about how Christians are going to take over and be an "American taliban", what a joke! They are turning the country that our Founding Fathers gave to us into a cheap copy of Mao's Red China. Gotta watch what you say- it may not be PC! The thought police are hard at work! Now there are hate crimes, hell, I thought all crimes were hateful. Yes, we "dangerous Christians" are something to worry about. What a load of crap!
should read 23rd Psalm, although the 22nd is one of my favorites. It is a prophetic look at the sufferings of Jesus on the cross.
Carolyn2,
Everyone should read Ecclesiastes 1, one of my favorites. It's an honest look at the sufferings and futility of human beings in life.
f.g.
Yes, f.g. Ecclesiastes is a good book, but I believe we have purpose. That kind of reminds me of the Kansas song "Dust In The Wind". ;)
"It is a prophetic look at the sufferings of Jesus on the cross."
He used it Himself on the cross to pray - O Lord why hast thou forsaken me...etc" I marked that piece lightly in my own Bible for reference. Not something one can do with a Koran apparently.
Ah yes,and a religion created 600 years after the death of Christ is valid even though the
self-professed Prophet that was a misogynistic
pedophile couldn't read or write and all his claims were in the "Second person" records.
Since Muhammed knew about Jesus he had to have been told about him to put him in the Quran
as a revered Prophet,Muhammed failed or either
omitted on purpose the fact that Jesus warned of a "False Prophet" that would come and claim to speak for my Father in Heaven.
The False Prophet would promise peace but only
bring pain and suffering along with wars upon more wars,Jesus also warned that the Prophet would cite verses from past records from God and fool the masses that he got them from God to prove he's a real prophet.
How pathetic for a God to resort to needing
violent thugs to protect his position on
values and ethics,books are made from trees and
Muslims should attack the trees that caused this problem,plus Muslims should attack all forms
of literacy products to keep the people ignorant
so they don't worship a false God.
Oops,I just gave away the storyline to the movie
"Plane of the Apes" and the sequels.
And Muslims call JEWS apes!
Carolyn2, f.g.: I'm feeling guilty because I didn't get through all of the Old Testament last year (got only through Jeremiah and Lamentations)--and I agree with f.g. that Ecclesiastes is a marvelous book. I even read it through in Hebrew a couple of times. It's a good way to put things in perspective.
Granny Weatherwax, My Layman's Parallel Bible looks like a roadmap, it is so marked up with highlighter and pen. I have another Bible that is kept pristine, but I think the working Bible is just what I have described.. a roadmap or instruction book.
Kepha, I should read the whole Bible again, it's funny how you find new things everytime you read it. You know Hebrew? I guess you've been to Israel, I would love to see the Holy Land.