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Amazon.com’s Koran Desecration Problem

May 20, 2005 6:20 am By Robert Spencer

Daniel Pipes outlines some suspicious aspects of the case involving Azza Basarudin, the woman who bought a used Qur’an from Amazon.com and says she found it defaced. From FrontPage, with thanks to OBL r Us:

Comments: This incident, far quieter than the Newsweek flap, is in its own way no less instructive or important.

(1) MPAC did not mention that the customer in question, Azza Basarudin, 30, is an Islamist affiliated at one time with the Islamic Institute of Human Rights, headed by Wissam Nasr. (Nasr now heads the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) office in New York.) For an example of her thinking, note above, how she presents 9/11 not as an occasion when Muslims violated Americans but when Americans violated Muslims. In other words, this is no average customer.

(2) MPAC also neglected to mention that Basarudin bought a used Koran, not a new one. Used books buyers do not normally expect vendors to clean their purchases of markings by former owners.

(3) Is it pure coincidence that this Koran episode is so perfectly times to follow the Newsweek and Guantánamo controversy? One can’t but wonder if Basarudin, like at least seven other U.S. Muslims, is faking her own persecution. Or if, like its colleague CAIR, MPAC stokes anti-Muslim hate even where it does not exist.

(4) If Muslims succeed in requiring that Korans undergo inspection for impurities before being sold, booksellers might well cease handling Korans.

(5) The idea that a Muslim has the right, without proof, to accuse a non-Muslim of blasphemy, as Basarudin and MPAC have done, brings to mind the notorious anti-blasphemy laws in force in Pakistan. There, as the World Council of Churches explained in 2000, those laws “have become a major tool in the hands of extremists to settle personal scores against members of the religious minorities particularly Christians.” In the United States, the blasphemy accusation serves as the basis for a Jesse Jackson-like corporate shakedown (note MPAC”s demand for Amazon to fund its programming).

(6) That Amazon suspended Bellwether from selling Korans via Amazon is a symbolic punishment rather than a substantive one, but it matters nonetheless. Can one imagine any other book’s defacement leading to such a penalty?

(7) This episode is yet another instance of Islamist organizations relentlessly seeking special privileges for Islam. At a time when American Catholics must endure “art” that consists of the crucifix in urine and a Virgin Mary made in part of elephant dung, why should American Muslims be indulged in their exquisite sensibilities?…

(8) Amazon should answer MPAC firmly in the negative, reinstituting Bellwether’s right to sell Korans at Amazon, making no public condemnations, and not giving money to MPAC. If you agree with this conclusion, let Patty Smith at Amazon (psmith@amazon.com) know your thoughts.

Read it all.

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