Book Burning Culture Is Reprehensible, but It Has Deeper Psychological Roots and Ramifications
By
Sumit Paul, New Age Islam
02
February 2023
Main
Points
1. Those who're
burning scriptures are going to the extreme end of the spectrum.
2. Some
idiots among the Muslims concocted a term Islamophobic for those who
criticise Islam.
3. It's the
ambiguity of Quranic verses that birthed a Talibani
Muslim who detonated himself in a mosque in Peshawar, killing more than 100
devout Muslims.
...
While
I categorically condemn the incineration of scriptures (Quran in Sweden
and photocopies of a controversial chaupai from Tulsidas'
Ramcharitmanas in Vrindavan) as a sign of violent and seemingly
unnecessary protest, I must say that this is a sign of tectonic shift that's
slowly taking place in our collective attitude to religions and scriptures. I'm
not bringing in god here.
Those
who're burning scriptures are going to the extreme end of the spectrum. But the
question arises, why's this happening? The person who burned the copy of Quran
may have been an atheist as Sweden, Denmark, Scandinavian countries and Holland
are predominantly faithless countries. But the simmering anger of a protestor
that culminated in the burning of Quran in the western hemisphere and almost
similar incident of burning a few caste-oriented chaupai from a
revered book in Hindi (Ramcharitmanas is in Avadhi) send the same
underlying message that it's time to rectify these so-called holier-than-thou
books which have been brewing differences, gender bias, violence and all sorts
of negativity right from the beginning.
It's
the ambiguity of Quranic verses that birthed a Talibani
Muslim who detonated himself in a mosque in Peshawar, killing more than 100
devout Muslims. The man, who blew himself up, also read the same Quran. But he
massacred his own brethren. Some idiots among the Muslims concocted a term Islamophobic
for those who criticise Islam. But here, a Muslim is blowing himself up to kill
his fellow Muslims. Is he an Islamophobic or a violent misanthrope?
Sunnis are killing Shias and vice versa. All these pathological people
are reading the same Quran but may be drawing different inferences? And why are
they drawing different inferences? Because, the very book is so damn obscure
that it can be a chalice of poison to many and a pot of nectar to a few devout
ones. So, what's the need of such a useless scripture that's so interpretative?
Shelve it, if burning is a disgusting act. We must re-evaluate our holy books
and expurgate those references and passages that are offensive and universally
irrelevant. All books are fraught with objectionable utterances. Remove them
for the survival of mankind. There's nothing irreverent about defying the
validity and supremacy of all scriptures. Since humans wrote them, humans have
the right to edit them as well.
...
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