Vodka7
Member
I went to the library, and read it. Technically, since I'm an "impure infidel", I'm under a death sentence in some islamic countries just for touching it! Touching it!
Not unless you read Arabic--translations of the Koran are not considered the Koran. The translation process changes it from God's words to the translator's words, which are worthless.
Just to clear up one other misconception--Muslims don't worship the Koran. They worship God the way he taught them to in the Koran. When a situation arises that the Koran is not explicit enough about, they go to the actions of Mohammad as recorded by his contemporaries or those that followed them. After that, they go to clerics who reach a consensus based on what their school of religious thought believes is most inline with Islam.
The main split in Islam, Shiite/Suni, is more complex than I could understand. Basically, which side you're on depends on who you believe succeeded Mohammad.
The real problem is that Americans don't hold anything sacred anymore. We're too all inclusive, too politically correct, to the point where the Supreme Court has said that flag burning is perfectly legal anywhere you could burn, say, a Hooters t-shirt. That's not the case in Muslim countries--they have the guts to say "no, this is sacred. You will NOT mess with it."
I can't remember the last time I heard church bells that denoted anything but the hour... In Egypt, I heard them five times a day, starting at 5:15am--the city (Cairo, in my case) quite literally rings out with them. You hear, in harmony, loudspeakers blaring from every direction.
Religion is a part of the daily life of every Muslim--in these countries, the first thing children learn to read is the Koran. Even a bad muslim child, raised in the United States, will still have more of the Koran memorized than I will ever know of the bible. In these countries, religion is something that happens every day--unlike here, where it's once a week, maybe just the big holidays, or when someone dies. So, where I and several other posters on this board have admitted that someone disgracing a bible right in front of me would not be a big deal, someone defacing a Koran is a big deal--people actually care, and would be offended.