The recent outcry over the (apparently accidental) burning of a few copies of the Qur’an is a reminder of the immense reverence accorded by Muslims to their holy book – and the almost complete incomprehension of the average Westerner. Why so much fuss over a few books, however special? It’s not all that long ago that the mere threat of burning a copy of the Qur’an by a maverick American pastor almost provoked an international incident. But if the situation were reversed and a Muslim burned a whole heap of Bibles, nobody would bat an eyelid. Why should that be?
Actually, the Bible and the Qur’an are not equivalent. Muslims believe the Qur’an to have existed in heaven from all eternity before being dictated directly to Mohammed; it is therefore almost as holy as Allah himself. Whereas the Bible was created on earth over a period of 1500 years through the pens of its many human authors – under God’s direction, but not (for the most part) His immediate authorship. The Qur’an cannot be translated from the Arabic without losing its essential nature; the Bible was written in three languages, and even incorporates translation from Hebrew to Greek within the text of the New Testament.
For Muslims, therefore, the Qur’an is the Word of God, and to destroy it is a form of sacrilege. For Christians, however, the Word of God is not the Bible but Jesus. Bibles have been treated with disrespect, spat upon, burned, and destroyed by other means – but this has never hindered God from speaking to the human race. The Bible itself tells us how a wicked king burned a scroll of prophecies that Jeremiah had written (Jeremiah 36). The prophet merely wrote the entire scroll all over again. In 1526, English bishops attempted to destroy every copy of William Tyndale’s recently published translation of the New Testament. Tyndale happily allowed them to buy up and destroy the entire print run – so that he could afford a second, bigger print run… And only 13 years later, a copy of the Bible was officially placed in every church in the country for everyone to read. Defend the Bible? We don’t need to.