What the Moslems would do with our books if they had the chance

First, the charge that U.S. authorities at Guantanamo flushed a prisoner’s Koran down the toilet seems most unlikely. As they said at Lucianne.com this morning, “Ever try to flush a book?”

But even if some disrespect was shown toward the Koran, who are the Moslems to complain? Jihad expert Andrew Bostom reminds me of what the lionized “Sufi” (i.e., “moderate” Moslem) Al-Ghazali said about what to do with infidels’ (i.e., OUR) books, in the course of waging the requisite yearly jihad raids against us:

“One must destroy their useless books.”

The book-burning Al-Ghazali, moreover, was no mere individual just sounding off. He has a unique stature in Muslim civilization. According to the leading Islam scholar W. Montgomery Watt, Al-Ghazali was

acclaimed in both the East and West as the greatest Muslim after Muhammad, and he is by no means unworthy of that dignity…. He brought orthodoxy and mysticism into closer contact… The theologians became more ready to accept the mystics as respectable, while the mystics were more careful to remain within the bounds of orthodoxy.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 16, 2005 08:07 AM | Send