Is the Qur'an More Holy Than The Bible?

For those who have been tuned at all of late it is impossible not to have heard more than your share of news regarding the alledged flushing of a Qur'an down a toilet, at the terrorist detention facility at Guantanimo Bay, Cuba.

I wrote a post, on another site, regarding the selective outrage on the part of the media with regard to this, which by the way, it now appears, never even really happened. But I posed the question of, "even if it had happened, why the selective outrage?" Bibles and Christians are desecrated and abused on a regular basis and we hear nothing of it. Vickie & I had our own experience with this in Morrocco in 1981, and a year later dear friends of ours were imprisoned for several months, for having Arabic language Christian literature in their position. What do you suppose happened to this literature?

In 2002, during a siege, Palestinian terrorists held hostages at the Church of the Nativity in Jerusalem. According to priests who were held hostage, the terrorist used pages from a Bible for toilet paper. This by itself is of course an outrage, but even without that, just imagine Christians holding hostages at a mosque, or laying siege to one? President Bush, our entire military and every Christian in America would be held personally responsible. We would also be seeing a new rash of kidnappings and beheadings, in so-called justyfied retaliation. I can hear the mainstream media now explaining how we deserve what we get for the behavior of right-wing, Christian extremists.

But I digress. That was a political article. Here I want to deal with a more spiritual issue regarding the Bible & the Qur'an (Koran for those in Texas & Oklahoma).

The following article appeared in Saturday's Wall Street Journal- Opinion Journal online. I encourage you to read the whole article, but here are a couple of paragraphs from it:

Newsweek and the Quran
The Muslim holy book isn't just a "bible." It's far more sacred than that.
BY KENNETH L. WOODWARD
Saturday, May 21, 2005 12:01 a.m. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006719

"I am in no position to pass judgment on my Newsweek colleagues, nor would I want to. Among them are highly sensitive editors who frequently caught errors in my own copy. My concern is that all Americans understand how deeply sacrilegious such an act as Newsweek described would be to Muslims, and why it is not like flushing pages from the Bible down the drain--as Keith Olbermann on MSNBC and other commentators have suggested.

The Quran is not "the Bible" of Muslims. It is infinitely more sacred than that. To use a Jewish analogy, it is more like the oral Torah first revealed on Mount Sinai, which was later passed on orally through the prophets and eventually written down on scrolls for all to read. Whereas Christians regard the Bible as written by human beings inspired by God, Muslims regard the Quran--the word means "The Recitation"--as the very words of God, revealed aurally to the Prophet Muhammad in Arabic. To hear those words recited is, for Muslims, to hear Allah. If, for Christians, Jesus is the logos or eternal Word of God made flesh, the Quran is the Word of God made book, and every Arabic syllable in it lives as the breath of the divine. In short, what Christ is for Christians the Quran (in Arabic) is for Muslims: the living Word of God made present in this world. Moreover, to recite the suras or verses of the Quran, as devout Muslims do, is to breathe in the very words of Allah. Thus, recitation of the Quran is for Muslims much like what receiving the Eucharist is for Catholics--a very intimate ingestion of the divine itself.

This, then, according to Newsweek's story--now retracted and "regretted" by the magazine's editor--is what some interrogators flushed down a toilet at Guantanamo Bay. "

What does Woodward say about the Bible and the Qur'an? Just look at the subheading: The Muslim holy book isn't just a "bible." It's far more sacred than that.

As I responded to Opinion Journal & Mr. Woodward on this, "I question his knowledge of, and belief in the authority of, The Bible aka the Word of God." Mr. Woodward states that the Qur'an is "not just the bible." It is more. Not just a bible?? The Bible, per Woodward, is on some lower order, a book written by men who were inspired, but the Qur'an is "the very words of God."

Hello?!!! For a religious writer Woodward's bible knowledge appears to be sorely lacking. First of all, the Torah he refers to in his comparison is still part of the Bible. Secondly, with regard to the Bible being written by "inspired" men, 2Timothy 3:16 says "all scripture is God-breathed," and 2 Peter 1:20-21 further says: "Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. What does God breathed or carried along by the Holy Spirit mean? Did he miss this somehow in his reading of this?

Woodward indicates that Muslims look to the Qur'an as something higher and more sacred than Christians do the Bible, and that may be partially correct. But the way he puts it makes one believe that the Qur'an has a greater authority. This is not true.

The real difference in the two books is in the eye of the beholder and speaks more to the state of Christianity and an apostate western world than it does of the books themselves. Woodward is the perfect example of the faithless western Christian who sees the Bible as a book written by well intentioned men containing some good advice, and a good deal of mythology, while Muslims hold a much higher regard for their schrift.

I assume that Woodward's point is that we need to respect their book more because it is seen as more sacred. I reject this entirely and refuse to raise the Qur'an to a higher standard, or to lower the Bible to a lower standard than each rightfully deserves.

As Christians, we must let this be a wake up call. We must ask ourselves what is the Bible? What authority does it have? And, based upon that authority, what shall I do?

Once we answer these questions, in our own lives, we will be in a better position to respond to the attacks and comparisons in the world at large. This is all a part of that Holy War that I have written about in the 3 past posts. This is no small matter. Please do not let it be.