The Black Madonna

I get a daily email from OpinionJournal.com, informing me of the highlights of the offerings there for that day. In the Saturday edition this week, the subtitle of one of the articles caught my eye: "The Muslim holy book isn't just a 'bible'. It's far more sacred than that." I immediately became interested, because the comment seemed like a clear sacrilege. Is not Jesus The Word? Well, Kenneth L. Woodward explains why the statement - though provocative - is not inaccurate, and why the Newsweek Koran-flushing story was so important in the Islamic world.

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.

So perhaps rather than comparing the errors at Newsweek with those at CBS, we should say they were equal to the Catholic Church's problem with eBay. Still, I believe Muslims need to get a grip on themselves - Catholics didn't kill anyone over the eBay incident.