Recently I featured the New American Bible as a banned book, which was a shock to many and garnered some fairly strong opinions in the comments in the discussions that followed.
But would that outrage be just as strong if it were someone else’s sacred text? I’m about to put that theory to the test.
Just as with the Christian Bible, governments around the world have officially banned, or attempted to ban, the Holy Qur’an.
Soviet Russia banned it from 1926-1957, along with the Bible and other religious and “socially deviant” texts.
The Calcutta Qur’an Petition is a book by Sita Ram Goel and Chandmal Chopra published in 1986. The subject matter of this book is a call for the state-authorized banning of books, specifically the Qur’an. The authors demanded that the State ban the holy book, and the publication of the Petition polarized the country. Some people even tried to enact the ban, which incited riots in India and Bangladesh in which at last a dozen people were killed and 100 were injured.
In 2007, the leader of the Netherlands’ right-wing Freedom Party, Geert Wilders, called for a ban on sale of the Qur’an and also outlaw its use in Mosques and private homes. He said the Qur’an “is a fascist book which promotes violence” and likened it to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
However, the proposal didn’t stand a chance of being approved by parliament, as the Freedom Party held only nine seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament.
The sale of Mein Kampf is outlawed in the Netherlands, but owning or trading old copies is permitted. By contrast, had the proposed ban on the Qur’an succeeded, it would have been more severe because it would also outlaw the mere possession of the book.
The United States has long had a practice of xenophobia toward widely-different religious, political, and social views. Those old enough to remember the uproar over Boxing Champ Cassius Clay’s changing his name to Muhammad Ali in 1964 and subsequently converting to Islam in 1975 can attest to the nation’s issues with change. The very personal matter of his faith was taken as an insult on the entire country. The Islamic faith, however, continued to flourish in the U.S. throughout the end of the 20th century, and the Christian majority, the holders of the status quo, felt endangered.
