Book burning

[sciolist]

Birmingham girl arrested for allegedly burning Quran
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/25/girl-arrested-allegedly-burning-quran

This kind of story upsets me a little since I wonder where the legal line gets drawn. What are acceptable ways of house-tidying or disposing of personal property? Garden waste is OK to burn, so's old furniture and arguably being paper, books could be burned too.

So, if you're allowed to burn your own unwanted property safely - where's the crime? Would it be better or worse if the Quran was one of a bunch of books being burned? Is chucking it in a wheelie bin that much more respectful? Is deleting a pdf of the Quran innately offensive? Could other faiths object to other books being disposed of? If Jedi is officially a faith in some circles does that mean that Splinter of the Mind's Eye could be holy enough to be criminal to burn? It's certainly unreliable and inconsistent with the later Star Wars canon. Even if you think the object in general is special, why should that affect what I can do with my instance of that object.

It feels like they've got a sticky situation where they're trying to make the intent criminal, and that's got to be harder than demonstrating the actual actions performed.

If I could be bothered, it'd make me tempted to hold a big book bonfire party. Just bring a book that you think is worthy of permanent disposal to render it unreadable by others.

Fret not, I'm likely not that motivated.

Comments

[valiha]

I usually don't just barge in into other people's journals, but I saw this on DW Latest Things, so I thought I should offer my perspective as a Muslim woman living in a predominantly Muslim country in the middle of Europe.

We have a special relationship with the Holy Qur'an. We view it as the Word of God. I'm aware that devout Christians view the Bible as the Word of God, but they don't treat the Bible the same way we treat our Holy Book.

In order to even hold the Holy Qur'an, you must be clean: you must perform ablutions, and your mind should not wander but be focused on what you are reading. It cannot be placed on the floor. You cannot scribble notes on the pages - I was always appalled at my Christian friends who would underline something in their Bibles, or scribble notes in the margins.

So yeah, to a Muslim disposing of the Holy Qur'an is offensive. If you do not want it anymore, for whatever reason, it should be either given to someone who does, or donated to a library.

Having said that, I believe a person has the right to dispose of their property in any way they like, as long as it's done safely and cannot be construed as offensive. Just because someone views your holy book as holy, doesn't mean they will too, and might want to get rid of it after reading it and finding it lacking. What this girl did was more than just disposing of an unwanted book. As reported by the website:

"A 15-year-old girl has been arrested on suspicion of inciting religious hatred after allegedly burning an English-language version of the Qur'an – and then posting video footage of the act on Facebook.

The teenager, from the Sandwell district of Birmingham, was filmed on her school premises burning the book. Police have confirmed the incident was reported to the school and the video has since been removed from the social networking site." [emphasis mine]

So not only was she not simply disposing of an unwanted book on her own property, she did it on school grounds, in a way which could be construed as deliberately offensive, and she (or the classmates looking on) posted the video of the event on Facebook.

A book burning is often not just burning old, unwanted things. It's almost always meant to send a Message: "we think you and your culture are worth nothing". Just remembering that Nazis burned books they disagreed with makes me disinclined to ever hold a book bonfire party, no matter how offensive a book might be to me. Because as stated on the Wikipedia entry linked above, "German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, who wrote in his 1820-1821 play Almansor the famous admonition, 'Where they burn books, they will also burn people.'"