In the wake of the war in Gaza, we have seen a large number of young people talking about reading the Qur’an for the first time, and in some cases actually converting to Islam as a result.
You're a really amazing writer! I thought this was a fantastic article that you put together.
Of the abrahamic traditions Islam is the one I definitely know the least about. I guess I don't even know if they don't like even being lumped in with the others.
I grew up in such an islamophobic place that about once a week at the library my mom ran: One of the conservative Christian groups would come in and steal the Quran because they deemed it didn't need to be on the shelves. At some point the joke was on the conservative Christians because my mom found at an estate sale 300 of them that the person ended up just giving to my mom. Every time the Quran would be stolen, my mom would just bring another one from the boxes we had in the basement.
At some point at one of the library board meetings they addressed a letter saying that my mom was spending too much money replacing all the quran's that have been stolen... My mom replied by saying that "she didn't know that the book had been stolen because there's always one on the shelf and I think that someone must just keep putting it in the wrong place". (Which was obviously a lie but the board didn't know what was happening)
At some point one of the board members looked at all of the money being spent on new books and was satisfied. At one point, the most conservative church decided to burn banned books and other forms of media Nirvana CDs and D&D books... At one point it was going to be a public event but then they noticed that 90% of the books had actually been taken from the public library with a surprising number of more than 100 quran's... This got reported in the local newspaper and it turned into a private thing out of shame for stealing that many books and destroying them... After the bad press, the church wrote a check for $4,000 as an apology to the library. As the coup de gras of a librarian, my mom purchased a rather expensive swedish translation of the Quran (It was a Scandinavian ethnic town for reference) and it was put into the special collection that was locked.
She also put a pretty hilarious Latin phrase "ferro ignique" (literally fire and iron but has a meaning of scorched earth basically) that she signed by our great uncle who was known as the person that came up with the name for the big festival locally in the late 1800s.
Every time there was a chance to unlock the special Scandinavian collection, she would mention the Quran. One person locally new enough of the story and laughed their ass off. I forget for sure, but I believe two or three professors thought it was an odd inscription. And now that I have been gone for 15 years, this is pretty much the first time I've ever told this story because my mom swore it to secrecy and it's been a long time since I've been in that little town.
I didn't know I was going to tell a story when I first started typing. I really love this article. Thank you so much!
Oh my gosh, I forgot the most funny thing that happened in the middle of the story: So after a good amount of time of the books being stolen someone tried to bring one back to try to prove that my mom was doing something. The chief of police happened to be in the library (The guy read Daniel steel novels on his brakes at work) and the woman that was harassing my mom ended up admitting that she had stolen the book and there was magically another one on the shelf. My mom mentioned the chief of police's name and ask him to come over and said " Joanna here has just mentioned to me that she knows and is found out who has been stealing books from the library"
The young Christian woman so embarrassed not knowing what to do sheepishly told the cop to just arrest her for stealing the books and she put her hands out as if he was going to handcuff her...
The chief of police knowing that something weird was going on just turned to my mom and asked " are you sure you want to press charges?"
And my mom replies "if Allah wills it"
And being the good swedish straight man, the chief of police kept a straight face but was beat red trying not to laugh. Said " well, if you're just returning stolen property, I doubt the library wants to press charges..."
The Young Conservative Christian woman, knowing that that was her cue to leave got out of there as quick as possible as my mom and the chief of police laughed for full 10 minutes and That's where I came to the library seeing both of them holding their sides beat red faces and it took him a whole 20 minutes to catch me up to speed on what was going on.
Thank you for your kind words and for the story - it was hilarious! We Brits view the whole American book banning/burning thing with incredulity. I didn't know if that's because we're more tolerant or because we just don't take books that seriously. I can't remember if my school library had a Qur'an, but it did have a copy of Marx"s Capital. I'm pretty sure I was the only one who read it, and I only managed the first chapter.
You're a really amazing writer! I thought this was a fantastic article that you put together.
Of the abrahamic traditions Islam is the one I definitely know the least about. I guess I don't even know if they don't like even being lumped in with the others.
I grew up in such an islamophobic place that about once a week at the library my mom ran: One of the conservative Christian groups would come in and steal the Quran because they deemed it didn't need to be on the shelves. At some point the joke was on the conservative Christians because my mom found at an estate sale 300 of them that the person ended up just giving to my mom. Every time the Quran would be stolen, my mom would just bring another one from the boxes we had in the basement.
At some point at one of the library board meetings they addressed a letter saying that my mom was spending too much money replacing all the quran's that have been stolen... My mom replied by saying that "she didn't know that the book had been stolen because there's always one on the shelf and I think that someone must just keep putting it in the wrong place". (Which was obviously a lie but the board didn't know what was happening)
At some point one of the board members looked at all of the money being spent on new books and was satisfied. At one point, the most conservative church decided to burn banned books and other forms of media Nirvana CDs and D&D books... At one point it was going to be a public event but then they noticed that 90% of the books had actually been taken from the public library with a surprising number of more than 100 quran's... This got reported in the local newspaper and it turned into a private thing out of shame for stealing that many books and destroying them... After the bad press, the church wrote a check for $4,000 as an apology to the library. As the coup de gras of a librarian, my mom purchased a rather expensive swedish translation of the Quran (It was a Scandinavian ethnic town for reference) and it was put into the special collection that was locked.
She also put a pretty hilarious Latin phrase "ferro ignique" (literally fire and iron but has a meaning of scorched earth basically) that she signed by our great uncle who was known as the person that came up with the name for the big festival locally in the late 1800s.
Every time there was a chance to unlock the special Scandinavian collection, she would mention the Quran. One person locally new enough of the story and laughed their ass off. I forget for sure, but I believe two or three professors thought it was an odd inscription. And now that I have been gone for 15 years, this is pretty much the first time I've ever told this story because my mom swore it to secrecy and it's been a long time since I've been in that little town.
I didn't know I was going to tell a story when I first started typing. I really love this article. Thank you so much!
Oh my gosh, I forgot the most funny thing that happened in the middle of the story: So after a good amount of time of the books being stolen someone tried to bring one back to try to prove that my mom was doing something. The chief of police happened to be in the library (The guy read Daniel steel novels on his brakes at work) and the woman that was harassing my mom ended up admitting that she had stolen the book and there was magically another one on the shelf. My mom mentioned the chief of police's name and ask him to come over and said " Joanna here has just mentioned to me that she knows and is found out who has been stealing books from the library"
The young Christian woman so embarrassed not knowing what to do sheepishly told the cop to just arrest her for stealing the books and she put her hands out as if he was going to handcuff her...
The chief of police knowing that something weird was going on just turned to my mom and asked " are you sure you want to press charges?"
And my mom replies "if Allah wills it"
And being the good swedish straight man, the chief of police kept a straight face but was beat red trying not to laugh. Said " well, if you're just returning stolen property, I doubt the library wants to press charges..."
The Young Conservative Christian woman, knowing that that was her cue to leave got out of there as quick as possible as my mom and the chief of police laughed for full 10 minutes and That's where I came to the library seeing both of them holding their sides beat red faces and it took him a whole 20 minutes to catch me up to speed on what was going on.
Thank you for your kind words and for the story - it was hilarious! We Brits view the whole American book banning/burning thing with incredulity. I didn't know if that's because we're more tolerant or because we just don't take books that seriously. I can't remember if my school library had a Qur'an, but it did have a copy of Marx"s Capital. I'm pretty sure I was the only one who read it, and I only managed the first chapter.