There’s an unintended irony about the (eventually aborted) campaign last week by Terry Jones, the pastor of a fringe church in Florida, to make a bonfire of copies of the Koran on the grounds that it was an “evil book”. Jones isn’t the first man of Christian faith who was broadcasting to the world his loathing of the Koran and, more broadly, of Islam. Since the 8th century, when Islam spread across Europe, that religion and its Holy Book have served as objects of hatred — and, on occasion, fear — for Christians.
Christian clergymen and scholars branded the Koran the “work of the devil” that was dangerous to Christian souls, and this revulsion was immortalised in popular Christian literature and hymns down the ages.
The “clash of civilisations” continued right up until the 16th century, when the Ottoman Empire, expanding through conquest, was at its apex. In the 16th century, however, German theologian Martin Luther advanced an effort to publish Latin translations of the Koran — in the belief that free dissemination of Koranic ideas among Christians would refute “the abomination of Mohammed” and do “grievous harm” to the Turks. Fighting efforts to censor and prevent the translation and dissemination of the Koran, Luther wrote: “To honour Christ, to do good for Christians, to harm the Turks, to vex the devil, set (the Koran) free…”
Full report here DNA
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