I believe the word you’re looking for is “veneration.” While its value is debatable, it does exist, unlike idolatry.
There is no ambiguity or uncertainty about the sequence of phonemes in the original Arabic. It doesn’t have a mysteriously shifting order of phonemes. If you look at it and look away, then look again, the sequence will not have changed. It’s exactly the same word every time.
The mark that looks like an apostrophe (’) is not just a decoration randomly strewn through Arabic words. It stands for a definite phoneme called hamzah, the glottal stop. It can only come after the r in Qur’an, not before, because that’s the only way to make this word.
Fighting ignorance here involves dispelling the vague notion that since Arabic isn’t written in the Roman alphabet, it therefore has indefinite, uncertain spelling. That’s false. You can map the Arabic orthography to Roman with a one-to-one symbol correspondence. From the standpoint of information science, if American intelligence is ever going to track terrorists, they d*mn well better get used to standardized Arabic romanization, or they will keep letting Omar Abel Rahmans into the country. He was on a watch list for not getting a visa. Because of the usual sloppy Arabic spelling, the US embassy in Khartoum gave him a visa. And the excuse is, Well, it’s just Arabic, it can be spelled any which way, who cares, dood. No. Not any more. In 2002, by act of Congress, the USA now has a standardized Arabic romanization to prevent this sort of snafu from happening.
Idolatry doesn’t exist?
I know we’re not in GD, but: cite?
Thank you for this. We do have to take care to note the dialectal differences present in Modern Arabic, however. That complicates a potential one-to-one Roman/Arabic symbolic correspondence that can take all Arabic dialects into account. But if a standard can be agreed upon (maybe we can call it “al-Jazeera”-speak), then it most certainly can be mapped reliably to Roman letters.
If I may make a slight hijack – how it the word “Qur’an” pronounced among the different Arab communities in various countries?
I know that the q represents a uvular stop in Classical Arabic. I also know that this sound has transformed to a velar stop (English k) in many versions of Arabic (generally in North Africa, IIRC).
I am familiar with the hamza ( ’ ). I do not know whether or not some Arabic dialects suppress the hamza in certain phonetic environments (e.g. between a consonant and a vowel).
Finally, the question of u versus o. As I understand it, Classical Arabic core vowels (present in short and long forms) are expressed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /a/, /i/, /u/ (not counting diphthongs). There is no /o/ in Classical Arabic. IPA /o/ is pronounced with a lower tongue position than /u/ (similarly with /e/ being lower than /i/).
Now then: in some Arabic dialects (Lebanese for one, IIRC) vowels like /o/ are part of the vocalic inventory alongside the Classical Arabic vowels. So where is “Qur’an” pronounced “Koran”? What other permutations are out there?
My poor English is my cite!!!
My sentence is structured poorly. “Which” refers to “its,” which refers to the value of veneration.
If you need me, I’ll be in the corner, beating myself in the head with my copy of “Eats Shoots and Leaves.”
Why should it be made up? In Hindu culture, any written work, regardless of its subject, is considered sacred, and if you drop it on the floor or let any part of your feet touch it, you do pronam, by touching it then touching your forehead – essentially a kind of sign of respect that incorporates a prayer or recognition of divinity.
I don’t find it unbelievable that Muslims might kiss a Koran if one is dropped.
Not to mention that “Koran” is a perfectly appropriate spelling. It transcribes the word as spoken in Hindi-Urdu, Bengali, and other South Asian languages.
Back in Catholic school, I was taught that the sacred texts of other faiths are just that – sacred texts – and that one should treat them with the proper dignity.
Of course, if one is not aware of the proper handling, one might, perhaps, be excused should one fail to observe the intricacies of etiquette as applied to particular texts. Rules certainly vary from one faith to the next. In high school religion and even in college theology courses we underlined and highlighted in our bibles and took notes in the margins without thinking of such as mistreatment. Had I taken classes on Islamic theology I might very well have done the same with regards to the Koran (unless instructed otherwise, of course). Had I done so, I would hope that devout Muslims would consider these to be the actions of an ignorant but well-meaning unbeliever rather than an unpardonable act of blasphemy.
On the other hand, as I understand it, the informed and willful mishandling of a sacred text from another faith should always be regarded as a sinful action.
Bordelond, I was talking about the standard written form of Arabic. Literary Arabic. I was not talking about colloquial Arabic pronunciation. The dialects are not written (well, they are a little bit, in certain limited settings like theatrical dialogue and cartoon balloons). You won’t find them coming up in written documents of international diplomacy, law, religion, technology, or for that matter, terrorism. However, Arabic internet chat has now worked out its own loose and shifting conventions for romanized Arabic.
The standardized romanization which I mentioned was mandated by Congress applies only to the written language. It’s a way of ensuring that you can bring together all the data you need to by cross-referencing the variant forms to the standardized form in a database. I’m a librarian by training, and in library/information science we do this with names al the time, to make sure we identify the right person no matter how their name might be found. For example, do you shelve Mark Twain’s books under T for Twain or under C for Clemens (his real name)? The library science answer is to pick one and use it all the time, and cross-reference the other one to it. This way you don’t lose any information.
So the answer to your question about the vowel /o/ is that it isn’t relevant to the situation I was talking about. We transliterate Arabic based on the invariable written form, that’s the concept. The pronunciation can vary from one country to another, but the standard romanization is a one-to-one symbol mapping from one alphabet to another. Transliteration, see, it comes from the Latin word for letter. It deals with letters of the alphabet, not phonetic sounds.
Actually, Islam has gone through several changes and schisms that might be characterized as “reformations.” (Tamerlane could provide us with rich details, I’m sure.) In any case, the essence of the Protestant Reformation was the rejection of the authority of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and its replacement with the Scripture as the ultimate authority on matters of doctrine. Since there is no generally recognized Islamic authority analogous to the papacy (the old Baghdad Caliphate having been extinct since 1258, and no one has even claimed the title of caliph since the Ottoman Sultanate was abolished in 1924), one might say that all of Islam now exists in a post-Reformation state, with all Muslims free to refer directly to the Koran (Quran, whatever) for their inspiration.
Part of me wants to lol at that. But as a librarian, another part of me wants that attitude spread as widely as possible. 
The veneration for the Qur’an has gone so far that some interpret Islamic law that you mustn’t even touch or handle the Qur’an unless you’re in the state of ritual ablution. This is based on interpretation of verse 56:79 where the Qur’an describes itself: Lâ yamassuhu illâ al-mutahharûn (None touches it except the purified). Some interpret that esoterically to mean that impure beings, i.e. demons, cannot “touch” or get access to the meaning of the Qur’an because their evil nature blocks them from understanding it. The literalist interpretation says people shouldn’t put their hands on it unless they’re in the state of ritual purity. Not everyone agrees with this.
Moving to GD.
-xash
General Questions Moderator
Wow. Now that is dedication to one’s religion.
Assuming for a minute that you’re not just kidding – why should it seem more extreme than, say, keeping kosher, which can actually cause you a lot more inconvenience?
I assume most office workers have places they can secure their valuables when going to the bathroom. I don’t see men retrieving their cheque books or women taking their purses to go to the office bathroom.
Besides, in many places around the world, many people make it a point never to move their bowels away from home.
I see some christian bible lovers just as reverant about the bible as muslims seem about the Quran. IMHO its idolatry in a way. Its the love of that physical object as being of divine origin. Its tiresome to hear these people blabbing about Jesus and the Bible and rarely mentioning God at all.
We do not treat the physical object as being of divine origin. We believe that the words contained in the Koran are divine – literally transmitted from Allah, through his messenger Gabriel to Muhammad, who was charged with spreading the word. This is the reason why we treat the Koran with the respect that we do – because those pages contain the direct word of Allah. We do not worship it, or treat it with blind reverence, hence I would not term it idolatry We just treat it with respect, the same way that the Jews treat their holy books with respect.
OK, then, how do you officially spell Muammar Gaddafi/Khadafy/Qadhafi/Duckbreath’s name?
Are IBS rates lower in other coutries than the U.S.?
That wasn’t vandalism. That was kinetic art. Hey, you’re not against freedom of expression, are you?