Dear Pastor Terry Jones,

This letter might come too late, but I still need to say to
you and other people who think that burning the Qur’an or any other holy book
is a way to remove evil from this world: your act is useless.

It does not do any good, nor does it remove evil. In fact,
when you burned the Qur’an in your Florida church on 20 March, you risked
creating more hatred because it fueled the anger of some Muslims who think that
burning the Qur’an is an insult to their religion. In rare cases it even led to
violence, as in Afghanistan, where news of the Qur’an burning incident spread
and certain imams incited people during Friday prayers to protest. When these
demonstrations got out of hand, more than 20 people died, including seven UN
staff.

I am Muslim. Like others who have expressed their rage to
you, the Qur’an is holy to me. It encourages me to protect the holy places of
any religion, reminds me to always tolerate and respect other people’s beliefs,
and to do good to others. It has inspired many Muslims to promote interfaith
dialogue, democracy, gender equality and social justice.

In difficult times, reading some of its verses has brought
peace to my heart. A Muslim mystic once said that the Qur’an is Allah’s love
letter.

That said, I will not kill or threaten violence against any
person who burns the Qur’an for whatever reason. I might disapprove of that
person, or scorn them, especially if it is being done in the name of upholding
justice, because it is a futile attempt.

It is true that there are verses in the Qur’an that
textually call for violence against non-believers. But burning the Qur’an will
not make those verses disappear, nor will it make some Muslims automatically
refrain from violence. However, it does mean that I will not stand idly by if
fellow Muslims use those verses to incite or perpetrate violence. Their acts
also deserve condemnation.

The words of the Qur’an are stored not only on paper, but in
the memory of each Muslim and the thousands of huffaz, who memorize the Qur’an
by heart.

Muslims believe that the words of the Qur’an are the words
of God; they are beyond the temporal, they are eternal and preserved in heaven.

For that reason – and I want my fellow Muslims to understand
this too – the Qur’an that you burned is essentially a cultural artifact. They
are products of human efforts to preserve the words of God in this world. As
cultural products, we can always create new ones.

In fact, my mother used to burn old Qur’ans because some of
their pages were eaten by moths, the pages were frayed, and the writing had
faded and was no longer legible. She burned them in order to prevent anyone
from stepping on the pages that were loose and could fall out. She then
collected the ashes and let the river carry them away, so they would be safe
from being stepped on. Burning the Qur’an, for my mother, was actually a way to
preserve its holiness.

The Qur’an is a larger part of our human relationship with
God, a source of encouragement to do good and uphold justice, and a reminder of
the afterlife. There are more verses that carry the message of freedom of
worship and pluralism than those that encourage violence. And those that do
seem to encourage violence relate to specific historical events and contexts.

Moreover, there are many discussions in the Muslim world
about how to reconcile these verses with the Qur’an’s messages of tolerance.
There are Muslim scholars who have dedicated their work to understanding these
verses in a new light: either by putting them in context for today’s readers,
by declaring them outdated in today’s context, or by assessing them in the
context of other verses.

If you genuinely want to make Muslims shun violence, then
join hands with me and many of my fellow Muslims to promote dialogue about
tolerance and pluralism. You might learn that the Qur’an can be credited for
inspiring it.

Sri Murniati, a graduate of the Islamic Studies program at
Islamic State University in Bandung, is a freelance writer and editor in
Penang, Malaysia. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service
(CGNews).