In an effort to inform the community about the alleged
desecration of a Koran at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba and a related incident in North Carolina, the Muslim
Student Association held a demonstration and distributed copies of
the Koran at UCLA on Thursday.
Several MSA members spoke briefly in Meyerhoff Park at noon,
condemning the alleged abuses of the Koran, counseling other
Muslims against retribution, and putting emphasis on the need to
respect all sacred texts.
“We have to take a positive approach to preserving any
religion,” said Mohamad Ahmad, a third-year student in
economics and international development studies.
Last month Newsweek published an account of a Koran being
flushed down a toilet as part of an interrogation at Guantanamo
Bay. The article was accused of precipitating a deadly riot in
Afghanistan, and Newsweek later retracted it.
On May 24, Creighton Lovelace, the pastor of a small baptist
church in North Carolina, refused to take down a sign which said
the Koran “should be flushed.” He reversed his position
and apologized to the Muslim community Thursday.
U.S. Army General Jay Hood, commander of Joint-Task force
Guantanamo, said Thursday that an investigation yielded five cases
of possible mishandling of the Koran but no evidence of one of the
religious texts being flushed down a toilet, according to a report
by the United Press International.
Ghayth Adhami, a third-year biology student and incoming program
director of MSA, said the group planned the speak-out to turn a
negative into a positive, using the instances of the abuse of the
Koran to promote community understanding.
To encourage such understanding, MSA gave out over 60 English
language copies of the Koran on Bruin Walk.
Students accepted the sacred Muslim texts so readily that soon
MSA had no more to give.
Enoch Jang, a third-year molecular, cell and developmental
biology student, said he took a copy of the Koran in order to
compare Islam to Christianity.
“I’m trying to learn about other religions to
understand (them) and compare (them) with mine,” Jang
said.
Ahmad called the student response encouraging.
“They weren’t just taking them haphazardly, they
were enthused,” he said. “They seemed willing to learn
and to avoid events like what happened at Guantanamo
Bay.”
Though MSA ran out of Korans to distribute Thursday, they will
continue distributing copies next week.