Jeanette Winterson, at least she had a good reason. Always flammable, the British feminist and writer stabbed a pile of hers two years ago own books in public. They were reissues, and Wintersons was annoyed by the frumpy, “domestic” praise her publisher had placed on the cover. Rather set it on fire than be portrayed as a cozy literary woman. The only book burning that is still a bit sympathetic somewhere.
Which blurbs should be on the Koran to discourage the pyromaniacs who now in Sweden and Denmark just keep going with the book? ‘Don’t burn it, it won’t get you on TV’? The burning, allowed in those countries as free speech, is a publicity provocation to the Islamic world. One that flashbacks evokes the Danish cartoon riots and other rowdy ‘Islam criticism’ that was also popular here twenty years ago. At the time, the Netherlands held its breath for a moment and spattered fear through the Torentje when a certain parliamentarian announced a film about what he intended to do with the Koran.
For secular citizens and cultural Christians, the offending of such a thing may be difficult to feel. The Bible may be God’s Word, but mediated through prophets and evangelists. The Qur’an is said to have been dictated literally by Allah. Regimes of Islamic countries, in turn, exploit any fuss opportunistically.
NRC Handelsbladaccidentally became acquainted with this sensitivity in the powder keg year of 2001, when the newspaper’s magazine had an image of the Quran on the cover. A handful of Muslim deliverers refused to deliver the magazine. One of the reasons: because it went through the bus, people would step on the holy book. Now many Muslims will shrug their shoulders at the Scandinavian stunt, accustomed to such sickening bullying.
But inevitably calling book burnings especially associations with the Naziswho in 1933 erected funeral pyres for ‘degenerate’ science and literature – and with Heine’s warning that ‘when you burn books, you end up burning people’.
Now you might be able to reverse that too. In the US, where black ‘suspects’ by lynch mobs burned alive or dead, sometimes in front of thousands of spectators, more recently only ‘unchristian’ printed matter has gone up in flames: comics and Harry Potter books. Also the American flag, by the way, and draft cards for duty.
But that’s no excuse. In the end it’s simple: you don’t burn books, certainly not after 1933. If it happens: invite the arsonists to the office to talk to them about incitement, group insult and hate speech.
Sjoerd de Jong writes a column here every Thursday.
A version of this article also appeared in the August 3, 2023 newspaper.
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