Korans suck
May. 17th, 2005 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothThe key problem here is that the Koran is widely distributed, easily manufactured, and still considered sacred. This is not safe! It puts the holy book at constant risk of inadvertant or malicious desecration! Compare this to Judaism, whose holy book is kept under lock and key in the synagogue and only brought out with elaborate ceremony -- the prayer books passed out to the flock are just normal, non-holy copies, usually annotated and expanded to help them understand key points.
While that would work, if they want to have access to an actual holy copy of the Koran for personal services, then the key is that since there's nothing holy about the book itself, it must be the pattern of words that's holy. So don't put that exact pattern in the physical copy -- encode it in some simple pattern (say, reverse the two first letters of every word) that allows someone reading it to reconstruct the holy words. The book would remain dead paper and ink, but the holiness would be restored in their mind as they decoded it.
Of course, if you use a weak cipher like that, there's still the risk of an unbeliever decoding your Koran into his own mental copy and then desecrating it in his thoughts. So the real solution is to write them in some private language that only the faithful would have any reason to know how to decode into holy arabic, and then jealously guard that secret.
While that would work, if they want to have access to an actual holy copy of the Koran for personal services, then the key is that since there's nothing holy about the book itself, it must be the pattern of words that's holy. So don't put that exact pattern in the physical copy -- encode it in some simple pattern (say, reverse the two first letters of every word) that allows someone reading it to reconstruct the holy words. The book would remain dead paper and ink, but the holiness would be restored in their mind as they decoded it.
Of course, if you use a weak cipher like that, there's still the risk of an unbeliever decoding your Koran into his own mental copy and then desecrating it in his thoughts. So the real solution is to write them in some private language that only the faithful would have any reason to know how to decode into holy arabic, and then jealously guard that secret.
