* Government Documents -- searchable ACLU archive of documents released under court order via the Freedom of Information Act, featuring recently declassified documents about reported Guantanamo Quran desecration

In chapter 2 ( Sura 2 ) of the Islamic Quran ( Verse 248 ), the Children of Israel, at the time of Samuel and Saul, were given back the Tabut E Sakina ( the casket of Shekhinah ) which contained remnants of the household of Musa ( Moses ) and Harun ( Aaron ) carried by angels which confirmed peace and reassurance for them from their Lord.

In the Middle East, Orthodox Christians have also been often referred as Roman ( or Rum ) Orthodox, because of their historical connection with the Eastern Roman ( Byzantine ) Empire as said in Chapter 30 ( Sura Rum ) of the Quran.

There are early literary references in the Quran, circa AD 632, to " war-horses … which strike fire, by dashing their hoofs against the stones …" which, if taken literally, is an effect that would have been obtained by shod horses, as barefoot hooves striking stone do not create sparks.

The Quran contains seven references to " the people of Lut ", the biblical Lot, but meaning the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah ( references 7: 80 – 84, 11: 77 – 83, 21: 74, 22: 43, 26: 165 – 175, 27: 56 – 59, and 29: 27 – 33 ), and their destruction by Allah is associated explicitly with their sexual practices:

For example, when five American soldiers accidentally burned several copies of Quran at nearby Bagram Airfield in February 2012, politicians in Kabul showed their personal anger in the media.

The Quran recounts the story of when the descendants of Adam were brought forth before God to testify that God alone is the Lord of creation and therefore only He is worthy of worship ( Quran chapter 7, verse 172 ), so that on the Day of Judgement, people could not make the excuse that they only worshipped others because they were following the ways of their ancestors.

The Quran says in Surah An-Nisa " And because of their saying, " We killed Messiah ' Îsâ ( Jesus ), son of Maryam ( Mary ), the Messenger of Allâh ," – but they killed him not, nor crucified him, but it appeared so to them, and those who differ therein are full of doubts ".

The Quran criticizes Christians and Jews who believed that their own religions the only source of Truth.

Extremism: Extremists have used the Quran and their own particular version of sharia to justify acts of war and terror against Western individuals and governments, and also against other Muslims believed to have Western sympathies.

The Quran is composed of verses ( Ayat ) that make up 114 chapters ( suras ) of unequal length which are classified either as Meccan () or Medinan () depending upon the place and time of their claimed revelation.

Abrahamic religions are those religions deriving from a common ancient Semitic tradition and traced by their adherents to Abraham ( circa 1900 BCE ), a patriarch whose life is narrated in the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament, where he is described as a prophet ( Genesis 20: 7 ), and in the Quran, where he also appears as a prophet.

Thus, the innermost purpose of the creation of all rational beings is their cognition of the existence of Allah and, hence, their conscious willingness to conform their own existence to whatever they may perceive of His will and plan: and it is this twofold concept of cognition and willingness that gives the deepest meaning to what the Quran describes as " worship ".

For example, in some Islamic cultures, though premarital sex is forbidden in the Quran with regard to both men and women, unmarried women who have been sexually active or even raped are subject to name-calling, shunning, or family shame, while unmarried men who have lost their virginities are not.

Although not specifically mentioned in the Quran, Muslims believe that Jesus and Mary were the only two children not to be touched by Satan at the moment of their birth, for God placed a veil between them and Satan.

Besides the fear of their prayers not getting heard, those who are able should be practicing this third pillar of Islam because the Quran states that this is what believers should do.

Leon Poliakov, Walter Laqueur, and Jane Gerber, argue that passages in the Quran reproach Jews for their refusal to recognize Muhammad as a prophet of God.

The Quran requires their " abasement and poverty " in the form of the poll tax jizya.

However, due to the Quran's timely process of story-telling, a majority of scholars agree that all references to Jews or other groups within the Quran refers to only certain populations at a certain point in history and bare any racial profiling or religious profiling, it also gives some legitimacy to their religion in

But the Quran differentiates between " good and bad " Jews, adding to the idea that the Jewish people or their religion itself are not the target of the story-telling process.

The Quran associates Jews above all with rejection of God's prophets including Jesus and Muhammad, thus explaining their resistance to him personally.

Rites of passage in Arab Iraq are mainly centered on children being schooled enough to correctly read the Quran, quite the challenging task.

Most huffaz have studied as children in special Islamic schools or madrasahs, being instructed in tajweed ( rules of recitation ) and vocalisation as well as committing the Quran to memory.

Although many lay Muslims and many Western scholars and writers hold the view that Islam began with Muhammad in Mecca, this contradicts the Quran, which says that Muhammad simply was the last prophet who preached the same faith that Adam preached to his children.

Dawda from an early age attended the local Arabic schools to memorize the Quran, a rite of passage for many Gambian children.

From the age of five he was enrolled in the al-Kutaab Islamic boarding schools ( a primary school not teaching children anything but how to recite and keep Quran by heart ) where he studied the Qur ' anic Sciences, Hadith ( the sayings of the Prophet of Islam and his Companions ), Fiqh ( Islamic Religious Philosophy ), and Seerah ( The detailed biography of the Prophet of Islam ), etc.

In the 1960s Tantawy wrote a 700-page treatise on the children of Israel in the Quran and Sunnah ( Jews in the Qur ' an and the Traditions ), in which he summarized:

It is recounted in both traditional Jewish texts and in the Quran that when Abraham discovered the true God, he destroyed his father's idols.

( It should be noted that in the account given of the same events, in rabbinic sources ( b. Talmud Shabbat 99a ; Exodus Rabbah 41 ) and in the Qur ' an, Aaron is not the idol-maker and upon Moses ' return begged his pardon as he had felt mortally threatened by the Israelites ( Quran 7: 142-152 ).

He was mentioned in the Quran as the " second of the two who lay in the cave " in reference to the event of hijra, with Muhammad where they hid in the cave in Jabal Thawr from the Meccan search party that was sent after them, thus being one of few who were given direct reference to in the Quran.

The calligraphic arts grew out of an effort to devote oneself to the study of the Quran.

These illuminations were applied to other works besides the Quran, and it became a respected art form in and of itself.

He memorised the Quran, giving him the title Hafiz.

A manuscript of the Quran from the reign of Bayezid I.

Quotes from the Quran and Hadith were used by Muslims in the Kuomintang-controlled Muslim publication, the Yuehua, to justify Chiang Kai-shek's rule over China.

The Yuehua, a Chinese Muslim publication, quoted the Quran and Hadith to justify submitting to Chiang Kai-shek as the leader of China, and as justification for Jihad in the war against Japan.

Islamic primary sources, the Quran and the Sunnah, declare concubinage permitted ( Halal ) under strict conditions.

Chapter 4 ( Sura-e-Nisa ), verse 3 of the Quran states that a man may only be married to four women at the most, should he be able to treat them all fairly and equally.

As a result, Chapter 66 Sura-e-Tahreem of the Quran instructed Muhammad to divorce his wife for maliciously alleging a concubine Maria Qibtia.

Ex nihilo creation is found in creation stories from ancient Egypt, the Rig Veda, the Bible and the Quran, and many animistic cultures in Africa, Asia, Oceania and North America.

Musiqi is the Persian word for the science and art of music, muzik being the sound and performance of music ( Sakata 1983, ), though some things European influenced listeners would include, such as Quran chanting, are excluded.

Actually, there are varying degrees of " musicality "; Quran chanting and Adhan is not considered music, but classical improvised song, classical instrumental metric composition, and popular dance music are.

Fiqh is an expansion of the code of conduct ( Sharia ) expounded in the Quran, often supplemented by tradition ( Sunnah ) and implemented by the rulings and interpretations of Islamic jurists.

Advocates of the movement seek to highlight the deeply rooted teachings of equality in the Quran and encourage a questioning of the patriarchal interpretation of Islamic teaching through the Quran ( holy book ), hadith ( sayings of Muhammad ) and sharia ( law ) towards the creation of a more equal and just society.

The jinn (, singular ; also spelled djinn ), or genies, are supernatural spirits mentioned in the Quran and Islamic mythology who inhabit an unseen world in dimensions beyond the visible universe of humans.

The Quran mentions that the jinn are made of a smokeless and " scorching fire ", and they have the physical property of weight.

The jinn are mentioned frequently in the Quran, and the 72nd sura of the Quran is entitled Sūrat al-Jinn.