Reply #205: Sorry for generalizing, but

[athena]

I never met a Muslim who would touch a Koran without first performing the ritual cleansing. And the Muslims I've met weren't particularly fundamentalist either. They didn't pray much or go to the mosque, and some didn't even fast, but they all followed the "no touching while unclean" rule. In fact, my impression was that an ultra-liberal Muslim would be much more likely not to own a Koran at all than to own one and leave it on the coffee table.

Anyway, the cleansing aspect was not discussed earlier in the thread, and I believe it suggests why some people may get very upset when a Koran is flushed down the toilet.