Share the Qur’an for 45 Million Dollars?

Recently the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)  announced their Share the Quran campaign in Washington, D.C. The plan is to give a copy of the Quran to every government leader in America and one million to average Americans over the next ten years at a cost of $45 each. Thus spending $45 million.

While Dawah is the most worthy cause a muslim can engage in, we are also warned not to be wasteful as in ayah 31 of surah Al-Araf  “O children of Adam! Wear your beautiful apparel at everytime and place of prayer: eat and drink: but waste not by excess, for God does not love the wasters.”Thus one must beg the question, is spending $45 million to give away a million Qur’ans wastefull? To answer this question lets assume 10% of the people receiving Quran actually read it and of those 25% become Muslim. That means we just spent $45 million to convert 25,000 Americans to Islam. And to be honest, 25,000 is a very generous number. We must also wonder how many of the one million Qurans will find their way to a local dump?

In the meantime, America holds around 3 million people in jails and prisons. Tens of thousands of whom are already Muslim or eager to leam about Islam. Currently there are very few Muslim
organizations dedicated to inmates in America. Those that do exist like the Islamic Correctional Reunion Association out of Illinois do a great job with what they have but are terribly under funded.

Lets consider what would happen if Muslim organizations that focus on inmates were given $45 million to expand their programs and dawah efforts. For $45 million every inmate in America would receive an English translation of the Quran, a qufi, or hijab for the women, and a ten-unit correspondence course in Islamic fundamentals like the one offered by l.C.R.A. mentioned above.

The return on such an investment clearly out weighs that of CAIR’s program, based on the history of every prophet up to our Nabi Muhammad PBUH. As we know it was always the most oppressed in every society that followed Allah’s messengers while the high handed socialites were the first to oppose the Messengers and put out the most vile resistance to them. The conversion rate among inmates given Dawah is about 25%. That would mean 750,000 converts for 45 million, versus CAIR’s possible 25,000 or less.

This is not to say CAIR is on the wrong track. They may just be driving the wrong locomotive. A much more economical plan, and one that would keep expensive Qurans out of the dump, would be to make a DVD introducing Islam which costs less than a dollar to produce and ship, with a website for those interested in further information and a Quran. With this kind of program CAIR could reach out to 30-40 million households in America, thus reaching nearly every American. And lets’ face it, Americans are more likely to watch a free DVD than read a book,  let alone a religious text.

So whether we support or object to programs like CAIR’s or I.C.R.A.’s we should express our opinions, ideas and concerns to our Muslim organizations. For if we sit on the sidelines, we all lose.

To contact l.C.R.A., go to www.islam-correctional.org, or write to l.C.R.A. P.O. Box 774, Tinley Park, IL 60477. To contact CAIR go to www.cair-net.org, or write to CAIR 453 New Jersey Ave, Washington D.C. 20003.

Abdullali Deen is a freelance writer, a Muslim activist and is not associated with l.C.R.A. or CAIR.