Muhyiddin said the government gave serious attention to Quranic education, not only on tahfiz (memorisation) but also tafsir (interpretation), ulum (science of) and al-Qiraat (recitation) of the Quran.

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But it remains unclear why the soldiers decided to burn copies of the Quran a particularly incendiary affront to Muslims who view the book as the sacred word of God as relayed to the Prophet Muhammad.

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It was Arabs with oil money, and with the prestige that comes with their mastery of Arabic, the language of the Quran, among impressionable Pakistanis and Afghans who had made Afghanistan the menace it had become.

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MAKHACHKALA, Russia (AP) The elder suspect in the Boston bombings regularly attended a mosque and spent time learning to read the Quran, but he struggled to fit in during a trip to his ancestral homeland in southern Russia last year, his aunt said.

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