Clandestine Spanish Muslims risked possession of books because their faith demanded it

Evidence

As we have seen, the characteristic that in the sixteenth century marked off the Muslims of Spain from those elsewhere in the world was the clandestinity of their religious beliefs. But the religion of Muslims is, always has been, and can only be, the religion of a Book, the Koran (al-Quran), God’s final and perfect revelation to mankind. Islam is inconceivable without the Koran, God’s word. And God’s word must be proclaimed in public. That is an explicit obligation. For the Muslims of Spain this posed a problem. If they had only prudently avoided possessing books and had committed nothing to writing, they would have been much safer. But would they have felt themselves to be good Muslims if they had had no books? Clearly not. From their writings we can see that, although they might accept the need to keep the nature of their religious beliefs secret for the time being, they never forgot that as Muslims they should aspire to worship openly one day and that they had an obligation to proclaim God’s message to everybody (which entailed having it available in writing). — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 592

Categorization

• DEFINE: Islam’s public proclamation obligation and the contradiction it creates for clandestine worshippers.
• XREF: Resonates with clandestine religious practice under repression elsewhere, e.g. crypto-Judaism, hidden Christians in Japan.