Harvard Didn't Rank Quran as Best Book for Justice

Anas Nassief

News

29th May 2020

Harvard Didn't Rank Quran as Best Book for Justice

The Quran has not been ranked as the best book for justice by Harvard University (Getty Images)

The Claim

Harvard University ranks the Quran as the best book for justice.

News posted on

https://akhbarelyom.com/

english.ahram.org.eg

Emerging story

A claim is doing rounds on social media that the Quran, the holy book of Islam is ranked as the best book for justice by one of the best universities in the world, Harvard University. Twitter user @ImAbdy tweeted saying, "Harvard University Ranks 'Quran' As the Best Book for Justice. Harvard University quotes the Quran, with its divine words, which is the final revelation as believed by us, the Muslims. Allah has selected it as His last and final book."

The World Muslim Communities Council, based in the UAE, also published on their official social media accounts that Harvard University recognizes the Quran as "the greatest expressions of justice."

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A number of other web portals including The Siasat Daily published stories on similar lines.

Misbar’s Analysis

Harvard has not ranked the Quran as the best book of justice. However, the Harvard Law School made an art installation called Words of Justice with quotations about justice from different eras to illustrate the universality of the concept of justice throughout time and across many cultures. One of the many quotes in the installation is a verse from the Quran. The posted verse has been taken from 135 of Surah Al Nisa (The Women).

You can watch the video compilation of such quotes here:

Words of Justice from HLSL on Vimeo.
The 135 verse of An-Nisa’ Verse (Chapter from Al Qurans) has been posted at the entrance of the Harvard Faculty of Law, describing the verse as one of the greatest expressions for justice in history.

Following this, sites started making the claim that Harvard University had ranked the Quran as the best book for justice.

However, Misbar's investigation shows that a verse from the Quran has been added to Harvard Law School's "Words of Justice" after which several websites started spreading misinformation.