This is deeply disturbing to me:

Quotations from Quran start appearing on the body of a 9-month boy named Ali from Kizlyar, Dagestan, his parents claim.

Birthmarks in form of Arabic scripts have been appearing on the baby’s body since his birth. First, there were individual letters, then texts and, according to local imams, these are texts from the Quran, the Vesti TV has reported on Thursday.

Thus, one of the baby’s legs has an inscription, “Allah is the creator of all things.”

“First, there was a hematoma on his chin. When the bruise went off, we saw the word “Allah,” Ali’s mother Madina Yakubova said.

Words similar to birthmarks show up on his shank and ankle usually on Monday and Friday and then disappear.

When new inscriptions are appearing, Ali doesn’t sleep all night long and has high temperature and even strong drugs cannot send it off.

The picture is horrific because the Qur’an phrases are so detailed and legible. I can’t see this being anything other than a case of child abuse. I can’t imagine what drives these parents to do something like this to their child – the discussion at Talk Islam suggested “Munchausen Syndrome“, but what concerns me more is how they are actually marking the baby. It looks like bruises to me.

This case is horrible and seems akin to the recent “faith healing” case in central Wisconsin where the parents let their child die from untreated diabetes. Religious convictions are important but harming your children as proxy for proving how devout you are is monstrous and about the furthest thing from genuine piety you can imagine.