Another day, another reminder of Syrian President Bashar Assad's complete detachment from reality and willingness to do anything to cling to power:

"Syrian President Bashar al-Assad updates Koran to stop 'distortion' or 'misleading' information" - The Independent

"Syria's Assad reveals new 'standardised' version of Qu'ran" - Newsweek

"Syrian President Assad's Government Has 'Revised' the Holy Quran" - VICE

Except these stories, which have proliferated over the last week and a half, aren't exactly true.

These Western publications took one fact – Syria approves new standardized Quran printing – and combined it with a quote from Assad – "We truly need such acts at this critical stage of distortion and misleading when it comes to the Holy Quran and the teachings of Prophet Mohammad."

Both seem to be true, but are incredibly misleading when presented together without details on this "new" Quran.

The original SANA report  that sparked these stories says "In the new version, Quranic letters are simplified and sketched with dexterity according to a set of accredited standards that scholars of Quranic science use."

While most media reports did include that information, all of them minimized it in their reporting, with suggestions that the "revisions" were substantive.

VICE even suggested that it was "an act that some of the faithful might consider sacrilegious."

The lack of information in the original SANA report left the door wide open for these publications to create scary headlines and leave readers with the impression that the dictator was tampering with the Quran.

But Syria's Religious Endowments Minister Mohammad Abdul-Sattar al-Sayyed has actually explained in detail  what the project did.

This work is a kind of improvement in the function of Qu’ranic script, locations of beginnings and ends of Qur’anic sentences, and standardization of the letters of Quranic words. The purpose is to produce a standardized edition for publishers and publishing centers to adopt with no alternation or change in the original Quranic script. This enables Muslims, irrespective of their educational backgrounds, to read the Qur’anic script with no difficulties resulting from the size, dotting or vowelization of letters.

His detailed list of the new rules the committee approved range from the placement of diactric marks to standardizing their size, and includes such things as where to place the end of verse marks.

These changes – which affect legibility – put Assad's quote into context. As does the creation of an audiobook of the Quran that is also a part of the project.

We'd say anything that allows more people to read their religious texts for themselves is probably a decent idea even if it's coming from someone like Assad.

There's enough atrocities that Assad is committing – with more than 200,000 dead  since he sparked a civil war with a brutal crackdown on what began as peaceful protests – that need addressing, scaring people over punctuation and vowel marks seems a bit over the top.