Even here in the bible belt area of Mississippi its being condemned. Its a blatant danger to our soldiers and our country. Allllllthough a good civil war may boost the economy, hmmmmmm, think that may be Obama’s plan? He may actually be working with this nutcase to start trouble…and put our economy in good. War always makes the economy better, for the stronger party that is… 
It’s a sad situation and is only going to lead to more trouble for the USA, both here and in the ME. By the way, that Gainesville church is still going to burn the Koran.
Jones is in a lose-lose situation. He can’t burn the quran, and he has to burn the quran to match his hate rhetoric. Nut jobs like this damage ALL religions. The condemnation by most christians will be forgotten quickly, and the vague impression of hate mongering will linger. The islamic peoples are a little - a lot - too wrapped up in “sacred” artifacts and images, and look just a little more than irrational to anyone not muslim. But all of this looks stupid in the eyes of most of the world, and religious hatred keeps proving that religion is something to avoid. It’s outlived it’s usefulness and as all religion becomes more extreme, becomes more and more irrelevant.
We are some curious animals. I wonder how God or some alien race, more advanced than us of course, sees this and perhaps thinks: “So you want to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 by burning Korans? Because you want to send a message to radical islam? Isn’t that a bit radical?”
To islamicists we are the “Great Satan”. To these congregation, it is Islam that is the Devil…probably alongside every other religion they consider in error. This is the darkest shadow of religion. Yet for every shadow there is a light. There are positive aspects of religion that cannot be denied simply because of these radical elements. The ability to become a radical is immanent in man, and it finds expression not just in religion but in other vehicles of meaning, meta-narratives.
But I appreciate where we are as a whole. The story has gained fame because we are against radicalism, because as a country, the Gainsville congregation is the exception and not the rule. It is a sign of progress that other Christians, Christian leaders, have emerged to criticize this demonstration and it’s intended message. We are not, as a nation, above radical fundamentalism. But stand against, we criticise, we frown upon such displays, such excess, such violations. In the muslim world, there are no congregation of leaders to denounce the murder of Christians, not the burning of their Bibles, no leader that stand and syas: “This is not Islam”…of course they would risk a whole lot more than someone here in the calm West that criticises a fundamentalist Christians, but that is the world we inherited from the martyrs of yesterday. It was not always without risk, even in the west, to stand against persecution and intolerance.
In the end, I worry for the same stuff that Petraus worry. Like Bloomberg, I believe that they should be free to burn whatever books they want to burn, so long as they own them. The state should protect that right. The state should also protect the right of those whose books are burnt one day to open a mosque the next day, again, so long as they own the land or building where this shall be built. The muslim world will not like us allowng the burning of korans, but will hate even more our inconsistency about the extend and involvement by government in religious matters.
If only both sides could understand its not the book its what is inside you that is important. Know one can ever take that away from you unless you let them. The bible, the koran etc. If you believe in their words then the words are safe within you, no fire can damage that book, ever. Let the otherside burn the written word, it does no good if you truly believe. Unfortunately it seems both sides have zero faith in what is within those words they faithfully gaurd within them.
I don’t see this issue as one of property rights protection but as the problem of xenophobia and projecting one’s own shadow on the “other.” I don’t think any of the people involved in the acts of violence are concerned about personal property but rather consumed with fear and hate of the other. I don’t think it’s the state’s job to protect hate, harm, and killing under any guise. If that were the case, I suppose it would be OK for klanners to burn crosses and conduct lynchings as long as it were on their “property” or federally owned commons.
But the books are “holy”. People kiss them, carry them on their foreheads, many believe that their words have magical powers and so discourage using the written word in vain or to defile it. You got to understand that access to scriptures is an innovation and that for centuries, millenia, from the time of the Egyptians, the written word has held a special place in the minds of men and women and that this has only now become rare only because scriptures, once divine and rare, have flooded the markets, are also given away for free…Bibles of course.
But Islam, I think, takes it’s religion more serious than the west takes Christianity as well. Islam is more down to earth than one would initially suspect. It is about respect. About what the act represents. Burning a few korans does little in the material sense, for there are millions in print and printed each day. But it is the meaning of the act that is aimed and received by these players. It is a mutual narrative that strikes and offends the players involved. The message is one of hate, and predictably (apparently no one knows a radical better than another radical and therefore knows best how to hurt the other-like-himself best as well) that is how people have reacted in muslim communities. If they decided to burn copies of the Book of Mormon, a similar outrage would ensue, even if mormons are not particularly radical…anymore at least.
It is a higher type of religiosity which you propose and which is not always attained. I think that people need symbols because our inner lives offer little permanence. We crave what remains, what is imbued with power, a word, spoken or written, a book and all it’s reprints, all containing that special spark that to them, should be respected, venerated, because the original itself comes from what is most Holy.
Now, today, for many, the Bible for example is not taken literally, many passages are seen as fictions, as mythologies, as works that originated from older myths created by men, that some of it’s stories about God were created by the tastes of the age rather than them being reports on what is most Holy…and that is an advance, though others may consider it a decline. The Bible is thus regarded as a mixture of the sacred and the profane, however honest their intentions. If a Bible is defiled, there is not much of a reaction in us, higher religious persons. To those like me the site where the WTC stood is is just land. A tomb is not what is special but our memories of the deceased. But I am not the rule as we see from the controversy about a mosque being built a few blocks away. To these people that oppose it, it is the same as those who oppose the burning of the koran. It is the symbol which they oppose, the meaning, the representation, the narrative.
Again, the point is that my particular opinion is an innovation that is not ordinary. That what is normative is the attachment of meaning to places, books etc, which then causes most to react emotionally to the burning of paper, or the leasing of a non-descript building which previously went unnoticed. What makes one like me cringe is that we defile the Law of God when we place such matters ahead of Justice. That people who call themselves Christians concern themselves when a building houses a mosque near “Ground Zero”, but fall silent or don’t even notice when many other buildingss may house crack-head, STD infected prostitutes, the homeless, the sick. I cringe that Indonesians will feel disrespect at a few floridians burning holy books and decide to protest, yet we hear nothing when in the name of Allah people die, that people, children quite often, are convinced that the God addressed in Islam, their religion, wants death at all cost, even the cost of your own life. They get offended by the burning of books, but not by the defiling by radicals of everything pure that is contained in those books, when they behead, kill and burn, not books, but people.
The true innovation for humanity that has not arrived and may never arrived is that someday we will denounce murder in the name of the most high. A day where we think of people rather than of symbols, when people will cry foul because other people suffer and die alone, because people are destroyed and not because a symbol of another God’s revelation is built near destroyed building that hold the remains of victims and their killers. That we hold on that day each person as unique and not as a symbol, not as a representation of something we detest. That we hold people as more important, more sacred, than buildings and books.
So, what shall we do --allow Jones to go ahead with the Quran burning under the principle of freedom of religion and expression or arrest him and his followers for a hate crime? A confused nation turns to ILP for answers. I recommend letting them burn the books but up-staging them with a massive protest outside the church building. That way potentially enraged Muslims will learn that Americans opposed the act as well. Gainesville is reputed to be a predominantly liberal college town. They should be up to the task.
Some people were suggesting that protesters print the Koran on the flag and burn it. They thought it might make the evangelical freepers’ heads explode.
Hello Jonquil,
— I don’t see this issue as one of property rights protection but as the problem of xenophobia and projecting one’s own shadow on the “other.” I don’t think any of the people involved in the acts of violence are concerned about personal property but rather consumed with fear and hate of the other. I don’t think it’s the state’s job to protect hate, harm, and killing under any guise. If that were the case, I suppose it would be OK for klanners to burn crosses and conduct lynchings as long as it were on their “property” or federally owned commons.
O- I did not say that they understood the issue as about property rights, but that, as far as our govt. is concerned, we should make it a matter of only property rights for the sake of consistency. The florida congreagation has a constitutional right to burn Korans…and by some of the decisions of the courts, even to burn another sacred symbol, the American Flag. Each is a form of speech to communicate, yes, hate, but more than anything disapproval of that which goes up in flames. I am not saying that govt should protect hate but the right to express hate. So long as the burning of paper does not harm anyone (other than perhaps psychologically- but then an insult cannot be made into a crime or else New York would become a prision-island.
Conduction lynchings is not protected under the right to free speech. Burning a cross on someone else’s yard or federally owned commons is not, as it would be consider assault or disturbing the peace. Burning a cross in your backyard? As legal as BBQ. Does it express your hate? Yes. But it is the right of a person to express their opinions as they please at home, including symbolically.
You don’t seem to see the problem here. If expression of hate becomes an issue of property rights, then anything goes. That’s the way it was before Civil Rights laws were passed to override property rights in the event that proprietary attitudes in the service of hate would lead to the very things I mentioned. In fact, they already do globally, just not so much on our home ground. If it’s somebody else’s country or property, of course, human and civil rights take second place to co-option of property and exploitation of labor.
Jonquil
— You don’t seem to see the problem here. If expression of hate becomes an issue of property rights, then anything goes. That’s the way it was before Civil Rights laws were passed to override property rights in the event that proprietary attitudes in the service of hate would lead to the very things I mentioned. In fact, they already do globally, just not so much on our home ground. If it’s somebody else’s country or property, of course, human and civil rights take second place to co-option of property and exploitation of labor.
O- It is not an issue of property rights as much as liberty to express your discontent. That does not mean that the law therefore would condone murder. Verbal or symbolical communication and physical assault are different acts and therefore handled differently. You have a right to express your anger at government, to stage a protest. You are not allowed thereby to assault government agents. So no. Not everything goes.
As far as the pre civil rights period, you’re going to be explicit and give me examples of history and effectively show the causal link to what I am proposing here. As for the rest, I think you were trying to make a marxist point??? I don’t know. It simply doesn’t relate to what I was talking about.
Omar I understand that the text is held as holy for both sides. If Islamics were burning bibles there would be hell to pay here. And that is my point. The text is not holy it is the meanings from that text that goes into you that is and should be held holy. Both sides hold their text too dearly and not the actual lessons and meanings enough. Any God’s words are not found in text, they are found within your soul. As a child of your God you know the words within. No book can replace the soul of Gods nor God’s children. Hate for each other has sprung up only within Jesus’s time of reported birth and death. Before that ,not so much. Trade and tolerance was practiced. I am an Atheist I have nothing holy except a dream that one day our kids will not have to join an army to kill another group of humans because of difference. To join an army to raise humans to better levels is the only army any kid should have to join. The creator I believe in holds sentience intelligence acceptance and goodness at its heart. That is the one I speak to it does not require worship and obedience, it requires growth, love and understanding.
Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.
Where they burn books, eventually they also burn people.
From: Almansor: A Tragedy (1823) by Heinrich Heine
That depends on who is doing the burning. If it is the Mighty Church, backed by the “Holy Empire”, then we have historical basis for this claim. But we have no reason to suppose that the demonstration by a congregation of fifty will lead to the burning of people, eventually, especially after the wide-condemnation this congregation has mustered.
Today on the “Journal” call-ins (CNN–a dirty word for some conservatives just as Fox News is a dirty word for some liberals) a muslim noted the Quran includes both much of the Hebrew OT and the Christian NT. To burn the Quran, in his opinion, is also to burn the Bible.
Concerns from Petreus have to do with the times we live in, not with obsessive fear of what radical Islamists will do to us. We don’t want to invite unnecessary slaughter. This is a question of making the moral distinction between freedom and liscence. It also has to do, as many callers noted, with Jones getting more than his fifteen minutes of fame because good diviseness makes good press.
When people in a society burn books, then that says that there is something in the society that will burn people. It doesn’t matter what manner of group does the book burning, Christian or otherwise. You can also take the Nazis as a cautionary example. Thus book-burning is a sign of a sickness and a rottenness in the larger society. Not only that, but I think a very good case could be made for people-burning now if you take a look at hate crimes and the actions of a corporate-controlled country overseas. Have you considered the fire-bombings, the dropping of nukes, the use of depleted uranium and agent orange on millions of innocents and whole cities, many of these in questionable wars that allowed a great deal of profiteering, assassination, and manipulation of leaders for the purpose of destroying unions and workers’ rights so that our exploitation and profiteering could continue unabated? Also, look at police-state weaponry and tactics – the use of fire-arms and tasers that “burn” and kill people . Then consider the way money is flowing due to lack of regulation and corrupt backhanding so that people can burn carbon fuels, which in turn leads to many more fires of a larger scale, fires that burn people out of their homes which they are allowed to build because unregulated and corrupt entities gain a profit from it.
Sounds like an apocalypse of liberal values. Time for meditation? Yes, book burning is a symbolic act of violence. Point received. But, hey Obama and other leaders are trying to talk the guy down. Liberal religious leaders from Christian and Muslim camps are joining virtual hands to sing Kumbaya aroung the campfire of ecumenical unity. It’s going to be alright… more-or-less as usual.
Corrected brain fart: liberal=>Muslim.
Lol. You da kat. The kumbayanans are with us always. Kumbaya makes a great peacelovedoveincense campfire song, with nothing burning but the love in the hearts of the singers and a few pieces of wood.
Jonquil
— When people in a society burn books, then that says that there is something in the society that will burn people.
O- The key word at the beginning is “in”. When all of society condemns you, then you can’t say that you’re “in” that society. What you do then is a reflection of your small group, and not a reflection on the society that condemns what you and your group propose to do.
— You can also take the Nazis as a cautionary example.
O- I wasn’t aware of Nazi book burnings prior to their implementation of the final solution.
— Thus book-burning is a sign of a sickness and a rottenness in the larger society.
O- No. It is a sign of the radical, extremist elements that can exists, side by side, a generally tolerant society.
— Not only that, but I think a very good case could be made for people-burning now if you take a look at hate crimes and the actions of a corporate-controlled country overseas. Have you considered the fire-bombings, the dropping of nukes, the use of depleted uranium and agent orange on millions of innocents and whole cities, many of these in questionable wars that allowed a great deal of profiteering, assassination, and manipulation of leaders for the purpose of destroying unions and workers’ rights so that our exploitation and profiteering could continue unabated? Also, look at police-state weaponry and tactics – the use of fire-arms and tasers that “burn” and kill people . Then consider the way money is flowing due to lack of regulation and corrupt backhanding so that people can burn carbon fuels, which in turn leads to many more fires of a larger scale, fires that burn people out of their homes which they are allowed to build because unregulated and corrupt entities gain a profit from it.
O- Now your argument turn absurd. For all of these things have happened all over history whether or not books were set ablaze or not. To be sure, in my opinion, the US is not what that Heine had in mind…at all. Quite the contrary, the US far from burning books is notable for it’s endless stocks of books under the weight of which “truth” is lost. All of these things, which you narrow down to the burning of people, for our benefit of course, therefore come in a society filled with books, where no books are burnt. It is precisely for this fact that the Gainsville congregation faces criticism, because, if you were right, then they would only gain praise from a society that already burns people, and therefore, to use Heine, must also already have already burnt books or lacks any objections to burning books…since they already burn people, according to you. So this outrage announces the weakness of your argument and shows that, in this society, book burning, as well as the burning of people, are aberrations of the social norm. If they go through with the burnings, it would only reflect their fringe nature.