Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center, a 50 member nondenominational charismatic Christian church in Gainesville, Florida should never have made the news. The man is obviously irrational and unintelligent. (Read his church's rulebook for becoming an "Apostolic Fife Fold Minister." The concepts are nebulous, grammar and spelling are atrocious, and parts are absolutely unintelligible.) What should have been nothing more than a blip on the local Gainesville radar screen has become the center of a book-burning furor that has stretched around the world. Why? Because the left-wing media wanted to point to someone who they erroneously thought represented the overzealous Right, the TEA party movement, or any other Obama decenter they wish to disavow. If it was not completely orchestrated by the media, then AP and Reuters would have never picked it up. It doesn't makes sense that they did. They took an inconsequential nut-job and made him into a behemoth. Or, as the Russian ladies at my doctor's office say, "They make elephants from flies."
The media is responsible for this getting blown out of proportion and for making it known worldwide. They are therefore responsible for the outcries from the middle east. They are responsible for the flag burnings, the "Death to America" signs and chants. Shame on them! Their little plan didn't turn out so well. It rather bit them in the ass. However, the sickest twist in the whole media blitz is that now that they have stoked the publicity fire so much that members of Congress and the Cabinet, General Patreas and even Obama himself have publicly commented, they say that if the book burning takes place, they will not show it. Suddenly they want to take the high road? Please! It wasn't news in the first place!
Islam believes that the Koran is sacred. I get that. The ORIGINAL writings of Mohammad should absolutely be sacred to them. However, they project the equivalent holiness to every copy. Really? That is just as wacko as Mr. Jones, but just from a different direction. Bestowing holy, mystical, magical powers onto paper and ink is silly. Where is the sanity? Can we be realistic here? That's the problem. For radical Islam, realism is nonexistent. (Do not allow this paragraph lead you to believe that I am a hater of Muslims. I work for a predominantly Muslim company and I like, respect and enjoy my coworkers. I learn from them and very much respect their religious discipline.)
Now, about the book burning itself.
First: Book burning is the singular most paradoxical action of liberty one can take in these United States. At once it is the symbol of the squelching of freedom and the ultimate expression of that same freedom. The practice (Brief History of Book Burning} is an ancient one. The priests at the Council of Nicea burned whatever documentation they had that did not "make the cut" into what we know now as the Bible, thereby stomping out free religious thought, debate and ultimately practice. The Nazi's burned books of Jewish origin, those that were anti-Nazi and those they deemed degenerate. They wanted to keep such books away from the masses which they thought were better off only with spoon-fed propaganda. Even Harry Potter books were ceremoniously burned by those narrow-minded fundamentalists who thought that they were somehow demonic. So it's nothing new.
Second: There is something viscerally upsetting to me about the idea of burning books. It is unequivocally wrong. Books - good, bad, important, ridiculous - are to be cherished and kept as an historical record. They are the legacy of the author and also of the time period. What we write today becomes the anthropological, sociological, cultural and historical lessons of future generations. Leave the books be!
Third: Logically speaking, books are paper and ink. There are many copies of most books out there, so burning a handful will not matter. Besides, they make good kindling (tongue in cheek, people!) and if I were stranded and cold I would burn a library to survive. Wouldn't you?
Questions:
Why does the media try to scare us with images of burning flags and crucifixes? They seem so worried that the radicals will be upset or offended. Hello? They are already upset! We are dirty Kafirs, infidels to them and must be eradicated. Remember 9/11? Remember the first attempt on the World Trade Center in 1993? They didn't need a minor Koran burning to be able to recruit terrorists; recruits were available all along.
Why is it OK for Muslims to burn the Bible, our flag and effigies of our leaders in protest but it is not OK for us to burn the Koran in protest? This is a double standard!
Why is it OK for Muslims to burn the Bible, our flag and effigies of our leaders in protest but it is not OK for us to burn the Koran in protest? This is a double standard!
Why is it OK to display a crucifix in urine or paint the Virgin Mary out of elephant dung and call it art but not to draw cartoons or caricatures of Mohammad? This too, is a double standard. (For the record, I'm cool with all of it.)
And why does the left cry foul about protests of offensive art to defend it as free speech, but not stand up equally for the right to burn a Koran in protest?
Free speech must be upheld absolutely. Give me liberty or give me death!
Final thoughts:
It is tragic that the radicals of Islam get more press than the peaceful, kind Muslims. Most pay little attention to the aberrant calls to violence in the Koran. We should be seeing more of that in the media to balance what we see of the radicals.
I believe that Americans think differently from the rest of the world because of our freedoms. We see everything through the eyes of liberty. In fact we have no real point of reference for looking at the world any other way. All you need do is talk to an immigrant from the communist block who still looks over their shoulder before they share an opinion. They see the world differently and have a level of fear that Americans will hopefully never know. Middle eastern Muslims see the world differently too. They see it from a place where religious and state law are one in the same. How can we possibly have empathy for each other when we cannot put ourselves in the other's shoes to gain the perspective needed? If only there was a simple way for us to see how they see and vice versa. It is only then that the emotional charge of our differences will dissipate. Then, perhaps an intellectual discussion could begin so we could truly
I believe that Americans think differently from the rest of the world because of our freedoms. We see everything through the eyes of liberty. In fact we have no real point of reference for looking at the world any other way. All you need do is talk to an immigrant from the communist block who still looks over their shoulder before they share an opinion. They see the world differently and have a level of fear that Americans will hopefully never know. Middle eastern Muslims see the world differently too. They see it from a place where religious and state law are one in the same. How can we possibly have empathy for each other when we cannot put ourselves in the other's shoes to gain the perspective needed? If only there was a simple way for us to see how they see and vice versa. It is only then that the emotional charge of our differences will dissipate. Then, perhaps an intellectual discussion could begin so we could truly
