Saturday, September 11, 2010

To Burn or Not to Burn

KHAN YOUNIS, GAZA STRIP - DECEMBER 23: Masked ...Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Burning a group's holy book like the Koran or The God Delusion is really not a good idea -- but  I doubt that atheists would react with rage and violence. Unlike Muslims.

A Muslim cleric says, "“If he’d gone through with it [the Koran burning], it would have been tantamount to war, a war that would have rallied Muslims all over the world.”

But what about Muslims burning Bibles, and destroying Christian symbols -- doesn't this count for something?  Somehow the soon-to-be-freshly-enraged Muslim world and the poodle-media apparently missed this story from 2007.
Father Manuel Musallem, head of Gaza's Latin church, told the AP that Muslims have ransacked, burned and looted a school and convent that are part of the Gaza Strip's small Romany Catholic community. He told the AP that crosses were broken, damage was done to a statue of Jesus, and at the Rosary Sister School and nearby convent, prayer books were burned.
Father Musalam additionally told The Jerusalem Post that the Muslim gunmen used rocket-propeled grenades (RPGs) to blow through the doors of the church and school, before burning Bibles and destroying every cross they could get their hands on.   
When the West fails to criticize the destruction of Bibles and crosses by Muslims, yet justifies Muslim rage and terror over the destruction of a Koran, it strengthens Islam.

When Obama calls for tolerance on 9/11, he clearly means tolerance by the West of Islam -- he clearly does not mean his words as a rebuke of Islamic actions of intolerance towards the West.

Islam is going to steam-roller over the West and its pliant double-standard of holding itself to one standard and other cultures to another.

Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Exactly. Obama preaching tolerance, but not mentioning Islamic intolerance.

P@J said...

As the token atheist here, my basic reaction is that the guy in Florida is a kook who is getting way more attention than he deserves. Book-burning in itself is abhorrent to most atheists, because it represents a burning of knowledge, and the attempt to destroy knowledge or keep it from others is both irrational and unethical. The proper response to “holy” books is logical ridicule, not destruction.

That said, if the guy owns the book, he is fully entitled to burn it, use it for toilet paper, line a birdcage, whatever. To an atheist, the Koran is no different than a Bible, a Vonnegut novel, or the telephone book. Just because someone else holds it a “holy” does not compel me to hold it so. Freedom of religion includes freedom from religion, and I am free to burn a Koran, spit on a communion wafer, or use a crucifix to open a plugged toilet. And you are free to call me a jerk for doing it.

One difference between us, Rick, is that you compare the way Saudis deal with the bible with the way we in Canada deal with the Koran, and see the difference as some sort of weakness on our part. I see it as our strength.

As for the “double standard” of our tolerance, I suspect that is exactly what Jesus was talking about on the mount.

"... nothing intellectually compelling or challenging.. bald assertions coupled to superstition... woefully pathetic"