Burning the Koran

by Rossputin | 7:47 am, September 10, 2010 | Comments Off

[Please see news update on this story at the end of this note]

Several of my friends have sent me their opinions on the plan by a small Florida church to have “Burn a Koran Day” tomorrow, the 9th anniversary of the 9/11/2001 attacks.

One said that “Petraeus and the administration should just STFU”.  (For the uninitiated, that means “Shut the F*** Up.”  He continued: “This theme that it puts our troops in danger is pure bullshit. Our free speech rights in this country do not hinge on the sensitives of Islamic lunatics or anybody else. To elevate just another case of an American exercising his right to be a jackass is to give it power and even worse it gives credence to the ’sensitivities’ of adherents to Islam.”

Another friend offered this: “The church has the absolute right to burn the koran as speech. But the simple minded want to abrogate that right because muslims will behave badly. Oh, NOT MUSLIMS BEHAVING BADLY! No matter how odious the behavior protected I am not willing to subordinate the constitution to accommodate the sensibilities of mulims. Let them behave badly. If need be…kill them and destroy their stuff. Do it with such consistency and force that they make it an article of the faith of Islam.”

I plan to talk about this on the radio show on Sunday (and would love to get your take then).  My take, after not spending too much time thinking about it, is this:

Of course the church has the right to burn the Koran or any other book.  But it’s stupid and it should be condemned for several reasons:

• The idea that it increases risk to Americans overseas is not ridiculous. In my mind, it increases the risk of non-military people, such as tourists in Indonesia, more than our troops.
• It makes American Christians (of which I am not one) look bad to non-Americans.
• It does these things with absolutely no benefit to our nation.

Look, I’m not sensitive to what people think about our nation.  But causing a few or a few dozen or a few hundred or a few thousand more people to hate and distrust America by doing something which has absolutely no offsetting benefit is just stupid.

I don’t like (or even really tolerate) Islam.  I have argued on these pages that the phrase “radical Islam” is redundant, that the religion – more like a political cult – is inherently radical.  So I don’t think I can be called some sort of apologist for Muslims.

I just think that burning a Koran is moronic…but legal.

———————–

UPDATE:

On Thursday afternoon, Terry Jones said he was suspending “Burn a Koran Day” because he had reached an indirect agreement (via a Florida imam) with the founder of the Ground Zero Mosque, Feisal Abdul Rauf, whereby the mosque would be moved.  Soon after, however, Rauf said there was no such deal, and not even an agreement to have a meeting.

At this point, it’s unclear whether the stupid event will remain canceled.  And even if it is, we’re like to see a few Koran burnings by other nitwits who think it sounded like a good idea.

It’s rather remarkable to learn that Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Terry Jones and asked him not to proceed.  Part of me hates the idea of the federal government asking a citizen not to proceed with a First Amendment right, and I’m sure many conservatives will come out with that view.  But I’m not certain it was wrong for Gates to call, as long as there wasn’t a hint of an implied threat from the government (though some might argue that the call itself could feel like an implied threat.) All in all, it’s an extremely difficult – and unncessary – situation.  The short answer: Terry Jones is an idiot.

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