Thought experiment: would we feel any different if Christopher Hitchens were burning a Bible, Koran, Talmud, Bhagavad Gita, and Book of Mormon together in the same pile?
No. It is the political implications that concern me, not the religious ones.
Why? Why would it do anything more than incite a few unhappy folks to burn some bibles and/or some effigies of Mr. Jones?
Are these folks so incredibly insecure and violent that they will kill people over a simple book burning?
Would you not feel insecure if you were a Muslim? However well you can justify America's current military endeavours, the cold facts are that the US has invaded two Muslim countries in the last ten years, still has troops in both of them, and is openly discussing the merits of attacking a third. So yes, I think it is wise to realise that Muslims do feel pretty insecure about the US.
Muslim reprisals will explain Islam quite nicely, FORCING the unwilling to understand what they would deny and demonstrating the Clash of Civilizations.
Why on Earth would you want to provoke a clash like that? I don't deny it is a possibility if the lunatics are allowed to dominate the debate, but why anyone would want such a situation... Do you dream of standing amid the ruins of cities saying, "look, I was right"?
The problem I have with your argument is it is the opposite used by those who are OK with the Mosque in N.Y. Even though it offends millions of people, it is defended as Constitutionally protected. Yet here today, we read in this forum how this man has no Constitutional protection and what he is doing is offensive to Muslims. You can't have it both ways.
My understanding is that he is very much constitutionally protected - you wouldn't see the entire American military, religious and political (left AND right) leadership begging him to desist if they could just ban the protest. If you just mean Rackspace, you have to respect their rights as well.
For the record, I'm not to clear on the details (is it a mosque? how close is it to ground zero?) but I'm no fan of it. It seems a needless provocation.
The left on this site offend Christians on a daily basis so it is really funny to see so many of you upset because some guy is going to offend Muslims. Hypocrites.
Disagree. The comparison should be an Iranian, say, insulting Islam. I think you'd find the same people cheering that as cheer insulting Christianity. This is a political issue rather than religious, although it is religious sensibilities that are being insulted.
Crusades 700 years ago. Muslim Terrorist terrorizing the world TODAY!
I'm no fan of radical Islam, but try to look at it from their point of view. Who's armies are in who's countries? You can come out with as much justification as you please, but you have to accept that invading someone's country is always extremely unpopular. In this situation it is simple common sense not to also insult their religion.
That would be ok with you then?
If I posted something so dire that I got the entire military and political leadership of the US to personally beg me to stop...? I'd ban myself.
Any religion that would cause random followers to act so hostily to strangers cuz a fucking book is burned is really crazy. I bet they can burn Bibles and not very many Christians iwll form mobs and/or kill someone.
It is one of the things I respect most about modern Christianity - their ability to tolerate or ignore the sacrilegious. It isn't anything to do with the religion though, it is a fairly recent development from a historical point of view.
I'm a christian and an American, yet I don't get offended when I see people burning bibles or American flags; I look at them like they're idiots. Sure, the symbolism of their action is bad, but it's still just a book - it's nothing I'm going to lose sleep over.
Good for you, if there were more people like you the world would be a better place. I'm sure you recognise however that many of your countrymen do not feel the same way.
Any nation that wants a cordial relationship with the people of the united states is well advised to avoid incidents of burning the US flag and bibles. This would be true times a thousand if the nation in question had 100,000 of their troops within US borders engaged in fighting an insurgency comprised at least in a large part of US citizens.
I wonder - would you be opposed to burning Bible as well? You know, based on the same principles?
By a Muslim group? Yes I would see it as a provocative insult, same way as I see burning the US flag. It is a pointless display, and indicates a profound inability to think on the part of the perpetrator.
And you are fine with the dumbf*ck who wants a mosque in NYC, because it sure as shit doesn't matter when THEY insult Americans.
I've heard responses to this along the lines of "it's not a mosque, and it's not at ground zero", but I'm actually not to sure of the facts on this. If it actually is a mosque at ground zero then no, it seems an unnecessary provocation by SOME Muslims and I don't approve.
But no one is guaranteed freedom from being offended. If people decide to go off and do something violent just because they were offended, then they are clearly in the wrong, and THAT is the behavior that needs to be checked. Being overtly offensive is less than good, and it should be discouraged, but being violent simply because you are offended is something that should be stopped, controlled, prevented, etc. Attempting to control others' behavior via the expressed threat that, should their behavior offend you, you will become violent, is also something that should not be tolerated. You know, unless you are a government.
I'd have some sympathy for that argument (while still thinking the guy was a dick) if this was a domestic US dispute, and the insulted parties were US all citizens.
But you can't just ignore the global situation - which does lets face it include large US armies in two Muslim countries. Without getting into the rights and wrongs of those wars, you must admit that they are perceived very badly in much of the Muslim world. Telling Muslims that they shouldn't be offended by the deliberate desecration of their holy book because it is this nutter's first amendment right... doesn't really cut it in my opinion.
"If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?" -- Lily Tomlin