Church Plans on Burning Qur'an on September 11th
 

So this is pretty much all over the news and I couldn't believe it when I heard it in past days. But The Dove World Outreach Centre says that it is planning on burning the Qur'an on the September 11th...

This is the news article for more information:

Church plans Quran-burning event - CNN.com

So, what are you guys' thoughts on this?

I don't think anyone quite realizes the **** storm this will bring. Not only is this incredibly offensive, but it is taking place on one of their biggest holidays (Hari Raya Puasa). This guy is an idiot and makes all Americans look even more like idiots than they already do. If Glenn freaking Beck says this is a bad idea, it really must be. On top of all this, this will be the perfect argument for oppressive governments to restrict free speech even more. All they have to do is point at us and say, "See? Look what they do with their free speech...**** that".

As this is potentially a threat to world peace and people who are alive now could well be soon dead because of it, then it's about time the U.S. government did something to stop this idiot from abusing his rights.
He should be arrested for incitement and transported to Guantanamo Bay with the other religious extremists.
I understand the freedom of speech, but common sense should take precedence here.

I saw that, too. I think someone should stage a bible burning. Another backwards redneck giving Americans a bad name. >:|

Considering America is a nation more than willing to give up individual rights for public safety, I'm a little annoyed by the hypocrisy when it comes to freedom of speech. You can search and seize me at the airport or wiretap my phone, but don't touch our freedom of speech. While I can see their argument, nothing good will come of this and this idiot racist will do nothing but create more anger and contempt from the rest of the world.

I'm also with Right-Track on this issue, this even will create a public safety concern.

...

Does he want the troops in Afghanistan to get bombed? Really? You want to give other Muslim countries more reason to hate us? This is petty at best.

I agree with the previous posters, this is going to create a massive **** storm. I doubt he realizes the ramifications of this. He has the right to do this, but I would strongly discourage him to carry this out.

Am I the only one that thinks this (seemingly) rapidly spreading Islamophobia is unsettling?

this guy sincerely believes that god has told him to burn the qur'an (as it is a book of the devil) and that the only thing that will stop him is that god comes down and tells him no!....except this morning when he said he may stop if the president gives him a call he would deeply consider stopping the BURN!

when asked about him getting his 15 minutes of fame he replied....'oh nothing i do is ever about me...it's all about god'....a side note is the his congregation has less than 30 people in it

when asked if he has read the qur'an...he replied 'yes. some of it'....so then when asked what part of the qur'an has upset him...he tried to change the subject...when confronted with the same question he replied 'the part that says they don't accept jesus as their personal saviour'

yeasterday he stated that he an overwhelming support from the citizens of america having received 200 qur'ans to burn

this guy is a complete idiot and i honestly feel he may not have any intention to actually burn these books....but at the last minute will have some divine vision or phone call form the president....and will stop the burn....this seems to me to more about publicity and his own personal ambition....just like this

its a real shame that imbeciles like this get press

I woul be interested to hear the American Christian community's reaction to this guy. He's violating the very precepts of his religion by staging this thing. "The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no greater commandment than these." -Mark 12:31 This verse is mentioned multiple times throughout the Bible. This man is obviously deeply offended by the Muslim religion, but he is choosing to blatantly ignore his Lord's command to "Turn the other cheek". So many things wrong with this situation :\

Book burnings have a different meaning in the 21st century. Books are easily reproducible and readily available. Someone tell the Floridian pastor this isn't the 17th century and that he is basically just donating money to the publisher of the Qur'an. Attention whore.

His logic is to take a religious book and burn it as a protest against those responsible for the attack on 9/11.
In other words, he's going to commit what will be perceived as an atrocity, in order to demonstrate his objection against another atrocity.
One religious nutter provoking a multitude of religious nutters is just what the world needs right now.

I doubt there's any reasoning with a blind bigoted moron like that man, no more than there will be any reasoning with the extreme lunatics hell bent on revenge and self righteous enough to retaliate.
In the meantime, decent men and woman are duty bound to stand by and watch this man burn the Koran, probably live on television too. And the most that can be done would be to arrest him for making a fire in a smokeless zone!

Where are all your crazy lone gunmen when you need one?

More proof that while Islam is a retarded religion it took a lot of inspiration from Christianity too.

it really makes you wonder...what would happen if the media just packed up and left this quack to his own devices?....this morning 'abc' had a constant record on this ****heads double wide or excuse me...place of worship....waiting for this guy to say a word.....

this guy has no logic...he is exactly like the weather balloon guy from a few months ago

He just canceled.

and the schmuck gets a free ****ing trip to NYC....this world sucks ****

Aww, fuck!

I was looking forward to that. :(

In before conspirators.
He's a CIA undercover agent working in a cunning and complex plan to fool the Muslim church into cancelling their plans to build a Mosque at ground zero.

Mission accomplished!

:usehead:

A)How exactly is Islam retarded?
B)Explain how it took inspiration from Christianity?

Before any of the more radical atheists on the forum start ranting about religion, it has to be pointed out that fanaticism like this isn't so much caused by relgion as by hatred, which are two different things.

I wouldn't say Islam is retarded. It's just a historical event like any other. More precisely, the final and logical consequence of a syphilitic cameller's spiral criminal career in the 7th-century Arabian Peninsula: once you start holding up caravans, you can end up founding a religion.

To write a delirious story about the hippie son of a Jewish carpenter is not that uncommon, actually. I've read worse things.

That what I don't understand is why people take those things seriously. :confused:

Like the Spanish Inquisition, for example. ;)

What a barrel of laughs that was.

That's political rather than religious. A result of a monarch's decision which wasn't expected (obviously) 14 centuries before by all those Middle-East's goatherds. BTW, even the BBC (Bring Back the Caliphate) has recognized that the issue has been grossly exaggerated. But that's another story.

What I meant is that the origin itself is absolutely ridiculous. Supposing you have to write a transcendental message from God through an angel's dictation (which is too bizarre per se), the most logical would be doing it as soon as posible, and, above all, neat and tidy. But, in Arabic and during 23 years? C'mon!! At least Moses wasn't required to write anything. Not even those ten f***ing sentences.

I doubt anyone will stop him, and he'll go through with it, he has the right to do it, not saying it's right, but we just have to wait and see what happens.

Within the christian religion there is nothing that says people of the christian faith must be tolerant of other religions. The way it looks to me is its a superstitious person getting angry at other people for holding superstitions and endangering others in the process.

the faith may not say it has to be tolerant of other religions but the LAW of the land most certainly does.

it's not a matter of superstitions, it's a matter of gross ignorance and disrespect.

@ xEMGx - it is NOT within his rights to spread hate, to condemn others based on belief, or to incite hate towards a particular group. what would have this proposed action have served besides that?

Erm, "law of the land"? It's most certainly within his rights as an American citizen to burn whatever book he wants to. It would be disgusting, yes, but for us to prevent him from doing so would violate the first amendment.

Exactly. That's the point. It's about a blatant lack of rationalism. Someone has to say the obvious once and for all:

Can't the first amendment be changed? It's not written in stone.
Obviously, I'm not an American citizen so forgive me this opinion.
Yours is a tolerant society which includes people of all religion, why then can't the amendment be amended to include measures against incitement to religious hatred?
Freedom of speech is one thing, after all it's not illegal to criticise someone about their religion, or their beliefs, but allowing physical acts like desecrating holy scriptures encourages religious hatred and in this case, could also be deemed as racial hatred.
What he was going to do (in my opinion) was to commit an aggravated act (crime) with prejudice, while inciting religious and racial hatred.

Zaqarbal...I think we both know the difference between saying "I hate Islam so much" and burning the Koran.
Good luck convincing the nutters.

obama even told this guy what would happen the war would escalate over this, muslim-terrorist groups are probably already using the fact that this guy said he wants to do it as a recruitment tool

i think this guy is doing this just so he can have his 15 minutes of fame

I guess the point is the divine nature of the holy paper. That changes it all. However, if you burn a Noam Chomsky's book, it wouldn't be an incitement to political hate. Since religion is above everything, only religious books are made of divine paper. Right? It seems that a physical action fuse together with a moral action, but only in regard to religion.

In addition: I don't know which is the difference between this possible ritual burning and all the already-existing videos on YouTube showing the same action. Here you are a list.

:yikes: Shocked? I'm not. As the famous movie says, "I've seen things some of you wouldn't believe": Bishops thrown out the window, satires of ridiculous cardinals, irreverent and obscene depictions of the Last Supper...

The point I'm making is you wouldn't be prepared to kill over such an insult.
Unfortunately, it's a fact that there are those who will.
And no amount of jibberish is going to change that fact.
Common sense should dictate here.

Exactly. Free speech...one of the most important rights within any free society...means that people can express themselves non-violently however they choose (as long as environmental law and property rights etc. aren't violated).

Supporting free speech means supporting the right of people to express themselves even if you find their message or how they portray it (non-violently) to be offensive.

Sometimes the philosophy of Utilitarianism (seeking the greatest good for the greatest number of people) is used as a rationale for violating people's free speech. For example, it is against the law to shout "fire!" in a theater, because people tend to die trying to escape.

So, I can see how people can argue that no one should burn the Quran, as many have in this thread, because doing so incites certain people to be violent...the very violent behavior the book burning is condemning.

However, not expressing your views for fear that someone in response will hurt you or others is EXACTLY why we need protection of free speech. The U.S. *should* protect and support a person's freedom of speech and expression, including destroying religious books in protest...any religion, any book. Not supporting freedom of expression is giving into fear and cowering before people who are violent. Worse, it supports those who perpetrate violence to try to enforce their views.

Yes. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion do not mean we have to like or follow religious views of others, or act as if their holy paper is truly holy.

The U.S. occasionally has groups wanting to make it illegal and against the constitution to burn the U.S. flag, and though it is certainly within their rights to try this, I feel a law against burning a flag violates freedom of expression. Thankfully, the U.S. supreme court agrees with me:

Rules about books should be the same: as long as you own the book, you can shred it, burn it, use it as toilet-paper, spit on it...etc. Similarly, if I have a flag, I can turn it into underwear, make a bear-suit out of it, whatever I want. Isn't that great? I think so.

The minister would not be the one responsible for reacting violently to his actions: the perpetrators would be, right-track.

The U.S. government should NOT do anything to stop a person from following his rights. If you have a right, and your action is within that right, then this is not abusing your rights.

I've got nothing against free speech. Let's make that clear.
I could get myself into a whole lot of trouble if I pursue the points I have to make about freedom and what people and nations should and shouldn't be able to do in it's name.
Respect > Freedom.

I guess I could summarize my whole previous post by saying I feel the following:

Freedom > Respect.

I like your pithy way of expressing yourself, R-T!

Yeah, well don't go getting my comment out of context VEGAN.

We'll just have to agree to disagree.

May I express my free will by strangling you with my bare hands?

Okay.

But in honor of honesty, I will disclose that I am now imaging you wearing a bear-suit sewn from the U.S. flag and festooned with pages from a variety of holy books and, worse, a science book!

I have a bit of a disrespectful imp in me, I think. :D

Oh...and the answer is NO to the expression of your free will with respect to me. Can't you think of anything better to do to me with your bare hands to get out your frustrations? ;)

Hmm. Well, I guess that *is* a little better than mere strangling.

Don't pick on the leaf-eaters RT, it's not fair.

Anyway, this guy is now saying he's only postponing the burning event pending that he gets a meeting with the people behind the "ground-zero mosque". He's basically realized the political power of this whole media thing and is holding it hostage.

Afghans protest, Fla. pastor plans to meet NY imam - Yahoo! News

I'm almost thinking this situation could be WORSE if it actually happens. This guy, meeting face to face with the people behind the moque could be a complete disaster. We do not need this guy being the face of our nation. Whether people in America take him seriously or not, he will/already has changed the way the Middle-Eastern Islamic community looks at America as a whole.

anybody see the interview this morning with the Today show?

this guy really believes that he is a vessel of god....and that his actions are in no way causing harm....even when confronted with the fact that his actions are causing violent reactions that have already caused the death of one american.....he replied by stating that his actions should mean nothing to muslims and that it is them who are over reacting....yet this entire "protest" of his is in direct retaliation of a mosque proposal in NYC and the fact that god came to him and told him it was just to darn close to our sacred 'ground zero'

Religious people are crazy, what's new?