7 U.N Workers Killed by Afghans in response to Koran Burning.
 

Afghan official: 5 die, 46 wounded in Quran burning protest in Kandahar in south - The Washington Post

I of course blame the Afghans for the killings. But I am ashamed of the Dove Outreach Center. If you recall they were the same church where there Rev. Terry Jones called for an International Koran Burning Day. Later he backed down but it looks like the church went through with it anyways. Idiots. I don't care that they burned a Koran. Burn as many as you like I don't care. Not even as a Christian do I care if people burn Bibles which I'm
sure they are doing. Do I want people to burn Bibles? Of course not but I'm
not going to kill them because they do. The problem with the Dove Outreach Center isn't so much that they burned the Koran. It's that they
made such a big deal out of it. Why? Because they wanted a reaction
and a reaction they did get. Now because of their immaturity 7 people
are now dead. Again, I blame the Afghans for the killing and in no way
am I excusing their actions. Still what the Dove Outreach Center did
was very selfish and in no way Christian at all.

I'm sorry, but I dated a Muslim and it's the worst sign of disrespect (other than making fun of Mohammad) to destroy/burn a Koran. To them it is a symbol of hate from the west. I don't care who did it, it rightly enraged a lot of people, some of which acted very viciously, others who didn't (but the media never shows).

I don't support hate crimes. Do you?

Agree.. Hate crime is in itself, a senseless killing (though I'm not sure if there's any other killing that makes sense).

There's nothing right about killing someone over a book. That said, Jones is a moron for doing what he did and really hope it bites him in the ass somehow.

Well he sort of asked for it... Why would you do such a thing?
I think there's nothing right in religion and especially not when it makes you kill people, but I'm probably an extremist on the other side of the line :D

and they say Religion is suppose to bring people closer together to God.
yeah right.

I mostly agree with this. Some days I wish I could move to different planet, one that isn't filled with people who want to fight and/or kill each other over folklore.

^^ that would be called Heaven. you need to die first.

And you apparently need to believe in some sort of God first.
No seriously, if heaven is based upon faith in a higher being rather than based upon being a good person, I don't even want to go there.

@ Janszoon; From where I stand, I don't see much good coming from religion. I'm sure it's different for the persons who do attend to a certainl religion, but to me... On a big scale it's causing wars, on a personal scale it usually causes unpleasant discussions :D.

I hear you, and I feel the same way.

It does feel a bit risky to say on a forum with so many ethnicities though...

Burning the Koran is a waste of perfectly good toilet paper.

Allright, I'm safe now.

I hate people like Jones, they're just a complete caricature of Christians.

Plus he gives a bad name to this guy:

http://images.eonline.com/eol_images...nes.042709.jpg

Maybe they should work on being closer to each other as human beings instead.

That's true that they just want a reaction man, but who cares - what sort of a World would we be living in where people didn't react to atrocities?

That's what it is in my view, it's bad. If you burn a person's Holy Book, you're burning every person who follows it. How can you then talk about freedom of belief and World community etc., you can't, you haven't got any grounds. How can you talk about equality, and rights and all that other bull****? You can't. So how can you then say, "it's my right to freedom of expression to burn this book"?

Well, you can't. Why should we uphold someones right to attack someone else's rights/ beliefs? Why is it their right to burn it, but it's not a Muslim's right to defend it?

Pretty sure every Holy Book has a variation of
"Thou Shalt Not Kill"

How can you equate burning a book to destroying the lives of a human being? Where are YOUR grounds for this reasoning?

:love:

You seriously don't see a difference between attacking beliefs actually killing human beings? Talk about lacking a sense of proportion. Elsewhere on this forum you have attacked the beliefs of the non-religious, does that mean they have a right to kill you?

Oh oh, here we go...
Crukster, you had me convinced that not all muslims are extremists.
Pleeeeassse don't tell me you think it's right to kill humans for burning a book...
I'd say it'd be fine if they kicked his ass real good. But human life vs. some stuff that comes out of a friggin printer.
It's in the end just a book mate. There's loads of copies. It's nothing more than a book.

[QUOTE=Plum;1030394]I'm not neccessarily saying that it was right of them to take lives cos of it, but there definitely has to be some sort of a reaction against it.

Thou shalt not Kill, you can consider that a basic guideline; baseline - if no-one wanted to Kill, there'd be no reason to.

But if someone puts a knife at your throat, well Thou Shalt not Kill won't do you much good then - it's you or them. If someone comes into my house and threatens my family, rule of defense, I'll kill em. Burning the Qu'ran is a metaphorical knife to the throat of Muslims everywhere - arguably of Humans everywhere if you respect the right to freedom of Religion. There are ideas that are more important than one life, because they form the foundation of ALL lives. How long till they take to burning Muslims houses? Burning Muslims? Burning children? Because we're not up to their "standard" of living.

But I don't condone what they did, there was no LITERAL actual knife to anyone's throat, it was simply a challenge and furthermore a defilement of Islam. They shouldn't have killed them for burning it, but I understand why they did. There's a better way. They should have started a reading OF the Qu'ran directly adjacent to the burning, imo that would have been the best thing to do. That would have answered the challenge and undone the defilin. Killing them makes them as bad as the one's burning it. They should have led by example, not by counter.



I wouldn't begrudge them for trying, I don't live my life in fear of anyone man.

If you thought I was attacking, then you misunderstood me. Firstly, I was not attacking, if I wanted to attack what would be the point in using words and discussing, I would have just outright insulted you and said I think you're a ****ing idiot and atheism is bull****, and stop typing there. If I wanna write that I'd write that, but I didn't do that because thats not what I wanna say, I was trying to make a platform for discussion. Secondly, if the non-religious are actually non-religious, how is there even anything for me to disrespect, I dont understand. I apologise if I'm wrong man but you seem like a textbook "atheist". When it suits you it's a belief, but when the weight is on, it's nothing, just a loosely affiliated group of non-believers. It's a smoke screen.

But I wasn't talking about killing anyway, I was talking about defending.

I also think it says something, the way you interpreted that. The point I was making was that they have no right to burn it in the first place.

They "defended" the burning of the Koran by killing people.
When you say they have the right to defend, it sort of seems like you're saying it's reasonable people are being killed because someone (not even the one that got killed!) burned the Koran.
So... that's not what you meant?

Dude, you scare me again...

No, not all I was saying this

My point is the people who were killing, were killing because they thought that was the best way to defend. In the end, that's all extremism is - flaw, stupidity, and an incomplete idea. If they'd had stronger leadership, they could have answered that burning in a freakin awesome way. Answer it with Islam. These people who were acting extremely, were answering it for Islam. It should be WITH, not for.

I'm saying I understand why they reacted so harshly, but I dont condone the killing, they should have used that energy in a different way.


I know that man, but they're not burning the paper it's printed on, they're burning the words and everything it stands for. Along with flag burning, it's one of the most disrespectful things you can do to any group of people imo.

Looks like you missed my point once again. For starters, the way you talked about it could definitely be viewed as an attack. Which is fine, you have a right to your opinions just like I have a right to mine. The point is that people don't have a right to defend their beliefs with physical violence.

I'm confused as to why you think that religious people have a monopoly on having beliefs. There are beliefs in this world that are non-religious in nature.

And I think I'm very consistent in how I view atheism actually. The problem here is that you're hanging on so tight to your misperceptions of it that you can't understand when someone explains it to you.

I'm glad you clarified that. You do understand, though, that when you come into a conversation about people killing over religious beliefs and announce that people have a right to defend their beliefs, that it sounds a lot like you're justifying the killing, right?

Well in a society that values free speech he actually does have a right to burn it. He's still an asshole for doing so though.

It still scares me that you have any understanding for the killing itself, but allright.
I mean, I understand they would WANT to kill them. But I don't understand they actually do it.

They can burn my country's flag as many times as they want.
I think pride is something to be afraid of, every now and then. You can be proud of what you achieve, proud of what your loved ones achieve, but when you become proud of something that really isn't there (like 'faith' or 'a country') it's sort of scary if you ask me. I know this is not something most people think. But I think that way. For me it's just one tiny earth that we shouldn't want to divide... But apparently that's a strange thing to say.

Yeahup. It's just a shitty thing. Sometimes it can make people have bake sales and start charities, but then there's an innumerable amount of horrible things that come out of it. Like perhaps the killing of 7 people over a religious book.

well, they shouldn't burn the Quran, anyway - I may not believe in any of it, but it contains some of the most beautiful poetry ever written - to me, it's like burning Rimbaud or Wordsworth

then again, you can burn the Bible all you want, nobody's gonna give too much of a fuss, I have so many Bibles sometimes I want to tear out their pages to roll my cigarettes and weed in

on the other hand, if you want to uphold every letter of the law, Christians should go on a killing spree of all people having extra-marital affairs - "Thou shall not commit adultery" - it should void "Thou shall not kill" as they're equal commandments - i should think it follows Asimov's 3 laws of robotics:-

Three Laws of Robotics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ergo, thou shall not kill unless you kill those who commit adultery

This anger isn't directed at you,

but holy ****, it's just a stupid ****ing book, it's ****ing ridiculous that some crazies halfway across the ****ing world will KILL PEOPLE because some crazies in the United States think their stupid ****ing book wants them to antagonize all the other crazies who don't conform to their stupid ****ing religion. I guess it's a hate crime, sure, but imagine the worst hate crime that someone could possibly commit against you without actually harming you in any way. Would you kill random, unrelated people in retaliation? It's ****ing insane! And any form of sympathy for these Muslims just pisses me off to no end.

Don't get me wrong, the Christians are just as bad, but hey, at least they aren't KILLING people.

Obama's a Christian and he's responsible for murdering Libyan civilians and continuing two other wars where American weapons are used to murder people. In fact, the American military is mostly Christian, and, like, they kill people.

Killing people is something that will soldiers of any military force will likely have to face. Religion has nothing to do with it in the case of the U.S. Military.

Yeah but I wasn't disputing any of those beliefs, they didn't even come into the conversation. I wasn't debating a particular theory you might have on Quantum Mechanics, what we were debating was Religion and religious belief, if you don't have a Religion or any religious belief, then how is it possible for me to offend you when talking about Religion?


That's the most important lesson here.

Because this is what the motivation of the Qu'ran burners is based on. What they propose to do, is to destroy something they don't want to use.

They want to make sure no-one else uses it. The scale hardly matters when the intent is the same.

They want to do it in a little amount, it's just nothing, just burning a book eh?

When has burning a book ever been just burning a book?

The act is rooted in a deeper misunderstanding and hatred. In order to resolve it, you have to understand the implications.

"If you think it's alright to just burn what I pledged my undying soul to, if you deject that I have one, and you burn that too, then I'm going to burn yourself into ash."

THAT is what is going through the mind of your average extremist. And by extremist I mean the people who have abandoned everything but religion - people living in dire straits.

It might not be accurate. Maybe they've misunderstood. maybe those people burning their Holy Book in front of their eyes, well maybe they don't want to destroy the last saving grace of these people's existence. No. Maybe, out back where no-one can see, they've got the New Book. They figured out something really wrong with what they were doing now. So they burnt it in front of them, they watched it all go, and the scales were reset. And then they'd bring out the new books, they'd give us the new words of knowledge and understanding and righteousness, and then we'd understand why they had to burn the old ones.

Or maybe, hey, it is accurate. And some people just need to see other's soul's burn.

If he's free to say how great burning it is, I'd be free to stand in on his podium and tell him why's he wrong. To engage, to interact, to battle it out.

That is what some of these extremists want. The want to tell you why you're wrong, but because Western free speech = "protection of speaker", and his cut off from interaction, responsibility and arguments, it also means that those arguments brew up, and turn into hatred.

Anger leads to Hatred, Hatred leads to the Dark Side etc.

What I am proposing is that Free Speech should mean, free speech of all. It should mean answering for what you decide to say. It should mean being willing to back it up, and to allows others to have their say, and to discuss things intelligently. And then to take appropriate action.

If you deny the first stages, people jump right to the last, which will generally always be a flawed action, not the appropriate one; acts of desperation.



That's what I mean, I mean I understand the want. The why, is because they feel things have become so desperate that the want becomes the most important thing to them.

It's resentment brewing up.

I get what you're saying about the pride thing man, I'd agree a lot of people don't think about it but it's important still.

It's the same as the "want" thing. It's when the pride becomes more important than what you're proud of.

Pride in itself just means wanting something to do well, imo, thats how I use it. I am Proud of this thing = I respect this thing and my part in it, I think it works pretty well, I wanna see it keep working and working better

Or like allying, pledging yourself or somethin, like from what you said there I would say sounds like you're proud of the Earth

Baloney. The religious right and the military walk hand in hand in America.

But the military's objective is not to kill for religious reasons.

It's always a large part of the objective. We believe in something that's right and they believe in something that's wrong. Pretty simple and stupid actually.

Pretty embarrassing that people in this thread actually condoned what the Afghans did. It's like suddenly we need to feel sympathy for the 'misunderstood' Afghans after Sept. 11 because people got PC and were afraid of stereotyping Afghans as one in the same (which I agree with, but I'm not about to accept what these extremists did as justice).

If Christians had killed after Bible burning, something tells me this would be a lot more controversial.

I think killing is pretty universally known as wrong. Hence the reason extremists do it to send a message.

If killing is universally known as wrong why do Americans celebrate not one but two holidays honoring those who kill: Veterans Day and Memorial Day (not to mention the 4th of July). Is the American military a collection of extremist who kill to send a message? The answer is obviously yes, especially if it's one of your loved ones who has been murdered. There's many Iraqi mothers who can verify this.

What are you saying? Are you saying that the reason we go to war with Muslim nations/fight muslim extremist groups is because of Christianity?

Extremists? No. Killing to send a message? Yes. The way the world works, unfortunately, is people kill to settle disputes. Don't tell me that killing armed and dangerous militia is the same as killing innocent civilians. Especially when that armed militia is killing innocents themselves to send a message.