31 July 2010 Will they interrogate the Koran before burning it

31 July 2010 Will they interrogate the Koran before burning it


“CNN) -- In protest of what it calls a religion "of the devil," a nondenominational church in Gainesville, Florida, plans to host an "International Burn a Quran Day" on the ninth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The Dove World Outreach Center says it is hosting the event to remember 9/11 victims and take a stand against Islam. With promotions on its website and Facebook page, it invites Christians to burn the Muslim holy book at the church from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

"We believe that Islam is of the devil, that it's causing billions of people to go to hell, it is a deceptive religion, it is a violent religion and that is proven many, many times," Pastor Terry Jones told CNN's Rick Sanchez earlier this week.

Jones wrote a book titled "Islam is of the Devil," and the church sells coffee mugs and shirts featuring the phrase.

Muslims and many other Christians -- including some evangelicals -- are fighting the initiative.

The church launched a YouTube channel to disseminate its messages.

"I mean ask yourself, have you ever really seen a really happy Muslim? As they're on the way to Mecca? As they gather together in the mosque on the floor? Does it look like a real religion of joy?" Jones asks in one of his YouTube posts.

"No, to me it looks like a religion of the devil."

http://us.cnn.com/2010/US/07/29/florida.burn.quran.day/index.html?hpt=C2

The years spent living in Florida made me acutely aware of the high level of fundamentalist Christianity that exists there. Of course, Florida is not alone in having such populations of supposedly peaceful Christians. This is merely a sad example of how twisted religion has become.

The television interview with Terry Jones showed him saying that he guessed 1.5 billion Moslems, world-wide, might take offense at his planned action. Then he rapidly followed up with a claim that since he did not believe the Koran, he didn’t care if he offended Moslems. The interviewer tried hard to express his disbelief and concern, to no avail.

This level of hatred should disturb every citizen of America. It is a blatant display of the depths of ignorance and religion-fueled bigotry that is becoming prevalent in our nation. There is no real difference in the rabid fundamentalism of any religion. All the fundamentalists are of the opinion that they are directed by a deity to behave the way they do. The rabid Christians insistence that they are directed to convert the world is no different than that of rabid Moslems. Both cults deny women full admission to the religion and to daily life, often deny them education. Both cults view all other religions as infidels, non-believers, or pagans. The fools at this church in Florida are no better than the Taliban of Afghanistan.

The depth of ignorance, the willingness to blame all inhumane and all witless behavior upon some line of text written by a malcontented cult member over a thousand years ago is equally used to justify suicide bombings, clinic shootings and bombings, and suppression of women here and in the Af-Pak region and Middle East. The practice of burning religious books is as hateful and as wrong today as it was in Nazi Germany. The mindset of the perpetrators is equally demonstrative of the participants’ willingness to violate any social contract they care to.

In the United States, such action is a direct statement that the perpetrators believe the 1st Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech, assembly, and religion only apply to Christians and that the leaders of this action would have little regret with the loss of the 1st Amendment if it resulted in a Christian-run theocracy. Yet it remains hard to convince most people of the seriousness of this action and others.

The next Presidential election will likely involve right wing fundamentalists. One of the probable people seeking the GOP nomination has already stated he favors changing our Constitution to make it compatible with a centuries-old translation of the Christian bible. He believes women must be subservient to men in all matters. Yet he attacks Moslems for their oppression of women in daily life.

Another is so poorly versed in science and so deeply immersed in fundamentalist Christianity that she believes in witchcraft as a possible attack upon her candidacy. She also believes that humans and dinosaurs shared the surface of the planet simultaneously.

Yet another belongs to a cult that mandates wearing special underwear and still has sub-sects that support polygamy. But there is such division among Christian cult members that many of the other sects don’t consider him to be Christian at all. This seems little different than the internecine conflicts among Moslems or among the Roman and Orthodox Catholic sects.

Even more disturbing is the seeming lack of regret at displaying lack of education, lack of intellect, and lack of understanding that no religion conveys any right to subjugate or disenfranchise any other.

The current anti-Moslem activity in the U.S. is very troubling. The decision by the GOP propaganda machine to stir up religious hatred is going to have far reaching effects. This extension of the GOP’s southern strategy allows the propagandists to add religion to the constellation of bigotry, racism, intellectual achievement/education, and progressivism that they have used to lure the Southern voters since the days of Richard Nixon. Currently they are pumping up the fear of an invasion by Moslems bent upon forcing Sharia law upon the U.S. legal system.

I’m far more afraid of a Christian theocratic attempt than I am a Moslem theocratic attempt. Moslem immigrants have often had the experience of living in a theocracy and have voted against it by leaving for other nations. The Christians who are pushing toward theocracy do so because they want to limit the actions of non-Christians and of other sects of Christians in order to curry favor with a deity and to control the political environment. They want to intrude their sect’s beliefs upon all our citizens and force anyone believing differently to alter their lives or leave. The Inquisition was not that long ago and there are many good journals that describe all too well how vicious “peaceful, peace-loving Christians” can be when they have theocratic power.

The Florida demagogue will rant about the brutality of Sharia law. He seems willing to overlook the tortures of the Inquisition, the heresy examinations, witchcraft interrogations and trials, the crushings, drownings, burnings at the stake, hanging-drawing-quartering favored by the gentle followers of Christ in the aim of purifying the faith and preventing independent thought, learning by the populations, and women acting as full citizens. Show me that we’ve progressed beyond the bestial behavior of “men of gods” in the Dark and Middle Ages. We had the opportunity during the enlightenment when we founded a nation and tried to keep religion and fools out of government. Both are well entrenched in government now and with every demonstration of our collective failure to banish religion from government we edge closer to becoming no different in nature from the targets of our carefully scripted national paranoia.