Why We Should Burn the Koran (and not stop there)
By now many of you have heard of Dove World Outreach Center in Florida’s “Burn a Koran Day.” Condemnation of the very idea of burning copies of the Islamic sacred text has been nigh universal.
I would like to disagree with the common wisdom here: We should burn the Koran. Then again, I am also for the burning of Bibles, money, computers, Blackberries, and copies of Atlas Shrugged.
As a society, and thus individually, we have ceased to truly reject ideas. Political squabbling doesn’t count, since the rhetoric on both sides is absurdly the same; the landscape is void of real ideas. We no longer burn heretics at the stake (which is a good thing) but we have also stopped rejecting heresy. Without a natural predator, wrong ideas thrive. Even worse, they become idols.
When a physical embodiment of an idea (such as a book) or a thing itself (such as Blackberry, aka Crackberry) becomes an obstacle to your end goal, you need to vehemently cast it away. Destroy it. Fire has been a popular choice for such a purpose. Even the Bible can be an idol; I’ve known more than a few Christians who, like the Pharisees, held the Bible itself higher than reverence for God. I couldn’t possibly pick out which Muslims have made the same mistake with their holy book, but I know it would be unfair to accuse them all of such a fault.
What of the Dove Outreach center? Besides having a terrible name for advocating such a practice, here is how they describe the event on their facebook page:
“On September 11th, 2010, from 6pm – 9pm, we will burn the Koran on the property of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL in remembrance of the fallen victims of 9/11 and to stand against the evil of Islam. Islam is of the devil!”
They are not burning the Koran for being an obstacle to their goal, their salvation. They are doing it in memorial to those who died in 2001 – thus it is an act of vengeance, and improperly aimed, for not all of Islam participated or even condoned the attacks. This, at least in part, is the justification for labeling Islam as “evil.”
I will not tarry on the point of Islam’s righteousness or wrongs here. The point for this post is that the Dove Outreach center is not burning an idol, they are burning an effigy of the object of their hatred. It is not unlike P.Z. Meyers’ abuse of Eucharistic hosts – pure defamation, with the intent to shock.
I do not know for certain at what point we, like Elijah, should smash the idols of others. I do know that we have too many idols ourselves to deal with before we make a weak case for naming another’s idol for them and smashing it. And the intention should be purely to free the person from the idol, not an act of hatred towards the person who values the object. On the other hand, we should be relentless in destroying our own idols.
Another example of an act of defamation would be the terrorist attacks of 9/11 themselves, made more horrific by the destruction of human lives. The goal was not to free us of the snares of a capitalist system, but to destroy the symbol (a very large banking and trading center) in order to shock.
I will close with an odd piece of prophesy from G.K. Chesterton on the matter:
“If, for instance, the Socialists were numerous or courageous enough to capture and smash up the Bank of England, you might argue for ever about the inutility of the act, and how it really did not touch the root of the economic problem in the correct manner. But mankind would never forget it. It would change the world.”
G.K. Chesterton, In The Place De La Bastille
About author:
Smith is a writer with Eternal Revolution. He can be found on Twitter at twitter.com/Pray4Revolution and can be reached by email at [email protected] You can find Smith & Wayne on Facebook as well.
All entries by Smith
The one thing I would worry about is what will happen to those Christians who live in Muslim lands. I mean, will this action, taken by people who can do it in relative safety, have terrible consequences for those who are already under persecution ? (“See ? these infidels burned the Qu’ran ! Let go riot and burn down the homes of the local Copts !” )
Fundamentalism, whether from Christians, Jews, or Muslims, is sick, dangerous, and deadly. Instead of inspiring love and compassion, which is the goal of the major religions, it inspires hatred, revenge, and death.
As for the burning of the Koran, it is no different than what the Muslim fundamentalists have been doing for thousands of years, burning Bibles, churches, and killing it’s followers.
All of those three religious branches have blood and murder in their religious history. The Muslim religion just hasn’t outgrown their barbaric religious practice due to their complete intolarance which makes it mandatory to destroy anyone who disagrees in following their particular brand of religiosity. Therefore, they kill even their own who dare to question.
Such intolarance should be expelled from our free country. Freedom should not mean that we look the other way when an idealogy threathens our freedom. Therefore, expunge the evil they bring along with them.