The Fire This Time (UPDATED)
It’s a shame that Pastor Terry Jones is not more articulate. His statements and interviews show that he is incapable of clearly expressing the Constitutional support for his famous or infamous burning of the Koran — an act, however distasteful, protected by the First Amendment — or of establishing a strong cultural argument. He might have expounded, for example, on Andres Serrano’s provocative photograph Piss Christ which caused some controversy for a time, but led to nothing more serious than a few attempts at vandalism and failed restraining orders. No one died or was hurt.
For that matter, one has yet to see a tribe of Orthodox Jewish communicants going on a killing spree because someone mutilated a Torah scroll, which happens often enough. Jones might thus have argued that a rampage of murder and mayhem in the Muslim world over the desecration of a religious text would have amounted to nothing more in the West in a comparable situation than a cultural flare-up and a lot of sanctimonious punditry, assuming it were even noticed. Instead, the height of his rhetoric is to say he “thinks” that the grisly events in Afghanistan prove “there is a radical element in Islam.” As the Simpsonism goes, “Doh!”
It’s a shame that major judicial and political figures in the West are not more insightful and courageous. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer cheerfully scants the Constitution when he suggests that burning a Koran may not be protected by the First Amendment — although it would appear that those who burn the American flag are within their rights. General David Petraeus releases a statement apologizing for “the action of an individual in the United States who recently burned a Holy Koran,” but has nothing to say about a rioting Muslim mob taking offense at a legal act carried out in another country and massacring more than 20 people, including 7 UN workers. After all, for the good general, these are “perhaps understandable passions.”
It’s a shame that the Afghan-Canadian governor of Kandahar can only condemn an “abhorrent move” by “a stupid pastor” and that Senator Harry Reid blames Jones for triggering a blood-tumult and in so doing effectively condones the berserkers who actually committed the murders. Similarly, Senator Lindsey Graham deplores Jones’ auto-da-fé for “put[ting] our soldiers at risk,” but what puts our troops at risk is not book burning but people who behave like inflammable tinder and who are never very far away from killing and maiming. Jones’ act was beyond the pale, the grotesque gesture of a small-time Savonarola. There were other ways in which he could have conveyed an entirely legitimate point. But he is not a killer. “You see the difference,” remarks Roger Kimball.
It is as if we are to take responsibility for the congenitally incitable; they themselves are not accountable for their feral impulses, which we consequently regard as perfectly comprehensible and even acceptable. We consider them as a pack of feckless unionists or as a special interest group composed of the disabled. They are somehow in their rights. But what is really at work in our tolerance of such homicidal rage is an incongruous mix of self-contempt and cultural condescension. As Victor Davis Hanson writes, “a nut burning a bible is either artistic expression or a proper antidote to centuries of oppression and so to be either applauded or ignored; but a nut burning a Koran evokes decapitations and murder and does so quite understandably.” The fact is: the madness is theirs, but the ignominy is ours.
I don’t think I agree that what Terry Jones did was “reprehensible.” it was a good bit of political theater. personally, I think we should burn a Koran every week, and maybe live-stream it to the Middle East. I also think every newspaper all over the world should reprint the Danish cartoons on the same day.
what would the barbarians do? how much hate can they carry? can they kill us all? can they hate that much?
I have had enough of the dhimmitude of my compatriots. if Jones is responsible for the murder and mayhem in Afghanistan, then Theo Van Gogh was responsible for his own murder, and the Army, I guess,is responsible for the Ft. Hood massacre. and the Jews are to blame for the Fogel family’s slaughter (bad policies, gosh who WOULDN’T be teed off?)
we have got to stand up for ourselves and our culture. we should not be ashamed of the Koran burning; we should be celebrating it. Obama should have said “That’s the difference between you and us: we react like people, you react like animals. we have freedom of speech, you have only ‘death to infidels’.” of course he would never say that, since he doesn’t quite see it like that.
Brava!
Can they kill us all? Yes, with a synthetic plague.
The amount of manpower and money required lessens every year;
One fine day, a single Mad Scientist will be able to do the deed.
Before that day arrives, that sort of madness needs to be minimized,
and access restricted to both the training and technology involved.
Gee, I don’t know what’s more distasteful in our oh so tolerant, multicultural, nirvana anymore; is a good book burning while doing pulled pork over Kingsford charcoal more distasteful than Muslims having a snit and killing infidels over the book burning? Difficult question for the educated Harvard elite. Would the following, “first they came for the Jews, and then they came for the Christians, and when they came for the atheists there was no one left around to stop the killings,” even register on the contemporary esthetic taste meter? But meanwhile the big apple wants to follow in San Francisco’s lead and out law the “Happy Meal,” for the sake of the children. Apparently the burning ethical issue is the requirement that the new “Happy Meal” has to be a fish sandwich with a complimentary condom covered banana, instead of the Ronald McDonald clown doll with a Big Mac. Welcome to the updated erogenous zone; if it feels good, eat it.
And, why, exactly, does Terry Jones deserve “reprehension”? Is it because he is taking a stand that is not as sophisticated or polished as, say, Charles Krauthammer might take? You make some excellent points, Mr. Solway, but please don’t kowtow to the Ruling Class.
I think that Terry Jones and especially Ann Barnhardt might be exactly who we need right now to wake our country up. Way too many of us are fat, stupid, complacent and lacking appreciation for the founding principles that made us so free and so great. And it is exactly those principles such as freedom of speech, religion and association that are under attack by Islam. The Krauthammers and Lowrys and Kristols of the world are hardly going to lead us to success, considering all their equivocations and cringing.
It seems unanimous, every post I read says something about Jones being reprehensible. Even those insisting that Jones bears no responsibility always include some statement about how Jones is beneath contempt.
In articles claiming that we flatter ourselves as superiors by believing Afghanis or Muslims or whoever should get special dispensation for incapacity, this is amusing. Let’s not judge the Afghanis, whether from a higher or lower position, but let’s all line up to judge Jones. Because no matter the result, his motive and act is beneath contempt… and we don’t like his moustache, he is uncool… and there are no consequences to making judgments on Jones. We aren’t better than Muslims or Afghanis, but we sure are better than him.
I disagree that Jones is beneath contempt. And if I had burnt a Koran, it would be at least as much a message to ‘our’ US government: ‘Your tinkering with terminology (i.e. man-caused disasters, overseas contingency operation, etc. etc. etc.) may fool you into believing you have control over reality, but fools no one else. I think your policies are ignorant, ill-considered, ineffective, and you are being manipulated by those more clever than yourselves into stances endangering the US and the world.’
Along with burning the Koran maybe we should burn the dictionary, since our elites have made a mockery of word definitions.
Terry Jones articulates himself very well (see burning Koran). Better than you. You deserve reprehension for condemning the man who started the conversation.
Well said.
Seems to me that Mr. Jones accomplished exactly what he set out to prove. People that kill others over a book, or cartoons, aren’t actually people. They’re animals and we should leave them to be themselves. Trying to civilize animals isn’t worth the effort.
Are you at all familiar with the history of the reformation?
I assume you are implying that burning a religious book is an act of intolerance, since such books were burned in the Reformation. If that’s what you mean, it is a false comparison. The important point is, who owns the book. If Terry Jones burned a book which he bought and paid for, there’s nothing particularly unusual about that. People destroy books all the time for all kinds of reasons. Libraries do it, religious insitutions do it, individuals do it. No one gives it a second thought.
If a governmental or religious authority with governmental powers confiscates books and destroys them, in order to prevent the community at large from having access to those books, then your comparison is valid. But that is not what happened. Terry Jones is not going door to door with armed men, confiscating books and terrorizing people. He made a personal statement. You can find it reprehensible or not, but it has nothing in common with book burning in the Reformation.
This is an excellent point, particularly considering David Soloway’s update, which seems even more uncharacteristically off the mark. Terry Jones’ behavior is not like the Kristallnacht; the people who rounded up and murdered innocents in the name of chauvinist ethno-religious insult were the only ones behaving like stormtroopers. The equivalence is not only false; it is condescending: what does it matter what you do with the pages of a book if you do not believe the words themselves?
Jones did and Soloway is refusing to do so. Who actually “respects” the murderers more?
I’m very surprised that a reader and writer like Soloway, of all people, would go down this road. It has been made clear to western nations that there will be consequences for our practicing freedom of speech within our borders or defending those who practice it elsewhere. Jones did not initiate the insult, if insults are to be the thing singularly fetishized here — as opposed to murder).
Also, I think he misrepresents Baldwin’s “Fire.” We should all revisit that text. What Baldwin has to say about the Nation of Islam is extraordinary — and was characteristically brave.
God is a spirit…and those who worship Him must worship him in spirit and in truth….well,unless your Muslim…this is just another example of how purely materialistic Islam is rather than being spiritual…they revere the man made physical book more than the spirit in which it was supposedly written…they bow down to a meteorite in the Arabian desert as if the rock itself were ‘holy’…they kill non-Muslims in suicide bombings so they can get 72 virgin sex partners in whatever material afterlife they imagine…they use ‘taqqiyah’ or strategic lying to defend or protect Islan…so much for ‘in spirit and in truth’
He burned a Quran. Big Deal.
Terry Jones is a brave man. He stands up against the brain dead elites in the West and in the Muslim dominated world. Burn a thousand Korans!
“Terry Jones is a brave man”
How so? He’s perfectly safe. The slightest hint of a threat and he’ll get police protection, and I haven’t heard a report of any serious domestic threat against him or his church anyway. So how is he brave? I think he’s just found a way to grab the limelight and he likes the attention.
“The slightest hint of a threat….”
He might be dead by then. What, is it a given that the first attempt on his life, if ever taken, will fail? He’s a lot more “courageous” than the Muslims intent on their killing binges, massacring innocent people whose only crime is being in the vicinity. That’s right – “religion of peace” Muslim mobs and suicide bombers.
I bet Theo Van Gough felt safe in his native land, too.
Terry Jones has already gotten death threats and muslims are insane enough to consider it some sort of honor killing.
Police Protection? You know this how?
Remember, when seconds count, the police are just minutes away. If they care to come.
Also, the Supreme Court of the United States has stated the police have NO obligation to protect any one of us. It’s quite sufficient to come along after the crime and take pictures and notes for the court.
Extending out our First Amendment and values overseas is something I just don’t get. Let’s worry about this when this reaction happens here in America and not go all nuts cuz a bunch of medieval farmers who resemble thinking human beings reacted exactly like we knew they would.
As far as crucifixes in urine, all you have to do to see fine art liberals switch their attention to Allah is to tell them they are afraid to do so because they are conservative rednecks and intellectual cowards and all will be well.
He is not trying to extend freedom of speech overseas, stupid. He is trying to establish it here in the face of people like you.
Message to the overly blunt: we already have free speech here and don’t need t-shirts that say, “I wish I was a wishing well”., and people dying to prove a point already made.
It was an act of bigotry and a farce that killed people so he could make a stupid and senseless point. If your brother was one of the dead would you still defend an academic point already well protected in our country?
We don’t have free speech here. Why do you think the US Army couldn’t do anything about Major Hasan even though he was an obvious Islamic whack job with a lit fuse, overly stupid? Why do you nthink Islam was not even mentioned in the report about the massacre he committed? That’s just one example. We will have freedom of speech when radio stations don’t fire people for “saying to much about Islam” as recently happened to an ex-Congressman in Washington. We will have real freedom of speech when people are not marginalized as “Islamophobics” for talking about Islam the way people talked about Nazis in World War II. You have repeated your dumb line about “we can’t export freedom of speech” so often that maybe you should think about it for a while and come up with something even a little more relevant.
You are objecting to someone else’s diplomatic politically correct jargon; that is not a free speech issue. You are free to call it like you see it and have done so. How does this involve book burning or outside polities?
An act of bigotry? And burning Mein Kampf would have been an act of bigotry when Hitler was in power?
Stop defending the enemiy’s instruction manual, you politically correct jackass.
I am defending “Mein Kampf” now Mr. Strawman? A sure sign you have no argument not to mention brains when it comes to distinguishing between America and Nazi Germany.
You are an Islamist. Terry Jones has now received 400 death threats and Hezbollah has put a big piece of money on his head. He is going to Dearborn to speak in front of the country’s biggest mosque.
Islam has decided to put a stop to people like Terry Jones. You are either for freedom of speech or you are against it. It is not academic. You appear to be against it.
I am in favor of people using discretion in controlling their own speech when lives are an issue, not in having their speech controlled.
The humorous anecdotes about your ancestry I have not included here partially speak to this.
If I had a brother killed by the barbaric Muslim savages we ostensibly “help” in Afghanistan, I would be furious at the policymakers who sent him into that fetid cesspool of ignorance. After all, the only thing that we should have done in Afghanistan, kill multitudes of people and degrade al-Qaeda, has been accomplished. If I had a brother killed in Afghanistan, I would insist our troops be withdrawn and we kill anyone who as much as yapped on our way out. Then I would join with the good Pastor, a much braver human being than the Grahams, Reids, Breyers, Petraeus,’ and other cowardly, cretinous swine of the world who think they are anywhere near his equal, and burn Korans all day until we had flushed out every traitor here in the United States. Look at what his one act has accomplished: we know who quite a bit now about who is unfit not only for public office but who is unfit to be a citizen of a Western democracy.
And only then, sir, would I know where to vent my next round of anger.
So in other words, the pastor has won, and your ilk have lost. The author of this piece doesn’t seem to understand the sea change this has brought about.
Yeah, well, that’ll all probably happen.
I think it was NOT an act of bigotry, nor would I say the point was “already made.”
“If your brother was one of the dead would you still defend…..”
That’s the whole point. Why should I or my brother or another innocent person have to fear some sort of retaliation when some idiot in Idaho. California, Georgia or Europe does something stupid? Should I support support putting Jones in jail, like Obama and his cronies would like? Certainly not. In the US, burning the Bible is allowed. Why not the Koran?
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
Ben Franklin
So you’re angry and disappointed because American laws and values aren’t observed in a medieval warren of valleys inhabited by farmers.
I am angry because I can’t fly using my arms but I am not going to burn any aviation books.
And you might want to explain to the folks around Gainesville, Florida, that they are overseas.
I am basing my remarks on the idea that Jones was pointing his act overseas which he was. He was taunting Islam overseas, not here.
The lady with the dilated eyes on youtube was pointing her act at our gov’t. There is a difference.
It is a difference without a distinction. Both exercised their constitutional rights on American soil and regardless whether their target audience was domestic or foreign, both actions could provoke the bloodthirsty savages in the Islamic world. You just wrote some stupid things and are trying to draw a difference where none exists to extricate yourself. Graham, of course, is too stupid even to try that lame exercise.
In fact, the entire argument against Jones act from the beginning was that is was not meant for American consumption but for consumption abroad. I have no deaths laid at my door and need extricate myself from nothing.
I noticed you didn’t acknowledge that either act, whether aimed at a foreign or domestic audience, could result in deaths at the hands of Islamic savages. One has, and the other could. Both are available on the ‘Net. Regardless of the intended audience, both could be (stupidly and falsely) blamed for barbarous acts. You simply have created a fictional distinction because what you have written is intellectually indefensible.
I have created no fictional distinction; the N.Y. Times on Aug.25, 2010 quoted Jones as calling his initial act of intending to burn the Koran for the anniversary of 9/11 “International Burn a Koran Day.”
ABC News, reporting on Sept.7, 2010 wrote that Jones “first lit a spark on Facebook when he called for people around the world to set fire to copies of the Koran…”
Please inform yourselves as to the topic before making moronic comments about something you clearly have no clue about.
As for the act of bacon on youtube, the woman did not precede her work with calls for international condemnation but aimed her piece squarely at Graham. If people cut off heads over something that is an internal political dialogue that is one thing but purposefully inflaming and targeting people overseas is another.
You are flailing badly–last time I checked, Graham wasn’t officially Muslim. Just admit you made an ass out of yourself and move on.
Colorful but vapid. Pastor Jones has cojones, and only a very few hitherto unheralded Americans can say the same.
Grow a pair, Mr. Solway. Or remain in Canada. Your choice.
Very rude and unAmerican of you Francis. Solway is a treasure and has written more eloquently about the threat of Islam than most of us could ever hope to. You would benefit from reading Techno’s post @12.
Jones wouldn’t even have the guts to burn a Koran in Toronto let alone Belgium let alone an Islamic country.
Until that time he’s just an idiot spending other people’s lives. For a man of God he has much the same views on the cheapness of ‘others’ lives as the people he purports to have so much disdain for.
Yes, he has a right to burn a koran. And I have to admit, I don’t really care about the “insult to islam”. Burn korans, bibles, manuscripts(1), jump up and down on them, see if I care. It’s not really big or clever, but they are just bundles of paper (mark driscoll has made this point by delivering sermons while standing on his bible)
But that’s not all that’s going on here.
If I press a button, knowing that the button will probably cause violence and death to innocent people in far-off countries by third parties, am I responsible for what happens?
If, having pressed that button and having seen what happens, I choose to press the button again … am I responsible?
How many times can I press the button before somebody should try to stop me?
Jones isn’t saying anything useful. He’s not alerting the world to anything we didn’t already know (and you’re right – he certainly isn’t articulate). His style of protest has all the sophistication of piss-christ, and it’s tedious. But it DOES get people killed – and those people are frequently non-muslim outsiders who’re already putting themselves at risk to try to make things better for people we’re all trying to help. So I’d quite like it if he either (a) figures out something useful to say instead or (b) stops doing it.
He really is, basically, shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. He has the legal right to do it, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to consider him responsible for what happens next, when we all know what that will be.
When lennon triggered the “bigger than jesus” controversy with some ill-chosen words, he was horrified and apologized. When terry jones does far worse, he’s proud of himself.
And yes, if christians/hindus/jews/jains went on rampages and killed people in response to symbolic insults, then I’d say the same thing about that. As a general rule, doing things that gets people killed is baaad, mkay? People like jay smith are able to make very strident and incisive criticisms of islam on social theological grounds and nobody gets killed. It is possible to have this debate – but doing so on the basis of bigotry and ignorance isn’t helping.
(1) little reference to bulgakov, there.
He is not doing nothing dopey. He is fighting for freedom of expression here in America. Did you know that even the DHS has a list of potential domestic terrorists from the ’90s when the Oklahoma bomber was the kind of threat to worry about? Why is that? It is because Islam is protected. The US Army could not even deal with Abdul Nidal Hassan before he committed the Fort Hood massacre, because of the protected status of Islam. Until anyone can burn a Koran in this country any bloody time they feel about it and pretentious idiots don’t get up and say what an Islamist in a covert role wpould say – as you are – we do not have freedom of speech in this country. If you’ve been following the news, you’ll know that people have been fired for talking “too much” about Islam. We will not be at the beginning of being able to decide what to do about Islam until people who defend it are the ones in that position.
He is fighting a very important fight, defending our country, just like the ones dropping bombs in time of war. Your idea that he is responsible for the people that barbarians kill on the other side of the planet, who happen to be our enemies, is stupid beyond belief.
Get on the right side and stop fighting for the same thing that the barbarians want.
Wake up.
What a load of nonsense. How can Jones protect what is already protected? How brave is that and what kind of a fight is that? Why doesn’t he go on a self-sacrificing campaign that says eating glass in bad for you?
He wanted to inflame people in a place our laws don’t extend to nor should they. Trying to make an internal issue out of it is dopey.
you say he can say it, but shouldn’t which makes his speech not so free. The folks that advertise what he has done are as complicit if not more. What point are they making, whether it be the press, the press ident or the military? methinks they should stfu.
did not intentionally give an email, but don’t really care. this is a problem with no solution especially as long as we let the extremists dictate the terms.
You can’t report on an act that hasn’t taken place and my wanting him to not burn books is not an imposition of free speech since I am not demanding it and can’t in any event. It is a non-issue. I wish there were no Lady Gaga CDs but I’ll stop short of marching to congress.
I hope Jones is allowed to speak in Dearborn. He should be allowed to since he is will be speaking ideas and not simply giving people the finger and he will also be facing people in America which is the place such issues need to be directed.
Waiting for the light of reason to shine in Afghanistan could be a very long one and in the meantime I am not going to be wearing “I hate Afghanistan” t-shirts just because I CAN. We already know what we CAN do. Why go nuts cuz you can’t do it in Afghanistan?
“But it DOES get people killed.”(?), and if you step-on-a-crack-you-break-your-mother’s-back. “Techno”? How will your mom feel when she finds out you stepped on a side-walk crack?
“Techno”? You need find out where the left-leaners go to apply for logic, and get in line, . . .
Both you and May still fail to see the point.
Terry Jones may be an idiot, but he is still entitled to the same rights as you, I or any other American citizen, or idiot. Period.
Just because someone is an idiot, he’s not allowed to own a gun? Just because someone is an idiot, he is not allowed to call Obama an idiot? Just because someone is an idiot, he’s not allowed to call your sister a ho’, and yell it from the roof tops? Just because someone is an idiot, he’s not allowed to burn the Bible? Just because someone’s an idiot, he’s not allowed to burn the Koran?
You two are actually promulgating PC laws similar to those in Canada and Europe, that use the “incite to riot” justification. I think it was last year that Anne Coulter was refused an agreed-on speaking engagement at the U. of Toronto because she may offend Muslims with her speech. Be careful of what you support.
Who here using my name has said Jones is not entitled to his rights? Those rights simply are. The gov’t or law doesn’t give me permission to do so, the gov’t has recognized that I am going to do what I want in this regard and is warning others off who feel reality is some kind of permission mill.
How many Korans do you think that Terry Jones would have to burn in order for one half of Afghanistan to kill the other half? And would the media still say it was Jones’ fault?
Yes, if one half of Afghanistan killed the other half, it still would be the fault of the Christian pastor; and, you know that—don’t you?
Seriously?
Have you heard this one: Sticks and stone will break my bones but burning a Koran will never harm me?
Are you really equating burning a book with killing 20 people?
That’s ridiculous in any normal part of the world.
There’s no question that burning the book was an unnecessary provocation. But it’s also no question that killing people because of that is over the top. And in a normal country would be against the law. Have the murderers been arrested? Did they plead the burning Koran defense?
The burning of the Koran was an intentionally provocative act. The provocation got the results it intended, if not the specific consequences.
One can dislike the provocation. That is an issue to be judged as a tactic and for its civility or incivility.
The second issue to be discussed is legality or illegality. Why should the Koran hold a “higher” place in the law than the Bible or the flag for that matter? The burning or urinating on the latter seem to be for the precise same effect as that which is fueling Jones’ desire for flaming.
If it is gravy for Jesus it is gravy for Muhammad.
If we make laws in reverse, based upon the rage of the adherents to a creed or doctrine, then largest rage wins. Sorry. That is a recipe for barbarism.
The beheadings of innocents, including nuns, priests, reverends and reporters contrasted with the silly provocation of burning a religious book seems to highlight the disparate reaction and uncontrolled behavior of one group vs. the other.
The leftists continually make a hash of the issues to create confusion about their naked hypocrisy.
I don’t particularly care for the “chippy” provocateur who intentionally flames the landscape. But, to equate that with murder is inane.
The Democrats have become full fledged assholes. I wish I had a better word for it. They are incapable of having an honest conversation. About the economy, about Islam, about their own naked hypocrisy and really about much of anything. They are lead by people who stand against this country and it is high time we simply called them out on it and let’s have the battle out in the open.
We cannot live together with the leftists and one of us has to go. They stand with nearly every enemy, they lie about our fiscal health, they put leftism above the good of this country and they have drawn a line in the sand and patriotic Americans are on the other side of it.
It is far beyond the time of mincing words. Burning the Koran is a sideshow. The American dream is on fire and we are still sitting on our hands.
Spot-on post.
These sad displays of dhimmitude by the likes of leftist pols, posters such as James May are really disheartening to see. I’d really like to see a real change in this trend of kissing up to barbarians. I don’t give a romeo alpha who burns the Koran. Such an act should never be followed by people excusing a reaction of killing innocents over it. Just not appropriate.
Who in the world is putting the Koran above the flag or the bible? Why is any one saying this and trying to make an argument out of it?
Who is saying in these posts that Jones has no legal right to burn Korans, TV sets, Dr. Seuss books or Hollywood screenplays? I have not said such a thing.
Can you read? Or did you burn all your books before acquiring that talent?
Mr. Solway – I agree with most of what you say except the last comment about the Rev. Jones’ being reprehensible. Read the Koran. It is not exactly a touchy-feely tract; it itself is reprehensible in how it instructs Muslims to behave towards non-Muslims. As far as its treatment of Jews, it ranks right up there with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf. As for Islam – it is not a religion: it is a political ideology pretending to be a religion. No Muslim will be happy unless the world is converted to Islam or everyone becomes dhimmi. Until then, Muslims will lie to the infidel, will murder the infidel and will always be offended by anything the infidel does, including existing. There can be no peace with these savages except the peace that comes out of the end of a gun.
Tehcno @12: We needn’t act like dhimmis because Muslims, en mass, have a case of arrested development. We needn’t be enablers to their infantile rage.
“these savages”
Yes, Jack, “savages”; and in large part because, as per the term mentioned above, taken as a whole, the Moslems are “congenitally incitable”:
Because Moslems are so much inbred from the practice of 1st cousin marriage (from their prophet, the author of that confusion)—producing 3X rate of birth defects and diminished IQ with emotional instability (It was in reading about Denmark and that nation’s immigrant problems that, I came across this of that governments findings—though, the laws of genetic probabilities and determination are known for a century or so.). It follows then, that, Moslems’ personalities are not so much shaped by beliefs and doctrines—which tend to be things susceptible of individual thought processes and consequent opinions—but their personality development is rather, entwined in mere patterns of behavior—things of common inculcation and acquiescence, even by the so-called moderate whom some suppose as being among them. And partly, no doubt, in this way, many mature Moslems feel is reasonable to teach mayhem unto their young—and have so done, time out of mind, and in every place which they come to inhabit.
There are of course, always, the unlearned among us—or, if in the very least and worst, those, ignorant of plain facts, not only some news(?) reports and politicians, but many others, too—and to them, sure, if we wish to bridge to Christians, are the Christians chopping and hacking family members heads and hands off, burying alive, stoning, throwing acid in faces, persuading children in suicide, and so on?
And, it also follows then, that, as any other cult, Moslems are thus constrained by circumstance to be parasitic to the host society—and, unable to build their own nation, they are predatory upon what good is to be found in any other.
Myself, I think it a correct postulate that, Islam is constitutive of a massive criminal organization operating under mere color of religion; and, I would marvel to know just when there shall have been sufficient record of anti-social and criminal activity—the world round—to have the thing recognized in law as criminal / terrorist with assets seized, wiretaps, trials, etc., with a view to at least freeing many, many women and many more, even of children, . . .
Islamic extremists do not need any provocation to kill.
They kill for the same reasons that a drunk drinks…
because the sun comes up, because the sun goes down.
Because it’s raining…because it doesn’t rain.
Because it’s the weekend, and I’m lonely.
Because it’s the weekend, and there are too many !@#*! people around here.
Because I don’t like you.
Because you don’t like me.
Because because because
they want to, and they can.
Here’s an articulate view of what Jerry Jones did by a patriot who knows what the issues are, how to respond to the idiotic Sen Graham, and how to state the cause:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qeyrp-V3Jvc&feature=related
and a sequel in:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LCLDjPNpf4&feature=related
Great videos, with more than a combined total of 70,000 hits in two days.
I’m worried about those eyes – how come I can’t see her pupils?
What?
Thank you for posting these two videos. Barnhardt is exactly right. She is uncommonly brave, giving her address and all. Nice touch using bacon as bookmarks.
People in the U.S. need to wake up. Many of our intellectual, academic, and political classes are participating in our suicide. Apparently, some of them don’t think it will be too bad living under Islamic domination and Sharia law.
Mr. Jones is not, and was never, the issue.
This need to intellectualize the barbarity-which-calls-itself-a-religion says alot about the current state of intellectualism and, apparently, our understanding of what constitutes religion. Had nazi-ism or communism been able to define themselves as religions, are you telling me we would have lacked all means of dealing with them? I remember a line from a movie, “You can call it a rose, if you like…but it would still stink.”
More and more, the need to look for reasons and fixes illustrates the west’s state of fear, a necessary precursor for the disambiguation to follow. When we are sick of being afraid and turn toward the unique stage of moral clarity called anger, all of this will stop, and quickly.
The only good thing about Islamic extremism are the classic one-liners.
Example:
“Don’t call us violent or we’ll kill you.”
Yup, classic.
I vote every man, woman and child in the United States of America should go out to Wal-Mart or Barnes & Noble and buy a copy of the Koran. Then we all wait until a chosen day and we all go out into our front yards and BURN THEM!!
If burning ONE Koran can send the city of Kandahar into meltdown and lead to twenty people being killed, imagine what a couple MILLION Koran’s being burned will do. They’ll be so busy yelling and screaming and protesting and killing people over there that maybe we won’t have to worry about any Islamic terrorists for a while.
This is Stupid, Ridiculous and Ludicrous.
If Terry Jones burning One Koran is enough reason for Muslims to kill twenty people, next time they burn a Bible, do Christians get to kill people too?
I’m betting the Christians have a back log of murderous rampages to set the books straight.
There are elements in the radical Islamist movement that are happy when a lone Florida preacher goes out of his way to burn what Ann Barnhardt describes as ink on paper.
(Her own provocative act in the second video seemed a burning of ideas, ideas of pedophilia & ideas of slaughter)
Not emphasized enough, however, is the way the Islamist movement uses alleged insults to its prophet and its holy book in service to the agenda of violent jihad.
Those people poured into the streets, attacked and murdered the UN workers among others, immediately after Friday prayers.
You can imagine what some religious leader was saying during prayers last Friday. Really pumping up the faithful. On purpose.
Lindsay Graham, Petraeus, the SC justice who “isn’t sure” burning a Koran is covered under the first amendment…all these people (and many more) need a better understanding about the very deep game being played against “the west”.
A game being played with far too much success for the jihadists.
yes Graham Petreaus and the ..how the heck did he get to be a SC judge do know what they are saying.
they may not be conscious of it (as many socialist are not conscious).
they are full fledged apologists and a very striking indication of how much has been lost. these people do not support the constitution nor individual rights.
Terry Jones and his ally Fred Phelps at the Westboro Baptist Church WBC are both shake down artists and in it for the money.
A failed socialist furniture salesman and a disbarred socialist lawyer–what a fail
They are both pariahs within the Christian Community and the Conservative Community.
What money is Terry Jones making out this?
Those Westboro Lawyers try to make Christians look bad for history’s sake.. Terry Jones is risking his life to wake Christians up from their slumber..
The only Christian pariahs are the ones who embrace islam like dhimmis.. may they all rot in hell for their stupidity and suicidal tendencies..
so why are you mulizzy friend bothered by him
Why doesn’t Terry simply warn the muslim terrorists that the next time they commit atrocities against normal people, he will burn/piss on “X” number of their obscene books?
Why does Terry respond and not warn the mussies that he will react to what stuff that they do?
We are all in this together, not just Pastor Terry Jones. A one-man war won’t get very far.
Announcing new Koranic lighter fluid – Allahu Ak-Barb:
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2011/04/open-thread-978.html
Presumably, the real point here is that the American constitution guarantees the right of freedom of expression, and the president and general are sworn to uphold that constitution. They are not sworn to apologise for it, or to say they wish it did not exist. They do not have to agree with the particular expression, but they do have to defend (!) the freedom to do it. It is time to see them using this as a teachable moment, getting out on the hustings and defending the freedoms of the nation they represent.
While Koran burning is the act of the daubtless usefullness,the S.Rushdi`s “Satanic verses” are the act of the caurage of a free-thinking,humane fighter!
I`m for Rushdi.
Kind of reminds me how America sucks up to the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson because as we are reminded from time to time “there will be consequences”. We’ve heard all the thinly veiled rhetoric implying racial strife, race war, and danger to our peace and safety. In fact that has been the mo for decades. So the next time someone is confronted with the moral question of affirmative action, see how many people censor themselves because of fear. America has the same problem, to a lesser degree, but it exists nevertheless: a violence prone population using the threat of violence to control and intimidate. Now we have La Raza learning the ropes as well. Lucky US.
A National Burn the Koran Day festival would be a good start. Allah Sucks bumper stickers a sure winner. It’s always just ‘a few radical Muslims’ that commit these atrocities. But the other billion or so ‘good Muslims’ keep their mouths shut. Silence gives consent. It’s time for our ‘leaders’ to speak the truth, and stop the inane platitudes.
I agree. How about we also pass a law requiring that a Koran be burned at every occasion where the pledge of allegiance is said.
What I find reprehensible is the media’s coverage of this event. Without publicity things like this seem to die on their own volition. I would bet that this isn’t the first or will it be the last Koran that has or will ever been burnt. Was there any real news value in the covering of this event? I think not.
again, why are we fighting with each other?
the reason we are at war in the middle east is to kill terrorists
the ones to blame are the policy makers that force our military to fight with both hands tied behind their backs while using straws to shoot spit wads
i see a solution in all of this: use terry jones to rouse the vermin and then drop tons of hell on the mobs as they form
i have never understood the notion that we must not offend the skittish and hysterical muslims as we could create more terrorists— creating more terrorists gives us more to kill and they need to be eradicated like the disease carrying vermin they are
What is most striking to me is that so many American leaders, both political and military, wax poetic about defending the Koran yet remain absolutely silent when the AMERICAN FLAG is burned! American have fought and died for the Stars and Stripes and as far as I am concerned it represents more HOLINESS than the koran possibly could.
” We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ”
THERE IS MORE OF G-D IN THAT STATEMENT THAN IN THE ENTIRE KORAN.
” Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors generations ago helped in her founding, and other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor . . . together. Here are Protestants, Catholics and Jews together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. Among these men, there is no discrimination. No prejudices. No hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy … ”
http://ajhs.org/scholarship/chapters/chapter.cfm?documentID=276
G-d bless America!
Upon reading the peice, “David Solway”, . . . what comes to MY mind is: “David Solway, . . . what a comical caricature.”—well, I did not wish to say: “What! a loser.”; but still and all, either, makes a statement—does it not?
I thought it kind of comical, . . . with the powerful ambit: “It’s a shame that Pastor Terry Jones is not more articulate.”, apparently, Solway leads us to blink the fact that Pastor Terry DID ACTUALLY make a statement—whatever “His statements and interviews show” or may not show of his prowess in presentation.
“Terry Jones burned a Koran. For that he deserves reprehension.”
But, David Solway, beyond the tawdry, maudlin, left-leaning approach to life and logic, can write us another article which in conservative terms might explain just why obloquy should accrue to the good pastor?
No, David S., America is not “infinitely guiltier”, . . . except that, we are remiss in not recognizing and declaring Islam a criminal enterprise, and thence forward, with American ingenuity and fire-power, removing it from the earth.
Finally, the left-wingers among us, who are “busy torching our own civilizational domicile, . . .”, are not at all “like sleep-walking arsonists who have no awareness of what they are doing.”—not at all, David Solway, not the Pres. and not his best friend, Bill somebody there in Chicago, I think, now teaching(?) at a University, forsooth! Bill the Bomber—they know, . . . they all know, . . .
And to reiterate for you, Pastor Terry DID make a statement, clearer, I think, than this wordy thing of yours, . . .
“piece”, yes, thank you, . . .
And in a different way, “It’s a shame that Pastor Terry Jones is not more articulate.”:
I don’t think so; for, there is always a place in human affairs for the “gut-level” action or reaction. I think rather, that, David Solway plainly missed the real message which a great many USA citizens well apprehend, . . . something on the order of, either: “The Koran is not holy, it should be burnt, better off burnt, doesn’t matter that, any one burn it, the Moslem societies are equivalent to a burned Koran, etc.”, a message perhaps only palpable, but nonetheless pregnant, . . . and speaking too, that, if at the very least, SOME USA citizens are ready to see the thing burnt, . . . with all the nastiness which it represents, . . .
Another Canadian coward heard from.
As much as I liked George Bush as a president, I think that when he started that ‘religion of peace’ line after 911, he set the stage for all the Islam worship that’s going on now. Better if he would have come out and said ‘they’re a bunch of ignorant, murdering savages and we need to kill as many as possible as quickly as possible’ if we are to survive.
Well maybe he could have been a bit less obvious.
Terry Jones may not be sophisticated, but he is making a dramatic stand; he is calling all of us out. Will we take a stand for the Constitution and western civilization, indeed, for civilization itself or will we cave in to Islam? It really is us or them. THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND. THERE IS NO MODERATE ISLAM. Why must Every commentator take a shot at Pastor Terry Jones just to prove they are sophisticated?
Terry Jones may not be sophisticated, but he damn sure knows right from wrong and isn’t afraid to say so. More than we can say for any of Pastor Jones’s detractors.
James May: ‘I am in favor of people using discretion in controlling their own speech when lives are an issue, not in having their speech controlled.’
Thank you. Please step over there. Right next to Lindsey Graham. It’s the stupid bench. You are the new owner.