The burning of books is not a custom new to society. Over the centuries, people have made burning, shredding, torching, and ultimately destroying books a sordid tradition. These people all have something in common. They all possess a huge amount of hatred, ignorance, and audacity. This surplus of attractive qualities always seems to be accompanied by a lack of hope or willingness to understand or make amends with the "enemy". The fact that a pastor in the United States is planning on conducting a ceremonial burning of the Koran, would undermine everything America stands for.
Book burnings never have happy endings. They seem to always have started or promoted crisis and war. If a pastor of all people has given up on hopes of peace, what example does that set for the rest of us? During the Holocaust the works of every Jewish authors were burned. In Ancient times, the Library of Alexandria was demolished and the scrolls of an entire Chinese Dynasty were set ablaze. Have any of these events ever been encouraging understanding, peace or international affairs? Have these “book bonfires” ever had a positive result?
No. The targeted group has been personally targeted and feels the instinctual need to react. This is true in the case of the Jews, philosophers, Muslims, and more. The degree of the reaction varies, but who’s to say what the burning of the Koran, a religious text with a massive following, will cause. There is a difference between whether something is morally vs. legally right. This may be legal, but by no means is it right.
If the pastor's intention is to "confront terrorism" and possibly prevent it, he is doing the opposite and rather inviting it.
Carolyn,
ReplyDeleteI wrote a post about this topic too, when I read about this it made me completely angry. I agree that this goes against anything America stands for. The thing that frustrates me the most is that there's no way for us to stop this, even if it will cause a huge reaction in Islamic countries. If the government were to intervene it would be a huge violation of our constitution. It looks like we're just going to have to wait it out and hope all the negative reactions from people like us will convince the pastor to rethink what he's doing.