Reply #16: I am a gay atheist, I could not disagree more with Terry Jones... [View All]

[originalpckelly]

and yet I support his right to burn a book that is in his possession, and therefore does not deny the right of others to read it.

A mass book burning is an act of oppression, and not a method of expression because it seeks to deny people en masse the right to read that book. You'd not only burn a personal copy, but every copy within the area, creating an unreasonable hurdle to freely read and then think based upon what one read.

A Nazi book burning of hate is different than a single American pastor expression his hatred with his own private property, within the legal burning guidelines in which the book shall have been burned. You have the right to hate someone and take a non-violent action based upon that, but you should not have the right to burn books en masse in order to limit freedom of information for the dissenters in your area.

People in the FL pastor's area can still read the Qur'an, while with a Nazi or other mob based book burning, it was not possible to do that.

In addition, this book burning takes place in the 21st Century and the text burned is one freely available on the internet, something many individuals in the nation where the book was burned have access to. They can freely see the book, even if every physical copy was burned, which again is not what happened here.

It may have been insensitive toward people who are believers in the Qur'an, but they themselves have no qualms about taking similar symbolic actions with no regard to their international consequences, or the offense of people in said foreign countries. I bet they'd cry foul if you wanted outlaw the burning of the American flag in their nations, right? Odd how they want the right to literally inflammatory expression, but they go on a killing rampage when someone else expresses their disgust in the same way.

And I'll add, you can say something incredibly "insensitive" to radicals, and still get the same reaction. I'd hope you'd protect even that right.

In this case, the burning could be viewed as a non-violent demonstration of disgust with a religion that does not seem to be doing enough to prevent it's more radical violent elements from killing other human beings, which is what the response to the book burning in Afghanistan in itself proves.

The world will not and should not suppress freedom of expression in order to please violent radicals.

We will not cower in fear of these people anymore, it has happened for too long.

Indeed, there are a billion Muslims in the world, but the rest of the world that isn't Muslim seems to be fair game for them. They really shouldn't be picking fights with almost 6 billion people. It's not just Christians, it's Hindus in India. Or those without a faith.

Now, it is true that even a billion Muslims did not do this. I use that number to give these radicals the best odds, to demonstrate that even if you included the whole world's population of Muslims, they would still be vastly outnumbered. The sad part is that the more moderate elements of that faith cower in fear of the radicals, who are not even pleased if you are a normal Muslim who doesn't subscribe to their violent intolerant theology.

So the world would suppress freedom of expression to please the vast minority, who themselves do not stand for such a thing and that is the reason the killings happened?

No, it will not happen, and should not happen.

We may condemn the pastor from Florida for being a bigot, but he is well within his rights to be ignorant. To force him to do otherwise would be an even greater threat to human freedom than to allow his existence or allow him to take actions based upon it.

The solution to ignorance is not violence and scare tactics, it's education and love.

I'll remind you these violent radicals murdered people in response to what? A CARTOON!

They are not reasonable people, and I feel that someone should at least be able to draw a controversial cartoon, don't you?

Or should we ban that too?

Where does it stop?