Category Archives: Koran burning

Terry Jones burns another Koran

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The pentagon urged him not to and the fire department fined him $271 because he did not have the “required authorization to burn books”.

The big questions are: how much does a permit from the Gainesville Fire Rescue to burn books cost, how many do they issue per year, does the permit include permission to burn Korans and once the fell deed was accomplished did the fire department treat the ashes with the respect they deserve or did they fail to flush them down the toilet? And would they have issued a $271 fine to an atheist burning a Bible?

From here:

About 20 people gathered for the ceremony outside the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., during which Jones demanded the release of Youcef Nadarkhani, an Iranian pastor, currently in jail for apostasy after converting from Islam to Christianity.

Moments after the burning, the Gainesville Fire Rescue issued a citation against the church, claiming it did not have the required authorization to burn books.

The church will be fined $271, including court costs, fire chief Gene Prince told the newspaper.

 

On Koran burning

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Burning Korans is never out of the news for very long. Most recently, rioters in Afghanistan killed 12 people after four Korans were burned by the U.S. military because imprisoned terrorists were using them to exchange clandestine messages. That’s three people per Koran. Before that, Pastor Terry Jones decided to burn a Koran for reasons never satisfactorily explained and we have enjoyed a few Burn the Koran days since then.

The Koran is Islam’s “holy book”. What does that mean? Islam’s claim is that the words of the Koran are Allah’s words: it is holy – sublime and pure – because it contains God’s words. Of course, if it doesn’t contain God’s words, it isn’t holy at all: it is a vile deception which contrives to lead those who read it into confusion and perdition – burning is too good for it. As a Christian, I am inclined to the latter view. There may be a middle ground between these extremes, but I suspect not.

We are frequently enjoined to respect Islam; as a Christian, I feel beholden to respect Muslims since they, like everyone else, are made in God’s image. I can’t see much reason to respect the transparently arrant nonsense that is Islam, though.

So, if Islam is not true and the Koran is not holy, there is no more reason to avoid burning it than to avoid burning the Tropic of Cancer and Muslims really should grow up and stop being so over-sensitive. Many won’t, though and that’s why most people would prefer to stick a firecracker up a bull’s nose than burn a Koran.

Nevertheless, occasionally Korans are burned; why?

Sometimes it is accidental; that was probably the case for the latest conflagration in Afghanistan. Its being an accident didn’t lessen the fury of those who were waiting patiently for an excuse – any excuse – to riot, shoot guns in the air, scream, burn flags and murder people.

Sometimes it is an expression of contempt for Islam. That appears to be the case for both Terry Jones and the Burn the Koran crowd. Since Christians are supposed to draw people to Christ through their words and example, it’s difficult to see why a Christian would view burning the Koran as anything but counter-productive to his primary calling. Even burning the Origin of Species to irritate an atheist, although tempting, is something Christians should avoid. Especially during Lent.

A secularist burning a Koran to demonstrate his contempt for all it represents doesn’t seem to me to be such a bad way to exercise freedom of expression, especially since the pyromaniac would be demonstrating the virtue of bravery (or possibly the vice of stupidity) by doing it in the full knowledge that his days of incendiary exploits were likely to be summarily curtailed by those he seeks to enlighten.

To come back to Afghanistan: the latest incidents have persuaded me that, worthy though the attempt to introduce civilisation to barbarism may be, the West no longer has the stomach to exert the force necessary to bring the effort to fruition. Without that, it’s all a tragic waste.

A 70 day prison sentence for burning a Koran

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Not in Saudi Arabia – in Carlisle!

From here:

A former soldier has been sentenced to 70 days in prison for setting fire to a copy of Muslim holy book the Koran in the centre of Carlisle.

Andrew Ryan had previously admitted religiously aggravated harassment and theft of a Koran from a library.

Ryan was exercising a form of free speech – his version of Fatwa 40378 – a commodity that is evidently in short supply in the politically correct madhouse that has become the UK.

As a Christian, I can’t bring myself to endorse the deliberate desecration of another religion’s paraphernalia – but I’m finding that increasingly difficult to say with conviction.

A police inspector sagely noted:

After sentencing, Insp Paul Marshall, of Cumbria Police, said: “This incident was highly unusual for Cumbria as we have such low levels of hate crime in the county.”

This leads one to speculate on whether Inspector Marshall would recognise a “hate crime” – which surely has to involve someone being injured as opposed to merely offended – if it paraded itself in front of him and took up lodging in his helmet.

If you burn a Koran in the UK, you are arrested

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From here:

A BNP candidate for next month’s Welsh assembly elections has been charged with a public order offence, after police were passed a video appearing to show him burning a copy of the Koran.

Sion Owens, 41, was named as a party candidate for the South Wales West regional list last week.

He is due to appear at Swansea magistrates’ court on Monday.

Let this be a lesson to anyone feeling inclined to do something unpleasant to a religious text: forget about the Koran, rip up a Bible and shove it in your knickers – it will probably earn you taxpayer funding.

The BNP may be an odious organisation, but I can’t think of a better way for the British legal establishment to give it a boost than by arresting one of its members for burning a Koran in his own garage – that is where the conflagration occurred – under the pretext of a Public Order Offence.

The charge has been withdrawn for the moment because of lack of evidence, although “further proceedings will ensue”. And if they do, it will be a sign to that very select group of rabid, head-hacking Muslim nut cases that they are on the right track and should, at the slightest pretext, keep on hacking.

Anglican leaders condemn Koran burning and offer "a prayer for a time of book-burning"

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“A prayer for a time of book-burning”: only Anglicans could come up with a phrase like that. The book in question is the Koran – surprise, surprise – a copy of which was burnt on March 20th in Florida. Anglican leaders have denounced the conflagration as the “act of a sick mind”.

Meanwhile, rampaging Muslims are burning Christian churches all over the place with nary a peep of protest from the same Anglican leaders: they appear to have squandered their monthly quota of indignation on the witless twerp who burnt the Koran.

From here:

Anglican leaders have condemned the act of burning of the Qur’an on March 20 in Florida, United States. Bishop Alexander Malik of the Diocese of Lahore, Pakistan, said that “Such acts were in flagrant contradiction to the teaching of Christianity… They were the manifestations of sick minds busy in spreading hatred, bigotry and unease in society.”

In Peshawar, Pakistan, Bishop Humphrey Peters noted that this was a “shameful act” performed “only to gain cheap popularity”.  Bishop Peters was speaking at a press conference alongside members of a Peshawar based inter faith group ‘Faith Friends’ at which colleagues from the Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities also expressed their anger at the action.