Posted on 09/10/2010 6:24:25 AM PDT by Kaslin
For once, I'm with Hillary Clinton. Regarding the Rev. Terry Jones, would-be Quran igniter, the secretary of state said, "It is regrettable that a pastor in Gainesville, Florida, with a church of no more than 50 people can make this outrageous and ... disgraceful plan and get the world's attention, but that's the world we live in right now."
"Get the world's attention" is putting it mildly. The until-recently justifiably obscure Jones is now famous on seven continents. He is doubtless far better known in the Muslim world than, say, N.Y. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has carried water for the World Trade Center mosque, and certainly better known than nearly all of those who have lined up to denounce him.
And what a long line it is! Take a number. Just about anyone in what used to be called Christendom who can command a microphone, starting with President Obama, has condemned the book-burning pastor. Gen. David Petraeus has warned that "Even the rumor that it might take place has sparked demonstrations such as the one that took place in Kabul yesterday. Were the actual burning to take place, the safety of our soldiers and civilians would be put in jeopardy, and accomplishment of the mission would be made more difficult."
Julius Scruggs of the National Baptist Convention reproved him, as did the Rev. Pat Robertson, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Sarah Palin, the Vatican, Attorney General Eric Holder, Mitt Romney, Angelina Jolie, Ann Coulter, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Glenn Beck, and Gov. Haley Barbour, among many, many others.
All of the denouncers are obviously right, but why in the world were sane people called upon to respond to this flyspeck anyway? How did the Gainesville pastor become such a world-bestriding figure?
He became news because he fulfilled a need for the press. They had to have another side to the ground zero mosque story. Why? Because members of the press are total suckers for "both sidesism." There is nothing they like better in a news story than to present two conflicting views and to pronounce that "both sides" are guilty of provocation, mistrust, violence or bad faith. They are confident that truth nearly always lies between two extremes. Exceptions are made when the antagonists are Democrats and Republicans, or environmentalists and businessmen, but the generalization usually applies.
The controversy over the ground zero mosque highlighted Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a Muslim cleric who seems insensitive to the feelings of Americans regarding the Sept. 11 attacks. What the story needed was some Christian or Jewish cleric who could demonstrate indifference to the feelings of Muslims. It's a measure of the integrity of mainstream religious figures in America that none could be found. They had to turn over rocks in rural Florida to find the handlebar moustache-sporting Quran burner.
But attempting to present "both sides" as having their extremists, their provocateurs, is quite simply absurd in this case. Though the easily inflamed members of the Umma believe that America and the West generally are crawling with Muslim haters, that Islam is "under attack" -- to use the favored phrase of al-Qaida -- the reality is quite otherwise. Americans actually do live out the meaning of their creed. Americans do honor religious expression of all kinds. And the overwhelming majority of Americans have shown no religious bigotry toward Muslims. When some bozo decides to express contempt for Islam by burning the Quran (book burning being the mark of barbarians), Americans as if with one voice denounce him.
The press has done the world, but particularly our men and women in the military, a severe disservice by making a household name of the Rev. Jones. Let's face it, if the feelings of American Christians and Jews are hurt (by, say, a mosque at ground zero), they will peacefully demonstrate in the streets, write letters to the editor, call their members of Congress, and possibly apply bumper stickers to their cars.
If Muslims worldwide have their feelings hurt, there will be blood. The offense to Muslim sensibilities need not be real (remember the riots over the rumors of Quran flushing at Guantanamo) and they need not rise to the level of geopolitics (recall the riots in Nigeria over the Miss World contest).
A significant minority of Muslims is on a hair-trigger for violence and murder. Everyone knows this, which is why Secretary of State Clinton referred so respectfully to the "holy Quran." Responsible non-Muslims are attempting, oh so conscientiously, to convey the message that the West does not despise Islam. The press, for the sake of "both sidesism," has undermined that message profoundly.
There should be a tag team match in Madison Square to settle it. Rev. Wright and the Imam vs. Rev. Jones and Chuck Norris.
We'll have to stand up to this sooner or later.
“but that’s the world we live in right now”
No the world we live in now is one where muslims can do no wrong no matter how savage and despicable they behave and Americans only have constitutional rights if Muslims allow them to.
The only thing more sickening than the liberals and muslims playing this game is that some rinoconservatives, who you would have thought would have known better, have joined in.
The question that needs to be addressed is why would something so innocuous as a Pastor of a Church of 50 followers burning a book create such a world wide stir and evoke threats against the entire non-Muslim world?
I think the problem is not Pastor Jones, but Islam. If Pastor Jones had threated to burn any other book ever printed, nobody would care. The fact that he wants to burn a single copy of the Koran makes everyone on the planet uneasy.
One man. One Book. One World in crisis.
This is an interesting question because the media certainly liked to hype this fellow up & publicize his attempted promotional stunt.
I really believe Rev. Jones was only trying to bring to light the double standards afforded to Muslims as opposed to Christians. This may have been a very bad idea but he has shed some new light on how things work (It certainly opened my eyes) in regard to Christian religious freedom as opposed to Muslim religious freedom. Rev. Jones was more than ready to call off the quran burning if the Mosque was moved. I did not see the same flexibility from the Imam. In fact, he seems to have dug his heels in. This speaks volumes to me.
This guy is a nobody. I have been in Bible Study classes for “25 to 35-year-old married couples with kids” with more than 50 people.
I think the event is a mistake ... but the Muslim world is reacting more strongly to 50 people in Florida than they reacted to the thousands of Palestinians dancing in the streets on 9/11.
Get some perspective here. There are individual churches in this country with thousands, or tens-of-thousands, of members. Come back to me when one of THEM holds such an event.
SnakeDoc
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same . . ."What part of that oath is in the least bit ambiguous? The military is sworn to uphold the Constitution and if I am not mistaken, that would include the First Amendment right of this jerk to burn the Koran.
Bingo.
If some backwater Imam in Islamistan decided to burn a pile of Bibles, we would have never heard about it. The burning would have occurred on schedule, without making so much as a ripple in the Western press.
That little book was called “Prairie Fire”.
It was instructions on how to orchestrate civil unrest/race riots.
Basically it says
Find an incident, a spark to ignite a flame, ratchet it up to a raging inferno.
Hillary's name or to be more precise,code word, she uses for this game plan of orchestrating civil unrest/race riots as a path to power or a way of hanging on to power, is “The Scorched Earth Policy”.
The controversy over the ground zero mosque highlighted Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, a Muslim cleric who seems insensitive to the feelings of Americans regarding the Sept. 11 attacks.”
Insensitive huh, Mona, pull your head out of your backside. Rauf has repeatedly parrotted the jihadi line whether it concerns Muslim sensitivites in Malaysia due to certain churches using the term Allah, culpability for 9/11, threats over the proposed moving of the GZM, his inability to label Hamas as terrorist and the list goes on. This guy may not have strapped a bomb vest on, but it’s clear he supports those who do.
So I guess now being a terrorist or sympathizer means your just insensitive to American’s feelings.
Many in this country have simply lost the will to confront evil.
“I summon my blue-eyed slaves anytime it pleases me. I command the Americans to send me their bravest soldiers to die for me. Anytime I clap my hands a stupid genie called the American ambassador appears to do my bidding. When the Americans die in my service their bodies are frozen in metal boxes by the US Embassy and American airplanes carry them away, as if they never existed. Truly, America is my favorite slave.”
King Fahd Bin Abdul-Aziz, Jeddeh 1993
The lunatics know they can control us through fear, so there is nothing surprising about their response to burning the unholy Korans, or building the monument to the terrorists at ground zero. We have become a nation of kowtowed, trembling neurotics who deserve to live in fear. Terry Jones is a kook, but not nearly as big a kook as the kooks who are panicked over his kookiness. ...If our labors to befriend the Muslim world can be destabilized by a fringe preacher burning a Koran, we’ve failed, and should immediately start looking for a better way to communicate with the Islamic crazies.
A MOAB works for me.
Do we stand up to this while we’re strong enought to defeat it?
That’s THE big question.
We have to look at WHO IT IS that doesn’t want us to stand up to it. It’s all leftists, for the most part. People with delusional worldviews.
They need to be ignored. Their opinions, being based on falsehood, are worthless.
I wonder why our country is in a position that allows Sharia Law to trump the Constitution? Here we have a General of the formerly great USA deferring to Sharia Law. How did we get ourselves into this position?
Nobody in authority condemns the burning of bibles, destruction of Christian churches, and the killing of Christians and Jews for that matter.
The US mass media deserve some blame for this, but the real problem is the Arab media. Al-Arabiya TV was making this a big story back in July, and other muslim media ran with it, and there were already protests in Afghanistan and Indonesia before the story broke big here.
Petreus decided to comment on the story when asked by the WSJ reporter, and the US media took it and ran with it.
That is an amazing quote. Sick, but amazing.
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