I'm a Palin supporter, read and love her book, and hope I have the chance to vote for her for President in 2012. That said ... have ANY prominent leaders on the right taken a stand FOR Quran burning?
I agreed with Palin at first -- that "just because you can doesn't mean you should." However, analyizing it more deeply, I have concluded that a kind of well-meaning, innocent disingenuousness is at play in that sentiment.
The Imam doesn't want to build the mosque at GZ "just because he can." He wants to build it to send a message to Islam that says, "Islam has achieved an important foothold in America at the very site of a great and bloody attack by us."
Americans didn't want to burn Korans "just because they could." They wanted to burn Korans because it was a civil, peaceful, non-violent and powerfully symbolic way to communicate to Islam: Not on our watch. Burning paper, burning symbols, is civil. Burning live people, sawing the heads off of living, breathing Jews and Christians, flying loaded passenger jets into occupied office towers, exploding suicide bombs in public places, is uncivil. It is also BARBARIC. I've read hysterical posts by FReepers who equate the peaceful, lawful, legal, symbolic burning of Korans with the barbaric acts of Muslims, and I see that they are being as disingenuous as the Imams.
Palin SHOULD have come out and said, "Better to burn paper Korans in peaceful, legal, symbolic protest than to burn live Muslims on the street. Islam might want to take a hint and do likewise when dealing with non-Muslims." Talk about the Golden Rule and loving your enemies, as per Christ's instruction? Burning Korans, mere paper, instead of flesh-and-blood Muslims IS honoring BOTH of those Christian commandments. Would that Islam had opted to burn mere cloth and paper in the form of bibles and flags instead of wholesale bloodshed and violence against Jews, Christians, and America.
Palin's understandable attempt to be "civil" backfired, and I am not surprised.
“I’m a Palin supporter, read and love her book, and hope I have the chance to vote for her for President in 2012. That said ... have ANY prominent leaders on the right taken a stand FOR Quran burning?...”
But you’re taking your views of what “should” have been done and imputing those views to Palin, and then calling her ‘disingenuous’ in the process for something she never said...
And my general point on this was a larger one: prominent leaders on the right acted in hopes of convincing somebody not to do something because of the possibility that it could lead to innocent deaths; Rauf, OTOH, could be called upon to make a legitimate attempt to warn radical Islamists not to attack if the GZM is moved. He has made no such statement- instead he acts as if there is nothing that can be done to stop them from attacking.
What next if we follow Rauf’s line of reasoning? We better immediately allow Sharia law to be imposed upon on us...because if we don’t, they will attack...?