Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ryan E. Hoffman on April 4, 2011 at 11:17am

EXACTLY! He has the right, but we also have the right to say he's an idiot, and his ideas are just some looney crackpot spouting off on the street corner in a pastor uniform.

But nobody has the right to kill people or rabble rouse to kill people because their panties are in a bunch.

Permalink Reply by Sassan K. on April 4, 2011 at 5:27am

The Iranian mullahs are going to end up using nukes and creating havoc for their end of the world prophecies. We don't need to do anything to provoke them; the only option is regime change and allowing the Iranian people to live in freedom. Otherwise, major worldwide casualties is around the corner. The international community must do everything to stop this regime to develop nuclear weapons and to assist the Iranian people with democracy and human rights.

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Permalink Reply by Melanie Dawn Molina Wood on April 3, 2011 at 5:17pm

was it criminally wrong again no.

I disagree for the reasons I've already stated.

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Permalink Reply by Pope OoO (Out of Order) on April 3, 2011 at 2:33pm

its a stretch to say that nut in Florida needs to share the blame for what happened in Afghanistan

He said he knew murder could be a result of his action. It's more of a stretch to say that he didn't want innocent people to die. He did it in order to advance his theological perspective.

Since there's no international law against what he did, the legal question of free speech is irrelevant. This is not an issue of free speech, but of an act of inhumanity.

As for discussing if he "needs to share the blame", the question seems ripe for all kinds of semantic splitting of hairs for little purpose. What does "share the blame" really mean?

 

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Permalink Reply by Arcus on April 3, 2011 at 2:54pm

Legally it is clear cut. If he is convicted of hate speech, there is legal precedence for Koran burning to be considered criminal. Then that's the only book which can't legally be burned as a means of expression. 

Koran burning will always have the same effect upon radicalized Muslims, as will depictions of Mohammed. The cartoons started as a critizism of the Danish government's failure in integrating muslims by pointing at the violent nature of their religion.

If two actions have the same consequence, and we judge the action upon the consequence, it's the same legal principle, and the law can therefore be extended.

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Permalink Reply by Pope OoO (Out of Order) on April 3, 2011 at 4:17pm

If he is convicted of hate speech

Why is this even considered a possibility, here? The "free speech" issue just sounds like such a red herring to me. (Ha, or straw man, or whatever it should be called. I need to look it up.)

I suppose I should add, just in case it actually does go to court as a legal issue (which I seriously doubt it will), then we should be talking more nitty-gritty about judges, lawyers, legal arguments, ACLU, the constitution, etc. But so far, none of this has come up in this discussion.

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Permalink Reply by Arcus on April 4, 2011 at 5:34am

The de juro situation is of course the worst possible outcome. But even if we only de facto protect the Koran from being burned, it is a limitation of free speech.

Some de facto limitations of free speech is good - such as racist slurs and profanity. But banning them by law is bad, we must be able to ridicule them because this is the only way of taking away their power.

If my intention is to incite violence, I can only be held accountable if I actually hold any power over those who perform it. The only way he could be guilty of inciting violence is if he had instructed his congregation to go out and shoot muslims, and they subsequently did.

The incitement to violence came not from WBC, it came from the Koran. As such, it is what needs to be held accountable.

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Permalink Reply by Ryan E. Hoffman on April 3, 2011 at 6:38pm

I am having a hard time understanding why people feel the need to take sides on this issue. Pastor Terry Jones is the other side of the same coin. Christians here really are no better. Yeah, they don't kill people, because we have laws in our secular nation. But they want to change that, and that's why we have communities like this to stop them. We need look no further than Mike Huckabee's comments/"joke" this past week about being indoctrinated at gunpoint with revisionist Christian history to see that they really are no better. If Terry Jones and his ilk had their way, we would be in deep trouble. I also refuse to see why I should be appalled that he would burn the Qur'an. It's a holy war. Just leave it alone. Neither side wants our help, and I don't want to give it. Terry Jones is a media seeking dumbass, and the people in Afghanistan are our religious nuts, only without laws. That's the difference.

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Permalink Reply by Joli on April 4, 2011 at 1:12am

*Like* : )

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Permalink Reply by Albert Bakker on April 4, 2011 at 1:30am

You have made some sensible statements here and you almost make me rethink my stronger position. Now the only trouble I have is with the suggestion that it is a holy war. I don't think it is. I think it is just a political issue, another incident. Muslims, leave a nut or two here or there, seem too busy with their own stuff outside US occupied territory it seems. It's not only the extremists in the Af-Pak region, who are milking it. In fact no political faction, including the puppets, can afford to excuse it. And Jones has been feeding them.  He has been frustrating American geopolitical interests and made some powerful enemies now. As opposed to the general public, these people have long memories.

Next time someone should mention to these Florida jokers that the most effective way to resist Islam is not burning a Koran, it's reading it.

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Permalink Reply by Ryan E. Hoffman on April 4, 2011 at 9:47am

Well, Albert, I think we agree on a lot of things, but there are some smaller issues that need to be better articulated.

I wouldn't call it a political issue or incident, because Terry Jones has no standing in the government, and the people who stormed the UN was just a plain mob. Both actions were done with religious intentions. Generally speaking, For Jones: Christianity is better than your barbaric religion. Christ is king! The Mob: How dare you say such things and burn our holy book. Islam will take over the world!

So both parties motivations here are not so much political as they are religious. I know the Af-Pak region wants us out, but if that were the main motive, I think this would have happened a long time ago. It may not be a holy "war" per se, but I think it's just two sets of theists pissing on each other's shoe, and innocent people have to die because of their filthy religions.

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Permalink Reply by Rodrica Davis on April 3, 2011 at 7:15pm

I doubt the reaction would be what we have seen in Afghanistan. You may get some religious individuals on the news yammering. I mean the idiot pastor wasn't inciting non-sentient beings but thinking individuals and some afghans acted out their evolutionary origins. Reason should have told that 1) this was only one friggin church and therefore does not represent a country, state, or city. 2) Killing innocent people isn't going to change anything and makes them look more barbaric and stupid and 3) they should have just ignore the pastor but now they have stooped past his level to murder. That's fundamentalist religion for you.

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