Burn a Quran day

[westprog]

westprog,

I'd appreciate it if you'd stop just echoing others' viewpoints.
You must be annoying even for those you rebound off.

If you're happy enough destroying books you disagree with, you should have no trouble with the "ignore" option. I'll wait for Firegarden to tell me that I'm being annoying, thanks. In the meantime, I'll stay at the front of the bus.

I note the technique for avoiding answering the question - can you come up with anyone currently suffering under islamic despotism who's recommending the Koran burning course of action?

 

[westprog]

Back in 1955, a lot of people copying Rosa Parks, especially in the South, could have resulted in riots in which many could have lost their lives. Would we have been justified in blaming Rosa Parks?

The difference is that the person most at risk from Rosa Parks' actions was Rosa Parks. If some white liberal in New York had taken it on himself to instruct the ignorant masses of the South as to what they should do, and if they had followed his advice, and if it had all gone wrong - without affecting him one whit - then yes, they'd be entitled to feel ticked off with him.

 

[BillyJoe]

If you're happy enough destroying books you disagree with, you should have no trouble with the "ignore" option.

Burning the koran is the very antithesis of "ignore".
I've never put anyone on ignore.

I'll wait for Firegarden to tell me that I'm being annoying, thanks. In the meantime, I'll stay at the front of the bus.

The bus driver is unlikely to upset his passengers.

I note the technique for avoiding answering the question - can you come up with anyone currently suffering under islamic despotism who's recommending the Koran burning course of action?

You just don't like the answers.
Even negroes were upset by the first uppity black man.
Most muslim women happily shackled to their burkas are upset by the lone upstart who points out the intolerance of their position.

 

[BillyJoe]

The difference is that the person most at risk from Rosa Parks' actions was Rosa Parks

Actually Rosa Parks was never at risk.
She was simply arrested for breaking the law.

But she was one of a few negroes who were prepared to stand up even against the objections of fellow negroes. Here are a couple more:

Vernon Johns:
In the early 1950s when a black pastor named Vernon Johns tried to get other blacks to leave a bus in protest after he was forced to give up his seat to a white man, only to have them tell him that he ought to have known better.

Jo Ann Robinson:
Jo Ann Robinson was an educated woman, a professor at the all-black Alabama State College, and a member of the Women's Political Council in Montgomery. After her traumatic experience on the bus in 1949, she tried to start a protest but was shocked when other Women's Political Council members brushed off the incident as a fact of life in Montgomery.

 

[FireGarden]

FireGarden,

If you can convince me that diplomacy did it for the negro slaves rather than a demand for equality, voiced at times by protests and the breaking of laws, all of which made the moderates very uncomfortable indeed, I'll concede your point.

Why? I never said that slaves never demanded to be free.

As I said, in time the moderates moved on and supported the call, but they had to dragged kicking and screaming in the first instance and this was not achieved by diplomacy.

You seem to be saying that annoying the moderates is what brings them to your side of the argument. Err, no. I can see how making some-one's blood boil on an issue can make them take it seriously and do something about it. But that isn't the same as pissing on them, which is likely to make them stop listening to you and stop taking you seriously. Can you honestly not see the difference between demanding to sit where you like and burning a Quran?

Rosa Parks, effectively, was saying to people (both black and white) "Do you agree with segregation?" That's pretty much what her actions amounted to. And implicit in that was the expectation that people would make the right choice. She was being respectful of people (both black and white) on the understanding that most are good and will make good choices. And, eventually, they did.

Burning the Quran does no such thing. It is not the oppressed reaching out and saying "Do you really want to be my oppressor?" Or "Do you really want to go on living this way?" It most certainly does not say, "I'm doing this because I love you and want to set you free".

If you think it does, then get a new dictionary.

Vernon Johns:
In the early 1950s when a black pastor named Vernon Johns tried to get other blacks to leave a bus in protest after he was forced to give up his seat to a white man, only to have them tell him that he ought to have known better.

Jo Ann Robinson:
Jo Ann Robinson was an educated woman, a professor at the all-black Alabama State College, and a member of the Women's Political Council in Montgomery. After her traumatic experience on the bus in 1949, she tried to start a protest but was shocked when other Women's Political Council members brushed off the incident as a fact of life in Montgomery.

So you want to argue against the success of Rosa Parks by showing how respectable behaviour didn't win success immediately.

Well... What should Jo ann Robinson have burnt, then, in order to piss off enough people to get them off their backsides and support her? Should she have burnt effigies of bus drivers? Maybe something which represents the bus company? Maybe if she'd burned the flag, or the US constitution. Maybe burn the declaration of independence. "All men are created equal" -- yeah, my ass. Burn it so that people will 'live out the true meaning of its creed', as MLK put it.

Do you think that would have caught on better than respectably demanding to sit where you wish? I don't.

btw, who did Rosa Parks copy?

Of course some slaves wanted to continue being slaves. A bit like how a long term prisoner finds it difficult to adjust to life outside prison. Should we have left slavery for those who wanted it? No. Today no negro wants to be a slave.

Muslim women subjugated under sharia law are in a similar position today.
Is it right that muslim women be regarded a second class citizens? Even if they want to? Even if they totally accept their inferior station in life?
Can change for muslim women come about by mere diplomacy?
Should I have tried dilpomacy on that psychopath?

You've ignored everything I've given you. There are examples of Muslims, even Muslim women, who are fighting for the freedom they demand and you want to talk in the abstract -- pulling ideas out of your 'elbow'. They are under pressures which you, just a moment ago, claimed were too great to allow protests or requests for help. Yet they are demanding their rights. And what is your response? To imply that Muslim women are sheep who don't know their lives could be better.

You're smarter than that, BillyJoe.
Stop ignoring the examples I've given and start listening to at least a few of them.

Today only forty percent of people voted in the Afghan elections because of fear of the Taliban. And dozens were killed trying to vote. I suppose they shouldn't have attempted holding elections knowing that people could get killed.

What is the relevance of this? In any case... One could also say that, given the corruption in the previous election -- which went unpunished -- people asked themselves: "what's the point?" Of course, when I complained about the corruption and how the west was willing to overlook it and work with Karzai I was accused of being against democracy then, too.

Back in 1955, a lot of people copying Rosa Parks, especially in the South, could have resulted in riots in which many could have lost their lives. Would we have been justified in blaming Rosa Parks?

I think it would have been worth the cost. Demanding equal rights is something you should not be intimidated away from. I really don't see how you can think I argue otherwise. Burning Qurans is a poor way to demand your rights. Even Pastor Jones was convinced of that. I don't think it's because he now has any new respect for the Quran. But because he can see it will not further his cause. Not that his cause can be compared with Rosa Parks' cause. Pastor Jones is a hate-monger.

You still haven't answered my question: What if 50% of Americans burned Qurans? And let's say there was no violence. That would still be bad, and you know precisely why. A Muslim could not feel they were an equal part of the community if that community allows such an act of hatred to be so wide-spread -- without any condemnation. If 50% of Americans burned Qurans, what percentage would refuse to hire a Muslim? Do you really see Quran burning as seperate from hate? Even to the extent that you cannot see why others would associate it with hate?

westprog,

I'd appreciate it if you'd stop just echoing others' viewpoints.
You must be annoying even for those you rebound off.

I don't find it annoying.
In fact, sorry to harp on with the theme, but... If 50% of Americans echoed my views I think that would be a good thing. I would be worried if 50% of Americans merely said that Quran burning was a good thing to do. Let alone actually did the damn thing.

I'll wait for Firegarden to tell me that I'm being annoying, thanks. In the meantime, I'll stay at the front of the bus.

Quite right. We demand to be heard.

The more we annoy moderates like BillyJoe, the more they'll be inclined to support us. At least, that's his argument. Damn the membership agreement! If I could get in a few good ad-homs, I'd win the flame war and BillyJoe would agree with me.

 

[BillyJoe]

Fundamentalists will never change.
Moderates are happy with the status quo until stirred into actually questioning it..
Militants stir the moderates out of their complacency and force them to take a stand.
Diplomats cajole the moderates into actually changing the law.

Without the militants paving the way for the diplomats the fundamentalists win.

 

[BillyJoe]

FireGarden,

In your post you first state:

You seem to be saying that annoying the moderates is what brings them to your side of the argument. Err, no.

So here you are disagreeing with me.
But then you immediately follow with this:

I can see how making some-one's blood boil on an issue can make them take it seriously and do something about it.

So, in the very next sentence, you're agreeing with me!
Then you try to make a distinction:

But that isn't the same as pissing on them, which is likely to make them stop listening to you and stop taking you seriously.

So what is it exactly that you're trying to say.
You don't think pissing on people is likely to make their blood boil?

Can you honestly not see the difference between demanding to sit where you like and burning a Quran?

But you are talking about two different stages of two different battles.

By the time of the Rosa Parks incident, blacks had already been freed from slavery. Moreover they were already allowed to sit in a bus occupied by whites. Segregation amounted to whites sitting at the front and blacks at the back.

But, even in the present day, there is total intolerance of apostates and non-believers by muslim fundamentalists with nary a moderate in sight to publicly oppose them.
Neverthelss there are some parallels....

Rosa Parks, effectively, was saying to people (both black and white) "Do you agree with segregation?" That's pretty much what her actions amounted to. And implicit in that was the expectation that people would make the right choice. She was being respectful of people (both black and white) on the understanding that most are good and will make good choices. And, eventually, they did.

You are rewriting history.

Rosa Parks challenged the status quo. The status quo was enshrined in a law which required blacks to sit at the back of the bus. Whites and blacks accepted this and Rosa Parks challenged them both. Her two friends sitting with her immediately moved a row back to make way for the white man who had just entered the bus. Only Rosa Parks remained seated.

Similarly when Jo Ann Robinson (who absentmindedly sat at the front of a nearly empty bus and ran off in tears when the bus driver screamed at her for doing so) approached the Women's Political Council, of which she was a member, they brushed off the incident as "a fact of life in Montgomery".

And, when Vernon Johns tried to get other blacks to leave a bus in protest after he was forced to give up his seat to a white man, the response from his fellow blacks was "You ought to knowed better."

And what happened after the Rosa Parks incident?
After E.D. Nixon and Martin Luther King organised a boycott of the Montgomery buses in protest at the arrest of Roas Parks, violence erupted: "King's home was bombed on January 30". "Nixon's home was bombed on February 1". "The homes of two black leaders, four Baptists churches, the People's Service Station and Cab Stand, and the home of another black were all bombed". "An unexploded bomb was found on King's front porch". "Snipers shot at buses".

Finally, when the pissed-off, blood-boiling, city white men defended segregation by saying that integration would lead to violence, one white man, Judge Rives stood up and asked, "Is it fair to command one man to surrender his constitutional rights...in order to prevent another man from committing a crime?"

So you want to argue against the success of Rosa Parks by showing how respectable behaviour didn't win success immediately.

She deliberately broke the law. She was arrested and charged. She upset both blacks and whites till some eventually came to her aid. The illegal Montgomery bus boycotts and associated violence followed.

What should Jo ann Robinson have burnt, then, in order to piss off enough people to get them off their backsides and support her?

She could have symbolicly burnt the law book prohibiting segregation. Istead, she chose to actually directly piss off blacks and whites by breaking that law.

Should she have burnt effigies of bus drivers? Maybe something which represents the bus company? Maybe if she'd burned the flag, or the US constitution. Maybe burn the declaration of independence.

The year long Montgomery bus boycotts that followed Rosa Parks' breaking of the segregation law, certainly burnt the bus companies and local busnesses - financially at least.

 

[ddt]

Rosa Parks challenged the status quo. The status quo was enshrined in a law which required blacks to sit at the back of the bus. Whites and blacks accepted this and Rosa Parks challenged them both. Her two friends sitting with her immediately moved a row back to make way for the white man who had just entered the bus. Only Rosa Parks remained seated.

And that law was unconstitutional. From the Rosa Parks wiki page:

On June 19, 1956, the U.S. District Court's three-judge panel ruled that Section 301 (31a, 31b and 31c) of Title 48, Code of Alabama, 1940, as amended, and Sections 10 and 11 of Chapter 6 of the Code of the City of Montgomery, 1952, "deny and deprive plaintiffs and other Negro citizens similarly situated of the equal protection of the laws and due process of law secured by the Fourteenth Amendment" (Browder v. Gayle, 1956). The court essentially decided that the precedent of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) could be applied to Browder v. Gayle. On November 13, 1956, the United States Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation on buses operating within the individual states, deeming it unconstitutional.

Similarly when Jo Ann Robinson (who absentmindedly sat at the front of a nearly empty bus and ran off in tears when the bus driver screamed at her for doing so) approached the Women's Political Council, of which she was a member, they brushed off the incident as "a fact of life in Montgomery".

And, when Vernon Johns tried to get other blacks to leave a bus in protest after he was forced to give up his seat to a white man, the response from his fellow blacks was "You ought to knowed better."

Your examples seem to be cherry picked. The same wiki page mentions other black activists preceding Rosa Parks:

Her action was not the first of its kind. Irene Morgan in 1946, and Sarah Louise Keys in 1955,[2] had won rulings before the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Interstate Commerce Commission, respectively, in the area of interstate bus travel. Nine months before Parks refused to give up her seat, 15-year-old Claudette Colvin refused to move from her seat on the same bus system.

So it wasn't like all blacks were complacent in their second-rank citizen status. And the local NAACP chapter was just waiting for an opportune candidate to challenge the unjust laws with.

She deliberately broke the law. She was arrested and charged. She upset both blacks and whites till some eventually came to her aid. The illegal Montgomery bus boycotts and associated violence followed.

The law she broke was unconstitutional - see the SCOTUS verdict. And yes, she did it deliberately. If no-one challenges unjust laws, they never get overturned. And what kind of idiotic statement is it to call a boycott illegal? It's called "voting with your feet". Boycotting a company is a legitimate form of protest against their conduct. Or is in your world view anyone obliged to take the bus?

She could have symbolicly burnt the law book prohibiting segregation. Istead, she chose to actually directly piss off blacks and whites by breaking that law.

Contrary, she chose to challenge an unjust law in the most appropriate way: by breaking it and then challenging the law in federal court.

The year long Montgomery bus boycotts that followed Rosa Parks' breaking of the segregation law, certainly burnt the bus companies and local busnesses - financially at least.

Serves them well. If you treat your customer like ****, you don't deserve any better.

 

[BillyJoe]

ddt,

You are miscontruing the intent of my post.
I support Rosa Parks actions. I'm jusat denying that they were diplomatic as others here would have us believe.

So it wasn't like all blacks were complacent in their second-rank citizen status.

Of course they weren't all complacent. But the large majority were, especially in the early days. And they needed to be knocked out of their compacency just as much as the white folks. And, in the early days, most negro slaves were happy to continue as slaves and, even after emancipation, some still wanted to remain on their plantations. Today most muslim women happily wear the burka and assume their role as second class ctizens.

The law she broke was unconstitutional - see the SCOTUS verdict. And yes, she did it deliberately. If no-one challenges unjust laws, they never get overturned.

You agree with me, then, that she broke the law and that she did it deliberately. I agree the law was unconstitutional. A law abiding citizen gets unconstituional laws changed via the law, they don't break them.
And, for the record, I support Rosa Parks breaking the law. That is my argument against FireGarten.

And what kind of idiotic statement is it to call a boycott illegal?

Simple fact, not a matter of opinion.
In Alabama in 1955, boycotts were illegal.

Serves them well. If you treat your customer like ****, you don't deserve any better.

You misunderstand. The businesses suffered because the blacks were not able to get to them - because the blacks were boycotting the buses!

 

[westprog]

ddt,

You are miscontruing the intent of my post.
I support Rosa Parks actions. I'm jusat denying that they were diplomatic as others here would have us believe.

Of course they weren't diplomatic. Rosa Parks was being highly provocative and challenging other people's deeply held beliefs. She was right to do it.

She could have listened to white preachers invoking biblical precedent for segregation, and decided to publicly burn a bible instead. That would have been a stupid thing to do - dividing her own community, and enraging many people who would have been inclined to support her.

The reasoning of "Rosa Parks was provocative - therefore anything provocative is good" is so obviously flawed that it hardly needs analysing. Trying to help people who are suffering under oppression while totally ignoring their own wishes is condescending and arrogant.

 

[BillyJoe]

westprog,

I see you've gotten off the bus:

Rosa Parks, effectively, was saying to people (both black and white) "Do you agree with segregation?" That's pretty much what her actions amounted to. And implicit in that was the expectation that people would make the right choice. She was being respectful of people (both black and white) on the understanding that most are good and will make good choices.

Of course they weren't diplomatic. Rosa Parks was being highly provocative and challenging other people's deeply held beliefs. She was right to do it.

For what it's worth, I agree with your view of Rosa Parks actions.
FireGarden's view is faeryland stuff disconnected from reality.

She could have listened to white preachers invoking biblical precedent for segregation, and decided to publicly burn a bible instead. That would have been a stupid thing to do - dividing her own community, and enraging many people who would have been inclined to support her.

I wouldn't disagree.
But Rosa Parks was fighting segregation which was being supported by more than biblical quotes.
The pastor was fighting the koran, the main source of the motivation for the twin towers attack by muslim fundamentalists. Death to the infidel.
Koran burning was tightly relevant in his case.

The reasoning of "Rosa Parks was provocative - therefore anything provocative is good" is so obviously flawed that it hardly needs analysing.

Again I agree, and I have explained the difference between the two events several times. What is appropriate in one case can clearly be inappropriate in other cases depending on circumstances.

Trying to help people who are suffering under oppression while totally ignoring their own wishes is condescending and arrogant.

Except that the pastor was making a point about the attack on America.

 

[FireGarden]

FireGarden,

In your post you first state:



So here you are disagreeing with me.
But then you immediately follow with this:

So, in the very next sentence, you're agreeing with me!
Then you try to make a distinction:

So what is it exactly that you're trying to say.
You don't think pissing on people is likely to make their blood boil?

Come on BillyJoe, you're not this dumb. I've read you on this forum for quite some time. When you make people's blood boil, their anger isn't necessarily directed at you, is it? You can make people's blood boil by telling them the news. That doesn't mean they're going to shoot the messenger. Yes, pissing on them will make their blood boil. Well done for spotting that.

But you are talking about two different stages of two different battles.

By the time of the Rosa Parks incident, blacks had already been freed from slavery. Moreover they were already allowed to sit in a bus occupied by whites. Segregation amounted to whites sitting at the front and blacks at the back.

But, even in the present day, there is total intolerance of apostates and non-believers by muslim fundamentalists with nary a moderate in sight to publicly oppose them.
Neverthelss there are some parallels....

No, there is not total intolerance of apostates. As you would know if you had bothered to read some of the sources I gave you. It serves no purpose to magnify your enemies faults in this way. It wouldn't even justify the acts you want to support.

You are rewriting history.

Rosa Parks challenged the status quo. The status quo was enshrined in a law which required blacks to sit at the back of the bus. Whites and blacks accepted this and Rosa Parks challenged them both.

Isn't that what I said?

Her two friends sitting with her immediately moved a row back to make way for the white man who had just entered the bus. Only Rosa Parks remained seated.

Similarly when Jo Ann Robinson (who absentmindedly sat at the front of a nearly empty bus and ran off in tears when the bus driver screamed at her for doing so) approached the Women's Political Council, of which she was a member, they brushed off the incident as "a fact of life in Montgomery".

And, when Vernon Johns tried to get other blacks to leave a bus in protest after he was forced to give up his seat to a white man, the response from his fellow blacks was "You ought to knowed better."

And what happened after the Rosa Parks incident?
After E.D. Nixon and Martin Luther King organised a boycott of the Montgomery buses in protest at the arrest of Roas Parks, violence erupted: "King's home was bombed on January 30". "Nixon's home was bombed on February 1". "The homes of two black leaders, four Baptists churches, the People's Service Station and Cab Stand, and the home of another black were all bombed". "An unexploded bomb was found on King's front porch". "Snipers shot at buses".

Finally, when the pissed-off, blood-boiling, city white men defended segregation by saying that integration would lead to violence, one white man, Judge Rives stood up and asked, "Is it fair to command one man to surrender his constitutional rights...in order to prevent another man from committing a crime?"

I don't see how this changes anything. Rosa Parks was still correct to demand an end to segregation. And she was correct in the way she did it.

She deliberately broke the law. She was arrested and charged. She upset both blacks and whites till some eventually came to her aid. The illegal Montgomery bus boycotts and associated violence followed.

And Pastor Jones, if he had gone ahead with burning Qurans, would not have broken the law. What is your point? If Phelps burnt a Quran (I can't be bothered to check) he didn't break the law. What's your point?

Good on Rosa Parks, and others, for breaking a bad law. I'm sure she did make people angry. But not all that anger was aimed at her. A lot of the anger was aimed at segregation.

She could have symbolicly burnt the law book prohibiting segregation. Istead, she chose to actually directly piss off blacks and whites by breaking that law.

I see you said "piss off" rather than "piss on".
I think that's progress.

 

[FireGarden]

Of course they weren't diplomatic. Rosa Parks was being highly provocative and challenging other people's deeply held beliefs. She was right to do it.

You don't think diplomacy can challenge people's beliefs? I think it can do just that. Diplomacy makes such challenges while keeping the channels of cummunication open.

westprog,

I see you've gotten off the bus:




For what it's worth, I agree with your view of Rosa Parks actions.
FireGarden's view is faeryland stuff disconnected from reality.

How so? I guess you think people can't be respectful and challenge beliefs at the same time.

The pastor was fighting the koran, the main source of the motivation for the twin towers attack by muslim fundamentalists.

I wouldn't agree with the Pastor on that.

 

[BillyJoe]

FireGarden,

I think you're just playing with words now.
It seems our views are not that far apart after all.
More an emphasis in one direction or the other.

 

[FireGarden]

FireGarden,

I think you're just playing with words now.
It seems our views are not that far apart after all.
More an emphasis in one direction or the other.

Our views overlap, in that we both agree that certain ideas need to be challenged.

But our views are also different in that we disagree on the worth/meaning of burning Qurans. I really would like to know how you would respond if 50% of Americans burnt Qurans on a regular basis. Surely you would see that as bigoted. I'm not even putting it as a question. The question becomes: what level of Quran burning do you see as acceptable? And why do you think that anyone should accept a small amount of Quran burning without condemning the act?

As to playing with words...
I admit I'm not the most eloquent poster here, but am I really so difficult to understand? For instance, I do not see how you saw fit to make this kind of comment:

So its okay to kill a few thousand non-believers in plane crash.
It's okay to kill people who do not agree with you.
It's unacceptable to demand to have a different view?

 

[westprog]

You don't think diplomacy can challenge people's beliefs? I think it can do just that. Diplomacy makes such challenges while keeping the channels of cummunication open.

It was essential that Rosa Parks gesture be accompanied by clear, reasoned demands. She wasn't asking for the millenium, or an end to prejudice. She was asking that segregation on public transport be ended. Because she had a clear demand, supported by the black population, it worked. But you're right - gestures of impotent rage don't achieve anything. Demands not backed up by some kind of incentive don't work either.

So if the protest had been hijacked by militants who made all kinds of miscellaneous incoherent demands, it would have been far less likely to have succeeded. The demands were focussed and achievable.

It's also worth noting that when a pregnant schoolgirl made a similar gesture, it was ignored. She was just as brave as Rosa Parks - made the same stand - but she wasn't media friendly. The time wasn't right. In order to get the necessary support, they needed to ensure that the person at the centre of the controversy be herself entirely uncontroversial.

The lesson is that annoying people is never the aim of any protest, if it wishes to be successful. The aim is to achieve something. The more focused the aim, the fewest people who can be offended or excluded, the better.

 

[BillyJoe]

But our views are also different in that we disagree on the worth/meaning of burning Qurans. I really would like to know how you would respond if 50% of Americans burnt Qurans on a regular basis.

I haven't answered this question because it's not relevant to anything I've said. It's not relevent period. 50% of Americans are never going to burn korans. As it turns out, it's difficult for even one American to burn a koran. And it seems they don't need to actually burn one. All they need to do is threaten to burn one. The news of that non-event went round the world within a day and by the end of next day they had rioted in Kashmir and killed 19 people. What does it tell you about a religion that the mere threat to burn a koran results in the death of 19 people. And I forget how many were killed after the Danish cartoons were published. So what point there is to asking a question about 50% of Americans burning korans escapes me quite frankly.

Surely you would see that as bigoted. I'm not even putting it as a question. The question becomes: what level of Quran burning do you see as acceptable? And why do you think that anyone should accept a small amount of Quran burning without condemning the act?

I don't see the bigotry. Your preference might be to point out the ambiguity, the contradiction, and the unethical practices promoted in the koran similar to what others have done with the bible. But, if someone wants to symbolically denounce the message contained in the koran by burning it, that is their prerogative. You are burning it with your critical review. They are critically reviewing it by burning it. The fact that people who live by the koran would kill in response to the mere threat of someone burning it just confirms how reprehensible that book really is. But, then, why would they not also kill someone for their critical review of the koran?

...oh wait

Theo Van Gogh murdered in Amsterdam
​

 

[BillyJoe]

The lesson is that annoying people is never the aim of any protest, if it wishes to be successful.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Annoying people is the essence of any protest.
If you don't annoy people, they don't pay attention. If they don't pay attention, they don't receive the message. If they don't receive the message, they cannot change the way they think.

You will alienate only those who would never accept the message no matter how it is delivered. Good people will see the correctness of the message and, more importantly, act on it.

Diplomacy?
Well, give us a while and we might see what maybe we can do about your problem...right after we deal with all those annoying protesters out there.

 

[FireGarden]

I haven't answered this question because it's not relevant to anything I've said.

Perhaps you should consider whether it's important to the points I'm trying to make. What point am I trying to illustrate by asking that question and comparing it to people copying Rosa Parks? Answering that might help you to understand me.

It's not relevent period. 50% of Americans are never going to burn korans.

It is relevent because it is often useful to judge an act by asking "what if everyone did that?" I think this is one of those cases.

You know what Muslims would feel like if 50% of Americans burnt qurans. You know they could not feel equal. If Qurans are burned without condemnation then Muslims will feel that they don't matter. And that applies even if it's only the likes of Phelps and Jones. Clinton was right to call such plans "disrespectful and disgraceful".

As it turns out, it's difficult for even one American to burn a koran. And it seems they don't need to actually burn one. All they need to do is threaten to burn one. The news of that non-event went round the world within a day and by the end of next day they had rioted in Kashmir and killed 19 people. What does it tell you about a religion that the mere threat to burn a koran results in the death of 19 people.

There's been rioting in Kashmir for a good long time. While reports of Quran burning were another flashpoint:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/13/kashmir-protesters-killed-quran-row

There have been others, as the above article will tell you. I condemn the riots, but I won't pretend that Quran burning was the only issue in a place where tensions are high.

I don't see the bigotry. Your preference might be to point out the ambiguity, the contradiction, and the unethical practices promoted in the koran similar to what others have done with the bible. But, if someone wants to symbolically denounce the message contained in the koran by burning it, that is their prerogative. You are burning it with your critical review. They are critically reviewing it by burning it.

They are not critically reviewing it by burning it. A review of any kind would need words.

And I know you don't see the bigotry. That is why I keep returning to the 50% example.

Would you understand why I see bigotry if 50% of Americans were burning Qurans? What about 40%? 10%? What percentage is acceptable? Just for the sake of argument.... Humour me, please. Try to argue in favour of a certain percentage of people burning Qurans -- without being condemned -- being something which can escape making Muslims feel as if they have no value in society.

 

[westprog]

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Annoying people is the essence of any protest.
If you don't annoy people, they don't pay attention. If they don't pay attention, they don't receive the message. If they don't receive the message, they cannot change the way they think.

You will alienate only those who would never accept the message no matter how it is delivered. Good people will see the correctness of the message and, more importantly, act on it.

Diplomacy?
Well, give us a while and we might see what maybe we can do about your problem...right after we deal with all those annoying protesters out there.

No, the point is not to annoy people. It's not to attract attention. It's to change behaviour.

Naturally you've ignored the detail of the Rosa Parks case. The reason it worked was because the message was clear. It was not anti-white bigotry. It wasn't some hoodlum misbehaving. The gesture was the message.

When a gesture needs to be explained in order to tell people what it isn't, then it's a foolish gesture. When Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, the message people got was that she didn't want to be made to move so that a white person could sit down. Simple, justified, and able to win the support of most reasonable people.

So, when choosing a gesture aimed at attacking the excesses of Islam, do you, say, support a march of Muslim women removing their veils - or do you choose something which will attract the support of racists and the very same religious fundamentalists that you are supposed to be opposing?

"Oh, but we'll issue a press release". Yeah, everyone will read that.