Burn a Quran day

bobcarp said:
But if it is going to cause Muslims, both radical and non radical, to seek vengeance by blowing up a building, then wouldn’t it be better to just not do it?
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If a Muslim blows up a building because someone burnt their favorite collection of bedtime stories, that Muslim is not non-radical.
 
Towlie said:
Again, he was asked not to go through with it. They didn't infringe on his right to free speech anymore that I infringed on yours by hinting that you should learn that the phrase "a lot" is two words.
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Will you be the first poster in this thread to answer (and not just make a claim ala the inside job idiots) why burning a koran is constitutionally protected free speech? What is guaranteed by the constitution to be protected free speech and why is it protected?
 
Burning a Quran you own is protected free speech.

Asking someone not to burn a Quran is also protected free speech.

No one's free speech rights have been abridged, and no one's Constitution has been broken.
 
(CNN) -- A Florida pastor who called off a Quran burning said late Thursday he was "rethinking our position" after a proposed meeting over the location of an Islamic center near New York's ground zero went unconfirmed.

...

"We assumed what the imam [Musri] said was true. Now, we're in a state of limbo and we have to rethink our position," Jones said Thursday evening. "We are rethinking our position. We are reconsidering, but we'd like to think what the Imam said was true. We're a little back to square one. We hope this thing works out."
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Surprise.
 
Checkmite said:
You know, this guy is really starting to get on my nerves with the "all we want is peace and harmony and unicorns and we never would've done anything to make people so angry if we had known" bulls***. Moving the mosque to a different location would create a hell of a lot more harmony than insisting on going ahead with it.
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So would moving to the back of the bus when the white man asks you nicely.

Damn uppity Muslims...
 
bokonon said:
So would moving to the back of the bus when the white man asks you nicely.

Damn uppity Muslims...
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Oh no, don't get me wrong. I get that there's principles at stake and all that jazz. But this mealy-mouthed dweeb needs to harden up and say that, and for God's or Allah's or even just for my sake knock it off with all the "WE ARE BRINGING PEOPLE TOGETHER IN HARMONY!" crap because anyone with eyes can see that it's doing exactly not that.
 
noreligion said:
Will you be the first poster in this thread to answer (and not just make a claim ala the inside job idiots) why burning a koran is constitutionally protected free speech? What is guaranteed by the constitution to be protected free speech and why is it protected?
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"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"

The Supreme Court, in its unanimous opinion in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, wrote:
Quote:
It is well understood that the right of free speech is not absolute at all times and under all circumstances. There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which has never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or “fighting” words — those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.

Since burning a Quran is not lewd and obscene, profane, or libelous, and does not inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace, it falls within the very broad category of protected free speech.
 
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noreligion said:
Contact a lawyer and get them to defend Turner because his free speech was abridged by the government. If you and the others here are so positive, let's see the courage of your convictions. Are you guys cowards? Sounds to me like you guys are not much different from the idiots that scream 9/11 was an inside job.
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I guess it's my reading comprehension again acting up, but I have no earthly idea what that means.
 
bokonon said:
"Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech"

The Supreme Court, in its unanimous opinion in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, wrote:
Quote:
It is well understood that the right of free speech is not absolute at all times and under all circumstances. There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which has never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or “fighting” words — those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.

Since burning a Quran is not lewd and obscene, profane, or libelous, and does not inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace, it falls within the very broad category of protected free speech.
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Are you just going to spout off foolish pseudo-intellectual crap or will you answer the question? How is burning the Quran free speech? Don't make me use my ignore button on you. :D

ETA: I'm going to leave my comment because I don't want to try to cover it up, but I'll also apologize to noreligion. My comment was juvenile, even if it was tongue-in-cheek.
 
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Why is Jones carrying a gun and why did he say he deliberately is trying to provoke Muslims by burning the koran? That is a breach of peace proven by his own words and by a stretch it is also incitement to riot. Tell me again how Jones actions are free speech.
 
Shouting fire in a crowded theater is not protected free speech, but i think the numerous Supreme Court cases (some cited here) would protect the book burning idea.

I think the idea was really really dumb, but the incredible reaction to the proposal does raise some interesting questions regarding whether Islam is a violent religion. I don't buy the nonsensical analogies to "pedophile priests" since there is no accompanying argument that Christianity promotes the practice. I have't read the Koran, but ive read numerous passages that seem to suggest that violence is encouraged, whereas I'ver never seen a convincing quote from the New Testament that promotes violence. If there was a Bible burning, it might piss off a few folks and might make a small line of news buried deep in some obscure paper--but I doubt that it would elciit the widespread dread of retaliation that the proposed Koran burning did--to me, that's an issue worth addressing in a skpetical forum.
 
noreligion said:
Visited by the FBI and some here still cling to the inane idea that this is constitutionally protected free speech?
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Cling? No.

Correctly assert.

I certainly wouldn't want to bring one of your deadly "show me where I said"s down on my head, but you seem to be implying here that there is something about a visit from the FBI which demonstrates that burning a Quran is not Constitutionally protected free speech. Since that would be an absurd non sequitur, perhaps you can explain what you meant by this bizarre juxtaposition.

noreligion said:
Why is Jones carrying a gun
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I believe he has received death threats for announcing that he intends to exercise his First Amendment rights in an especially offensive way. Don't you read the news?

noreligion said:
and why did he say he deliberately is trying to provoke Muslims by burning the koran?
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If he did say such a thing (and, forgive me, but I won't assume that he did simply because you assert it), he probably wanted to convey his desire to provoke Muslims by burning a Quran. No doubt Fred Phelps desires to provoke homosexuals and servicemen, but their offensive speech is still protected by the U.S. Constitution.

noreligion said:
That is a breach of peace proven by his own words and by a stretch it is also incitement to riot. Tell me again how Jones actions are free speech.
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Because it is not a breach of the peace, nor is it incitement to riot. Since it is also not any other category of unprotected speech, it continues to fall within the broad default category of protected free speech.

There, wasn't that easy?
 
ACLU spokesman "Hensler", below, summarizes pretty well what should be the prevailing thinking on this. It is the censoring "based on hypothetical outcome", or what is often called "prior restraint" which is not allowed by the constitution.

The Koran burning is further complicated by the fact that many in the Muslim world cannot conceive of a government with such freedoms, and the fear is that they will assume that the US is sanctioning the insult to their faith.

It is so fraught with ironies and medieval thinking that the whole situation complete with a sanctimonious mustachioed pastor, who is now in a battle to save his own face, is worthy of a Shakespearean comedy.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20016003-10391695.html?tag=latest
Hensler told CBS News: "we're not insensitive to endangering troops abroad... but you can't censor speech based on hypothetical outcome. The Reverend clearly has the free speech right to burn a Koran, as disgusting and vile an act as it is. It's everybody else's right to exercise their free speech against him. You can't pick and choose who has constitutional rights.
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Coverage of Koran Case Stirs Questions on Media Role

A renegade pastor and his tiny flock set fire to a Koran on a street corner, and made sure to capture it on film. And they were ignored.

That stunt took place in 2008, involving members of the Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, Kan., an almost universally condemned group of fundamentalists who also protest at military funerals.

But plans for a similar stunt by another fringe pastor, Terry Jones, have garnered worldwide news media attention this summer, attention that peaked Thursday when he announced he was canceling — and later, that he had only “suspended” — what he had dubbed International Burn a Koran Day. It had been scheduled for Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Unlike the Koran-burning by Westboro Baptist, Mr. Jones’s planned event in Gainesville, Fla., coincided with the controversy over the proposed building of a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan near ground zero and a simmering summerlong debate about the freedoms of speech and religion.

Mr. Jones was able to put himself at the center of those issues by using the news lull of summer and the demands of a 24-hour news cycle to promote his anti-Islam cause. He said he consented to more than 150 interview requests in July and August, each time expressing his extremist views about Islam and Sharia law.

By the middle of this week, the planned Koran burning was the lead story on some network newscasts, and topic No. 1 on cable news — an extraordinary amount of attention for a marginal figure with a very small following. On Thursday, President Obama condemned Mr. Jones’s plan, and his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said that there were “more people at his press conferences than listen to his sermons,” in a bit of media criticism.
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They're feeding the troll.
 
Puppycow said:
They're feeding the troll.
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Rofl exactly Puppycow. This is more the media's fault (and Obama's not helping) than the guy actually burning the books. Hell I'm burning something right now, but no one will hear about what it is because I'm just some guy.. Which is what this guy would have been if we didn't give him all this attention.
 
(Edit: This is actually pretty serious, trolls have escaped the internet and hapless IRL people are blissfully feeding them..)

(Edit 2: And this was supposed to be an edit.)

(Edit 3: Really, this is bad, apparently real world media doesn't know how to spot trolling. Just imagine when the entire planet gets derailed like it was a forum thread!)
 
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Burning books is just wrong. The politically correct solution is to run the Quran through a shredder, then pulverize it in a blender with water, turn it into paper and then print the Torah on the paper. Everybody is happy.
 
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