I would not do any of that behavior. But when it was revealed that a Quran was shot, it was not anyone personal property. If it were I would suggest an apology and a new Quran. But if I buy it i can do what I want with it.
If you burn a Bible in your Christian hosts’ living room does it make it less rude if you own the Bible?
I think you’re missing that the “crime” is probably not the destruction of a book, per se, but the likely disobedience of standing orders not to do things like that.
It is nobodies living room. We are not guests. We are occupiers. They have lots of reasons to hate us. Shooting a book is a little one. Some people run around looking for affronts. This is an example.
We have made many attempts to keep our soldiers under control. It wont happen. As the film showed ,we shot up mosques and blown up schools. If all we did was shoot a Quran ,they could forgive us for what we have done.
We should not be there at all. That is our affront.
All that is true, more or less, but officially, we are not “occupiers,” and the state of Iraq is our ally and our host.
Well, that is a foolish statement. Occupying conquerers are almost never ‘officially’ occupiers in modern times.
Even the Nazi occupation of France & Norway was not an ‘officially’ occupation – they were there with approval of the Vichy & Quisling governments, respectively.
Which does nothing to undermine my point, that point being that we are not admitting we are occupiers but operating under a mutual pretense that we are invited guests. Not shooting the local holy books is a necessary part of maintaining that pretense.
Not at all analogous from their POV. According to a religious briefing I had a couple weeks ago, the Muslims consider the Quran to be Divine (as opposed to the Bible, which Christians merely considered to be divinely inspired). That’s where a big part of this comes in, it’s considered a completely different degree of blasphemy for them than it would be for us.
Does any body believe THAT.?
I doubt they blew up a mosque just for kicks. I suspect there is a background to the event that isn’t being told. Muslim insurgents have a long history of using mosques as ammo dumps and military installations. If a band of insurgents is using a mosque for military purposes, it should be destroyed.
Though I don’t have any direct knowledge of the cultural training of the 1940s I do know what kind of training is going on now. If I had to guess I would say we now get a hell of a lot more training in cultural awareness and sensitivity. That does not stop individuals from being retarded.