# The politics of Quran burning **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 23, 2012, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754 "2012-02-23T18:17:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2012, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/21 "2012-02-23T22:23:24Z")
Since this is working so well for them, I fully expect the Taliban to start marking potential military targets with quotations from the Koran, so they can incite the Afghan populace every time they are hit by artillery. Instead of human shields, they can hide behind Koran shields and get the same result. That whole country is mad. Time to leave. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2012, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/22 "2012-02-23T22:27:12Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Of course. But there are some protests because of this specific act. > [Scholars say you can bury it, erase the text, or just leave it in storage.](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/02/afghan_quran_burning_protests_what_s_the_right_way_to_dispose_of_a_quran_.html) Some say burning is OK if it’s done “ritually on mosque property.” And, yet, there’s no rioting over the defacing of the books themselves by Muslims. After all, that’s the reason those particular copies of the book in question were being disposed, wasn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2012, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/23 "2012-02-23T22:27:44Z")
By (allegedly) putting secret messages in scripture, I think they already went as far down that road as you could reasonably expect them to go. If they were putting Quran quotations on military targets I think people (who weren’t already sympathetic to their cause) would understand that the Taliban were the ones putting the words in danger. > [@Monty](#): > > And, yet, there’s no rioting over the defacing of the books themselves by Muslims. After all, that’s the reason those particular copies of the book in question were being disposed, wasn’t it? Beats me. Does what the detainees were supposedly doing count as defacing the books? Or maybe they don’t trust that story anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/24 "2012-02-24T02:13:14Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Our enemies rely on the Big Lie, that we are at war with Islam. It is essential that we counter this lie at any and every opportunity. Really? So if we’re a friendly nation we can burn Korans? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/25 "2012-02-24T02:18:33Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > Really? So if we’re a friendly nation we can burn Korans? Because we’re a free nation, we can burn Korans. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/26 "2012-02-24T02:29:55Z")
> [@RedFury](#): > > I obviously disapprove of provocative actions of this sort – after all, it is mindful of Christianity’s scorched-earth campaigns of the past. Which I doubt did anyone any good. > > But I wonder, instead of going full-Monty over every Koran burning that happens, why don’t Muslims literally fuel their rage over a bunch of Bibles? That way, no one gets hurt, it becomes sort of a tit-for-tat…with the added bonus of showing how silly the whole thing is on either side. Are you asking a serious question? I ask because I thought you were quite knowledgeable about the Middle East and your question would strike anyone familiar with Islam and Muslims as extremely ignorant. Muslims do not have the same view of the Bible that devout Christians have of the Quran and more importantly Muslims don’t view the Quran the way Christians view the Bible. ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/27 "2012-02-24T04:00:54Z")
Selective media reporting? If every time something went wrong OS and we showed Westboro Baptists reaction they might think we are all loonies as well? ---
**Author:** ![Grumman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/43a26b/32.png) [@Grumman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grumman)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/28 "2012-02-24T04:12:35Z")
> [@sisu](#): > > Selective media reporting? If every time something went wrong OS and we showed Westboro Baptists reaction they might think we are all loonies as well? Have the Westboro Baptists _ever_ done anything as bad as the reactions seen in Muslim countries whenever something bad happens to a Koran? Have they ever rioted, murdered people or committed acts of arson? ---
**Author:** ![sisu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/df705f/32.png) [@sisu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sisu)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/29 "2012-02-24T04:28:06Z")
> [@Grumman](#): > > Have the Westboro Baptists _ever_ done anything as bad as the reactions seen in Muslim countries whenever something bad happens to a Koran? Have they ever rioted, murdered people or committed acts of arson? No but they are loonies. ---
**Author:** ![Cubsfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Cubsfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cubsfan)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/30 "2012-02-24T05:47:55Z")
We’re the US. All we do is apologize to Muslims for every action we take. Burning a stack of Korans inside Afghanistan may have been dumb, but not as dumb as leaving the burn pile recognizable as Koran ashes. Otherwise I’m pretty much over the extreme pandering to the insanity of Muslims, though most Muslims are not insane. Mostly just the ones in 3rd world shit holes like Afghanistan. Oh and Saudi Arabia. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/31 "2012-02-24T06:07:24Z")
> [@Cubsfan](#): > > We’re the US. All we do is apologize to Muslims for every action we take. Yeah. Every time some soldiers piss on some corpses or some Qurans get burned or some detainees get stripped naked and tortured, the U.S. apologizes! Why are the Muslims so unreasonable about this? ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/32 "2012-02-24T06:11:10Z")
> [@Cubsfan](#): > > We’re the US. All we do is apologize to Muslims for every action we take. Oh poor you. Let’s be a bit more realistic here: your government apologises to Muslims when it’s strategically necessary to do so. Unless you’re bombing or and occupying their countries. If you occupy a country (which in Afghanistan something I support, and my country’s military contributes to) that has an extreme version of a religion and a whole heap of very poor, extremely propagandized and uneducated people, you have to deal with what you’ve got. While I have no doubt the burning is being used as a convenient lever by the Taliban _et al_ to whip up anti-US hysteria and violence, you’d think that the US military, after nearly _ten whole years_ of occupation of _two_ Muslim countries, would by now have consolidated enough cultural knowledge not to exacerbate by cultural insensitivity an already problematic situation, no matter how assinine the reasons for outrage appears to us westerners. With more cultural sensitivity and a less gung-ho attitude, the occupation of Iraq could possibly have been a success. (See how the Brits handled Basra before the Yanks fucked up the rest of the country so much that the policy couldn’t continue.) Afghanistan’s a hell of a lot more difficult a country to occupy, so repeating mistakes similar to those made in one of the US’s greatest global failures is clearly not the correct thing to do. Not that the apology will do any good anyway, except perhaps with the educated leadership in Kabul. Hopefully the riots will just fizzle out after a while to be consolidated with all the other antipathy. But please, don’t adopt a victim mentality here. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/33 "2012-02-24T06:14:37Z")
> [@Cubsfan](#): > > We’re the US. All we do is apologize to Muslims for every action we take. > > Burning a stack of Korans inside Afghanistan may have been dumb, but not as dumb as leaving the burn pile recognizable as Koran ashes. > > Otherwise I’m pretty much over the extreme pandering to the insanity of Muslims, though most Muslims are not insane. Mostly just the ones in 3rd world shit holes like Afghanistan. Oh and Saudi Arabia. Agreed. They’re almost as bad as the Catholics in Northern Ireland, who’ve during the 90s used to regularly threaten to riot whenever they heard about Protestant marches through West Belfast and who would attack anyone they heard shout “The Pope’s a Queer” or scrawl a similar slogan on the wall. Of course, if the US had ever been bombed into submission, conquered and had hundreds of thousands of it’s citizens murdered, Americans wouldn’t get upset if some of the occupying troops decided to burn the American flag and you’ll never meet anyone in Canada, Australia, Japan or the UK, who think that Americans have extremely weird fetish in regards to the American flag. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/34 "2012-02-24T08:09:10Z")
The idea of cultural equality is largely a modern western value. We can see the equivalence that burning a Quran is as offensive as burning a Bible or burning an American flag. But we have to remember that many people in the world don’t think that way. They want to protect their culture but don’t care about other people’s cultures. To a Muslim with this viewpoint, burning a Quran would be a major sin while burning a Bible would be no big deal. And he wouldn’t see why he should care if Christians were offended by a Bible being burned. ---
**Author:** ![jackdavinci](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackdavinci/32/3259_2.png) [@jackdavinci](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackdavinci)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/35 "2012-02-24T08:31:42Z")
I wouldn’t want to outlaw it or anything, but I generally find the idea of book burning to be distasteful. I have a friend who posted videos of himself dragging Quran ebooks into the digital trash and then erasing them. Even though it was a symbolic protest against violence, it still felt a little bit too intentionally provocative to me. OTOH I felt comfortable with the idea of myself and others posting pics of Mohammed online. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/36 "2012-02-24T12:02:26Z")
Since it is evident that only incidents of book burnings – and other comparable events – are being excused, let alone excused at the presidential level, when it is accompanied by the ravings of a mob, or in general the threat of violence, then it is obvious that it is not so much the event itself that is being reacted upon, as it is the threat of violence. It is the politics of allowing oneself to be intimidated by the violence of the barbarian. Personally when I see the same groups protesting the burning of a Koran, protest the destruction of Buddhist statues with the same vigor, then I shall think about giving an ear to their grievance. And appros.: > [@](#): > > In the midst of the political turmoil racking this tiny Indian Ocean nation of 1,200 islands, a half-dozen men stormed into the museum last Tuesday and ransacked a collection of coral and lime figures, including a six-faced coral statue and a 1 1/2-foot-wide representation of the Buddha’s head. Officials said the men attacked the figures because they believed they were idols and therefore illegal under Islamic and national laws. > > The vandalism was reminiscent of the Taliban’s demolition of the great carved Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan in early 2001 [Vandalism at Maldives Museum Stirs Fears of Extremism](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/world/asia/political-turmoil-threatens-archaeological-treasures-in-maldives.html?_r=4&scp=2&sq=maldives&st=cse) ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/37 "2012-02-24T12:03:26Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > Oh poor you. > > Let’s be a bit more realistic here: your government apologises to Muslims when it’s strategically necessary to do so. Unless you’re bombing or and occupying their countries. > > please, don’t adopt a victim mentality here. It’s “strategically necessarily to do so” because of the tendency to violence of various Muslim groups. Rather like the episodes with the Danish cartoons and the freaking teddybear named Mohammed. Any excuse to kick off. I would be nervous about, say, posting a youtube of myself criticizing Islam, because I would put myself in physical danger. And a similar fear is operating in international politics. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/38 "2012-02-24T12:15:01Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Rather like the episodes with the Danish cartoons and the freaking teddybear named Mohammed. Show me where the US apologised for either of those incidents and I’ll agree with you. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/39 "2012-02-24T12:31:13Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > Show me where the US apologised for either of those incidents and I’ll agree with you. They didn’t. The USA seems to have taken then classic Voltarian approach, saying the cartoons were offensive and incited ethnic hatred, but supported the publishers right to print them. Must Danes remember that the support of ordinary Americans was more heartfelt, for instance through a buy-Danish campaign that more than balanced out the Boycott campaign from the Arab nations. Bill Clinton, to his everlasting shame, condemned the European newspapers that had published the cartoons and urged that the publishes should be convicted. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2012, 12:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754/40 "2012-02-24T12:39:53Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > They didn’t. The USA seems to have taken then classic Voltarian approach, saying the cartoons were offensive and incited ethnic hatred, but supported the publishers right to print them. Must Danes remember that the support of ordinary Americans was more heartfelt, for instance through a buy-Danish campaign that more than balanced out the Boycott campaign from the Arab nations. My response was a direct response to someone whining that “all we [the US] do is apologize”. I’ve already acknowledged that the people rioting are hot-headed idiots. > [@](#): > > Bill Clinton, to his everlasting shame, condemned the European newspapers that had published the cartoons and urged that the publishes should be convicted. I didn’t know that. That sucks. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-politics-of-quran-burning/613754.md?page=3)