I made a mistake and voted yes in the poll.
To clarify: ALL book burnings are attention getters. I don’t believe it was a fundraising scheme.
Personally, I have no problem with book burning, and I believe anybody that does needs to get a life. Now, if somebody steals a book, and burns it, the person should get into trouble for stealing it. It is a free speech thing. People do things that disgust me, but, I would never carry on the way these other people are.
Best wishes,
hh
I voted the third one, “He started off sincere, but realized this was his 15 minutes and could get donations.” I know his type very well, and I think he is sincere in believing the Koran is evil and should be burned but also a showman who was quick enough to grasp an opportunity. He may still burn them.
Meanwhile, Australian lawyer smokes pages of Bible and Koran, asking “Which is best?”.
I think he was just showing the Muslims what it feels like to be threatened. Granted burning a book isn’t taking thousands of innocent lives but it is hitting them where they would feel it doing it on 911, the day they were supposed to open their new 911 memorial.
If it was an attention getter it worked! If he is fund raising, power to him. So is the Imam on the taxpayers dime. Isn’t he just back from his all expenses paid trip to the middle east to drum up mosque money. Our country can’t afford to support this but we do?
Just because it isn’t against the law doesn’t make it right. I really think he was challenging the mosque which is legal to build but insensitive and unwanted by most of NY. He was showing them that he had the legal right to burn a Koran even though that is not right and equally insensitive. They were both being bigots.
He met with a Muslim cleric who told him if he did not burn the Koran they would move the mosque to another location so he said he would not do it. Then the cleric denied making him the promise at all. Says a lot on trusting a Muslims word.
I love what he did because of the reaction he got. Not that it made any difference to the building of the mosque but it may have made a few think about how upsetting it can be to be insensitive to others. We are more worried about being insensitive to the Muslims than to our own people. That is crazy! Trying to change people who don’t want to change does not work. They want to change us as bad as we want to change them. Negotiating with terrorists does not work. History shows us this time and time again. When we do it we surrender our power to them.
Plainly it showed just how insane the Muslim world is. That the president said, It would jeopardize the troops and our national security to burn a book… Yet all we do is focus on the preacher? If he woke up just one person with his stunt he is my new hero.
Me too. I don’t think he did it for attention, but because he was gonna show them damn terrorists. Or, at least I prefer to think that bating our enemies (not all muslims, obviously) into possibly harming our folks abroad arose from honest stupidity rather than a calculated attempt to garner funds.
The truth is that several people have been killed in Afghanistan and the Kashmir as a result of protesting the burning.
No two ways about it, that Pastor has sinned. His actions led to death.
Unless he put a gun in someone’s hand and threatened to kill their family if they didn’t do his bidding then he isn’t any more responsible for anyone’s death than those who drew pictures of Mohammed.
the real focus shouldn’t be on the Pastor, it should be on the people who are willing to kill to impose their belief system on others.
Okay, well if it’s that simple, then I suppose he was serious, and got scared at the last minute, and then used God to justify it. If he had flip-flopped, I’d be more likely to believe he did it for fame and money.
Haven’t we considered that this might have been a clever plan?
1 “I’m going to do something hideously offensive, and no one can stop me”.
2 “Ok, even though you couldn’t stop me, I will stop anyway as a gesture of good will.”
3 “Your turn”.
Enough people will buy the false equivalence between an Islamic cultural centre in Manhattan and a deliberately publicised Koran-burning to put a lot of pressure for no
investment whatsoever.
Cite that “they” were going to open a 9/11 “memorial” on Saturday?
Cite that the Park51 imam is somehow being paid by the federal or state government? I’ve never heard a hint of this, and there’s no reason to assume that the director of a private project would be somehow supported by “the taxpayers dime.”
Why would you assume that the imam was the one who was lying? There isn’t any evidence whatsoever that Jones ever had a conversation with the imam of the Park51 project. There IS evidence that a Gainesville imam had a number of conversations with Jones, and may have attempted to put Jones in touch with Rauf, but if Rauf says he did not have a conversation with Jones, why would you assume that Rauf is lying rather than Jones? (You don’t have to answer that, actually - we all know the answer).
Allowing a community center that happens to include a prayer space to be built several blocks away from Ground Zero, surrounded by strip clubs and other businesses, is not “negotiating with terrorists.” The people involved with the Park51 project did not fly planes into buildings, have not been charged with terrorist activities, and have actively denounced for YEARS the use of violence and terrorist activities in the Muslim world.
Woke up one person to what? The fact that there are some extremist members of the Islamic faith? I think 9/11/01 already showed everybody that. What, exactly, was Jones’ stunt supposed to wake us up to?
I didn’t say he was responsible, I said he sinned.
He was a sincere idiot, who stumbled upon a way to get worldwide attention. And the media gave it to him.
I loved the clip Jon Stewart showed the other night about a TV pundit going on and on about how the media is giving this guy too much attention, he’s a looney and should be mocked and ignored and not given all this airtime, and then the host interrupts him to say “I’m sorry we have to cut away, Reverand Jones is stepping up to the mikes to give a statement…”
I think it also shows how insane the US is.
If the president wants to keep our troops safe, he should bring them home to the US. If he wants to defend America, and Americans, and American freedom, he should be trying to do dirt to the combatants, not a US citizen.
Shouldn’t the soldiers be protecting us? And instead, the president wants to infringe on one pastor’s first amendment rights, 10,000 miles away from the battlefield, so that the soldiers will be safe? If the pastor recants, will our soldiers be safer? This is a pretty sad state of affairs,when the President pulls this sort of stunt, and nobody has called him on it.
Best wishes,
hh
:dubious: When was this?
Not by the New Yorkers who can actually think for themselves, something you are obviously unfamiliar with.
:rolleyes:
I just want some sort of consensus on the spelling of the book in question.
I’m spelling it Koran, and no car bomb can stop me.
I’ll betcha one could. Seems pretty wasteful of a precious car bomb, though.
Bah! Let’s just see them try. C’mon, Osama, give me your best shot. (And I live in a 36-story building.)
Do you travel everywhere using 36th floor skywalks?
I was thinking more of planes for that one.