Burn a Koran Day?

As reported, this doesn't really seem like a good idea to me.  (I've wondered the same thing from time to time when reading about a future martyr who decided to destroy someone's highly-cherished idols. Is there a difference? What is the idea here?)

Comments

[Robert Espe]

I suppose it comminicates that, "we hate you as much as you hate us" which of course should convince them to back down once they know we're serious...Now they just need a Jesus action figure with Qu'ran burning action to raise money.

[Michael Bauman (not Dr.)]

Some of the Apostles engaged in idol smashing but those were local and concrete. The Koran is the codification of an idea, not a good idea, but the mere destruction of copies of it does little good. If the book they are destroying is in English, it's not really the Holy Koran anyway.

How does one love one's enemies? What does that really look like?

[John FB]

It's not a matter of destroying someone's sacred texts just to offend them. This is about letting the minority of Muslims who are bent on establishing Sharia in all corners of the world - and who cannot co-exist peacefully with those who believe differently than they - that we are not going to cave in.

However, I think there are probably other ways to do it that might be as effective: oust from this country or imprison any radical imam who publicly makes an obvious call for violence against America's citizens or threatens bodily harm against those who offend their religious sensibilities (which is apparently easy to do). Free speech is almost absolute here, but even it has its limits.

[this]

You don't burn ancient literature, no matter how lunatic it is. Especially if it's also regarded as sacred.

I have no wish to cause offense here, but to me the Koran is what you get when you take sola scriptura to its logical conclusion. Here, in other words, is the writing that gives you all the answers (as the K. says "in plain Arabic"): just "Read". Par contre what differentiates Christianity from Islam and the ethnic tradition of Judaism is the Church.

[Yosefit]

This lost soul needs to study his own religion (original scriptures which are in HEBREW.)

1.Learn Hebrew
2.Study your religion/understand it fully
3.AFTER that; study ARABIC (language of the Holy Qur'an)
4.Study Qur’an. Every verse starts with: "We seek protection from the devil and his influence". (You said it's an 'evil' religion?)

It is human nature: anything unknown is 'frightening' &'threatening'. Take step towards educating yourself like most scholars, maybe then you can be a 'qualified' preacher.

This idiot just triggered more hate crimes.
1.Aggravate Muslims
2.Insult them
3.Burn their holy book

In return, they blow you into 50 million pieces as well as other innocent souls of your religion:
4.Call them terrorists.

How about every time a child gets molested we burn a bible? Works fine?

[Deacon Michael D. Harmon]

Well, Yosefit, your second list is just exactly how Christians and their Scriptures are treated in many (most?) majority-Muslim countries. Yet, not too many Christians are setting themselves off as suicide bombers in Saudi Arabia or Egypt, are they? (And yes, we have dropped a great number of bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. We also dropped a great number of bombs in Bosnia and Serbia. On Christians, to get them to stop killing Muslims.) We just don't know what we're doing, do we? Or perhaps our military is trying to get the people who are killing innocent people (and sheltering behind them when they attack) to stop doing that. At least there's a chance of it, and it worked (at least so far) in Serbia and Iraq. Afghanistan is a tougher case, but it is where al-Qaida developed its plans to attack New York and Washington. I don't favor burning Korans, but I'm not so sure Islam is a beneficient religion. I know it's not worship of the One True God. But I don't think nonbelievers should be killed, they should be converted instead. In that context, note which side of the controversy has put up the death penalty for conversion.

[this]

How about every time a child gets molested

You mean, like that 9-year-old Mohammad molested?

[Firinnteine]

Deacon Harmon -- does your "we" equate to "The United States of America" or "Christians"? Some radical Muslims equate these, as do some Americans... but Jesus seemingly made it pretty clear His Kingdom doesn't line up with any kingdom of this world, however nifty its constitutional freedoms. You may be clear about these distinctions, but some other folks are not. I suspect the organization in this story may be suffering from such confusion....

General comments:

It seems to me that churches burning copies of the Qur'an are undermining those of us who want to object when countries like Kuwait buy and burn Bibles (which reportedly happened a few years ago).

I also can't work out how this equips and encourages Christians (not least those participating in the "party") to show our Muslim neighbors the love of Jesus Christ.

[Hagar]

Burning the Kuran may provoke more than two billion muslims around the world to burn the bible, you will be happy for that?

Terry Johnes has a lack of mind, Muslims saying he is afraid of the very fast growing islam.. and now terry johnes will increase the gap between the American citizens of different religions, so don't blame them if they never consider you as a friends as long as you deal with them as enemies.

[Eddie Kovacs]

If the Muslims do burn Bibles, it won't hurt God, any more than Christians (or anybody else, for that matter) burning the Koran could hurt Allah. If Allah really is a god, he can contend for himself when someone goes burning his book(s). (There's a fun little principle I learned from Judges 6:31.)

Muslims are bullies: they beat their wives, they continue to "marry" and rape little girls in the tradition of their violent and lecherous founder, they have rape victims stoned for adultery, they put a price on the head of anyone who converts away from Islam, and they spread their religion at the point of a sword. What else are we to treat them as but what they are? Muslims are evil; they are our enemies. He who treats them as a friend is an enemy, not only to our nation and its liberties, but to all humanity, which Islam seeks to enslave.

Islam is an evil religion, and we do our deluded neighbors no favor to let them go on believing it is anything else. Let those terrorists and the Islamic hate groups that spawned them be provoked! Nothing awakens the deluded from their delusions so much as seeing the liars they believed were peaceful behave like the bullies they are. Let's call a terrorist a terrorist, a bully a bully, and an appeaser an appeaser. Provocation is no excuse for terrorism; else, 9/11 would have been more than sufficient justification for nuking all Islamic nations. Islamic terrorists must each pay for their own sins; God does not allow anyone to shift the blame from sinners to their tempters, and neither should we.

Let our First Amendment rights be upheld, and let the Korans burn. If the Muslims are too hot-headed to bear up under so infinitesimal a fraction of the insult and injury that they and so many others have done to Christianity, they must not really have all that much faith that their Allah is so great and their ultimate victory so inevitable as they claim. They must secretly be afraid that Allah is deep in thought, or busy, or traveling, or sleeping and in need of awakening! (There's another principle I picked up from Scripture, courtesy of I Kings 18:27.) They might even doubt his very existence. We should do our best to encourage these doubts about their false god at every turn.

[Burns at Work]

It may be surprising that with all the rules and regulations associated with the elements that can cause burns at work