US Gen. Petraeus Decries "Burn A Koran Day"

[Master of Ossus]

Can't link to it 'cause I heard it on TV, but the latest update was that Pastor Attention-Whore spoke to a local Florida imman, apparently unaware said imman had ZERO connection to the folks in NYC. Pastor insists the Florida imman promised the NYC "mosque" (which is, if I recall, a community center and not a mosque, or at least not just a mosque) would be moved.

That's just a distinction without a difference. If it has a prayer center set up specifically and exclusively for Muslims then it's a mosque.

The NYC crowd say they hadn't talked to Pastor Attention-Whore or the Florida imman, whom they had never heard of, nor would they be speaking to either tonight since they were busy with Ramadan observances.

I'm wondering if a Florida imman pulled a fast one on the Pastor in the interests of defusing the situation.

Also heard the Secretary of Defense called Pastor Attention-Whore and spoke with him, saying canceling the burning was a matter of national security.

The government's response to this is getting ridiculous. It's one thing to try and discourage him, but this isn't going to be an al Qaeda "recruiting bonanza" if he does burn the Koran.

In tangentially related news (since it doesn't seem that the mosque in New York and the Koran burning thing are actually related at all), Donald Trump has offered to purchase the real estate at a 25% premium to defuse the situation. Dunno if this will have any effect on anything, of course.

[MarshalPurnell]

I am disgusted with the whole situation. Obviously Pastor Jones is a bigoted, attention-seeking jackass who embarrasses America by his mere existence. His church of thirty people is a complete joke, his grasp of his own theology (nevermind Islamic theology) is limited to whatever Biblical messages agree with his bias, and his ability to whip up a crisis with this stunt is a disgrace. He shares more in common with the Islamic fundamentalists he denounces than with most people who live in this country.

At the same time, he has every right to desecrate the Koran. If Muslims react in a violent, insanely disproportionate manner, that is their fault. It is completely irresponsible to pander to the sensitivities of one religion in such a way that no one ever would to any other religion. And it would be the death of secular society to pander to the demands of all religions for their sacred cows to remain unslain, either by irreverent atheists or believers of another sect. And yet here we are, where Muslim demands to be spared from any objectionable speech are afforded a gravitas that borders on the utterly absurd because, frankly, some followers of that religion are willing to resort to violence given the pretext of offense.

Ideally this little hick and his redneck "church" should just never have been given their spotlight in the first place. It's a failure of the sense of perspective on every possible level. And we face the prospect of more jackasses seizing the spotlight to be offensive, and other jackasses using the spectacle to justify violence in the name of Allah. Wonderful.

[Anguirus]

And tell him: They will not prevent him from attempting the burning, as it's his right. However, if he decides to go ahead and do it, they will stop him, as that action puts the lives of the United States servicepeople, and it's citizens aboard, in danger.

How is this supposed to make sense? I don't just mean considering that the First Amendment and laws against assault exist, I mean, that this passage directly contradicts itself.

Also, the problem with your position is that, no matter how much we disagree with this bigoted, stupid little fucktard, is that this frantic hand-wringing practiced by everyone from the President on down about how this will rile up the Islamists just empowers them and validates their use of political intimidation.

[wautd]

I am disgusted with the whole situation. Obviously Pastor Jones is a bigoted, attention-seeking jackass who embarrasses America by his mere existence.

With all the media attention and even Obama speaking about it: Mission Accomplished.

Seriously, even the media over here (Belgium) is talking about it. It's just a little troll burning a stupid book, but thanks to all the media hype it'll be cartoon wars all over again.

[KrauserKrauser]

As much as it is a bad idea for him to do it, where does it make sense to completely ignore the insane reaction that this is getting out of the Islamic world. Burning a book = justifiable death threats, in what world is that acceptable.

Just like Amadinijihadii going on about how we should be arresting him. Just because he runs a theocratic police state doesn't mean the rest of the civilized world does.

They are proving the guy's point that Islam is outright violent when confronted, which is entirely unacceptable. They want nuclear power and the other benefits of modern society while never changing from their 12th century goat herding social mores. They don't mix, it's either one or the other.

[Thanas]

As much as it is a bad idea for him to do it, where does it make sense to completely ignore the insane reaction that this is getting out of the Islamic world. Burning a book = justifiable death threats, in what world is that acceptable.

I bet if you ask among the american right wing, many would be okay with people getting threatened for burning american flags, which have even less objective value than a book.

[Andrew J.]

That's just a distinction without a difference. If it has a prayer center set up specifically and exclusively for Muslims then it's a mosque.

Yeah, no. If a hospital has a chapel inside it, would you call the whole thing a church?

I think that even a lot of paranoid bigots would be less upset if they properly understood that the mosque is incidental to a larger community center, and not ten stories of Islamic religious indoctrination ZOMG!!!!!!!!!!1

[mr friendly guy]

I have a question for MoO. If the World Trade Centre has a prayer room for Muslims, would you consider the WTC a Mosque as well?

Because I remember reading in 2001 this fact in passing. So with a bit of googling, lo behold

The future of Islam by John Esposito

page 30 of this book

Overshadowed were the shock and concern of many mainstream Muslims. The Gallup World Poll found that 91 percent of Muslims interviewed believed the attacks were morally unjustified. Eclipsed also was the fact that some 358 Muslim employees died in the World Trade Center; the number of Muslims working there was so large that the WTC had created a Muslim prayer room on the second floor.

You will of course need an amazon password to search, but this is the relevant passage.

[MKSheppard]

I think for 2011 -- the 10th Anniversary of 9/11; I will set up a local BBQ in my part -- we'll burn everything, from US Flags, Korans, Bibles, the Talmud; etc.

Should be fun to count the number of death threats I get and from what corner.

[General Zod]

I think for 2011 -- the 10th Anniversary of 9/11; I will set up a local BBQ in my part -- we'll burn everything, from US Flags, Korans, Bibles, the Talmud; etc.

Should be fun to count the number of death threats I get and from what corner.

Make sure to put up a video on Youtube.

[Darth Yan]

Krauser, Islam has actually contributed a lot of knowledge; while you are correct in some of your points, you could have honestly expressed it a lot better. Islam isn't any more backwards and primitive then any other faith.

[Master of Ossus]

Yeah, no. If a hospital has a chapel inside it, would you call the whole thing a church?

I've never heard of a hospital having an exclusive space set aside for members of a particular religion, except for religious institutions which double as hospitals.

But, yes, if the primary purpose of building the hospital was to build a church, then I would consider it to be a church, even if it also happened to serve as a hospital.

I think that even a lot of paranoid bigots would be less upset if they properly understood that the mosque is incidental to a larger community center, and not ten stories of Islamic religious indoctrination ZOMG!!!!!!!!!!1

It is the reverse: it is a mosque which happens to be a community center. The entire purpose of building the "community center" is to build the mosque.

I have a question for MoO. If the World Trade Centre has a prayer room for Muslims, would you consider the WTC a Mosque as well?

No. The World Trade Center was not designed to have an integrated mosque, nor was it designed and built for the purpose of promoting Islam. It was designed as a secular building. The mosque is the exact opposite: it is intended as a religious building.

[Master of Ossus]

Krauser, Islam has actually contributed a lot of knowledge; while you are correct in some of your points, you could have honestly expressed it a lot better. Islam isn't any more backwards and primitive then any other faith.

Bullshit. Arab countries produce scientific papers at a far lower rate than would be expected for their proportion of world population and GDP. Looking at top-50 medical journals, the discrepency is even larger: despite housing 4.6% of the world's population and 1.4% of the world's GDP, these countries are collectively turning out only .1% of the world's medical knowledge. It's also not related to the overall economic health of the countries involved: Kuwait produces more papers/person and more per unit of GDP than Saudi Arabia. What describes the difference, if not the hold of Islam in the two countries?

Moreover, your equivalency of other faiths is laughable in lieu of some faiths actively discouraging technological understanding and improvements (e.g., the Amish).

[Zed]

The intellectual situation in the Arab world is really rather saddening. From the (United Nations Human Development) Arab Human Development Report 2003, p. 82:

Most Arab countries have not learned from the lessons of the past and the field of translation remains chaotic. In terms of quantity, and notwithstanding the increase in the number of translated books from 175 per year during 1970-1975 to 330, the number of books translated in the Arab world is one fifth of the number translated in Greece. The aggregate total of translated books from the Al-Ma’moon era to the present day amounts to 10,000 books - equivalent to what Spain translates in a single year (Shawki Galal, in Arabic, 1999, 87).

http://www.arab-hdr.org/publications/ot ... r2003e.pdf

[Darth Yan]

historically they were more progressive; things have changed certainly, and islam has played somewhat of a part; but saying that it's all islam's fault is kind of silly. there are other factors, and there are plenty of historical context that makes the offensive verses less hateful even if they don't remove it entirely. Is islam perfect. Lord no. But to say that it's all bad with very few redeeming factors is just stupid.

[Kanastrous]

Having been world leaders in the arts and sciences several centuries ago is not particularly relevant to the conspiracy-mongering, superstition-ridden, religious-mania-driven societies with which a lot of Arabs are saddled, today.

I'm disinterested in 'historical context' when we're talking about beliefs and traditions that are problematic today.

[Darth Yan]

true, but the current state of the islamic world is not entirely due to islam. there are other factors that also play a part.

[Master of Ossus]

historically they were more progressive; things have changed certainly, and islam has played somewhat of a part; but saying that it's all islam's fault is kind of silly.

The state of the world's scientific knowledge is not "all Islam's fault," but you cannot honestly argue that Islam is aiding in the development of scientific knowledge, given these figures. Nor can you argue that it is "no more backwards than any other faith." It is, obviously, actively detracting from the development of humanity and developing science.

there are other factors, and there are plenty of historical context that makes the offensive verses less hateful even if they don't remove it entirely. Is islam perfect. Lord no. But to say that it's all bad with very few redeeming factors is just stupid.

So... "Different cultural context. Can't judge by modern standards. No religion perfect. Faith is beautiful." Are there any other platitutdes that are endlessly recited by Biblical apologists that you will spare us from in this thread?

As for "redeeming factors," can you cite any that come close to compensating for the obvious truth that Islam as practiced today is actively detracting from modern scientific discovery?

And why is it "just stupid" to call a religion on the Dark Ages-esque policies of its practitioners which are actively encouraged by that religion?

[Bakustra]

Yeah, no. If a hospital has a chapel inside it, would you call the whole thing a church?

I've never heard of a hospital having an exclusive space set aside for members of a particular religion, except for religious institutions which double as hospitals.

But, yes, if the primary purpose of building the hospital was to build a church, then I would consider it to be a church, even if it also happened to serve as a hospital.

The prayer space was to be administrated separately from the community center proper, but now Mr. Rauf has indicated that the center is to contain prayer spaces for a variety of faiths. I suppose that it is now a church, synagogue, and mosque simultaneously? That is ignoring the definition of a mosque, since I doubt that you care about that, and it is immaterial to the fit of sensitivity that has come upon so many.

I think that even a lot of paranoid bigots would be less upset if they properly understood that the mosque is incidental to a larger community center, and not ten stories of Islamic religious indoctrination ZOMG!!!!!!!!!!1

It is the reverse: it is a mosque which happens to be a community center. The entire purpose of building the "community center" is to build the mosque.

Your psionic ability to distinguish the public aims of Feisal Rauf for Cordoba House/Park51 (a multicultural center to improve interfaith understanding and senses of community) from his real aims (sneak mosque into vague vicinity of Ground Zero for undefined but insensitive aims... or something) is without peer. Tell me, is it congenital, or a learned skill?

Krauser, Islam has actually contributed a lot of knowledge; while you are correct in some of your points, you could have honestly expressed it a lot better. Islam isn't any more backwards and primitive then any other faith.

Bullshit. Arab countries produce scientific papers at a far lower rate than would be expected for their proportion of world population and GDP. Looking at top-50 medical journals, the discrepency is even larger: despite housing 4.6% of the world's population and 1.4% of the world's GDP, these countries are collectively turning out only .1% of the world's medical knowledge. It's also not related to the overall economic health of the countries involved: Kuwait produces more papers/person and more per unit of GDP than Saudi Arabia. What describes the difference, if not the hold of Islam in the two countries?

Moreover, your equivalency of other faiths is laughable in lieu of some faiths actively discouraging technological understanding and improvements (e.g., the Amish).

So if I were to show that, say, Italy produced fewer scientific papers, would this make Catholics and Protestants backwards and primitive religions? Your argument that it's solely religious is interesting, since you conflate "Arab" with "Muslim". I was unaware that the two were synonyms. I shall have to inform my Turkish and Indonesian acquaintances that they are no longer Muslims. In other words, you are taking a small selection of heavily Islamic countries and ignoring a great many others, as well as other factors that you will no doubt attribute to Islam (Islam makes you poor! Protestantism is the light!). You even misinterpret Yan's statement- which I took to be historical and which he has confirmed is historical. (P. S. Show that technology makes you better. The Amish (and Mennonites) reject specific technologies because they believe them to be disruptive to community life. That is a philosophical point of view, and there are other technologies (modern healthcare, as an example) which they are willing to use as well.)

true, but the current state of the islamic world is not entirely due to islam. there are other factors that also play a part.

The hell are you talking about, young man? Everybody knows it to be a fact that European exploitation of Islamic countries was the fault of those Muslims! If they didn't go around with their five pillars of faith, Europeans wouldn't have conquered and colonized them. They didn't industrialize because, much like the Orthodox and Coptic adherents, they are simply inferior to Jews, Protestants, and Catholics. No other reasons are applicable!

[Shroom Man 777]

Maybe we should quantify the amount of scientific papers produced in the African continent, and try to correlate it with certain ethnographical features of peoples dwelling in that continent also?

[Bakustra]

there are other factors, and there are plenty of historical context that makes the offensive verses less hateful even if they don't remove it entirely. Is islam perfect. Lord no. But to say that it's all bad with very few redeeming factors is just stupid.

So... "Different cultural context. Can't judge by modern standards. No religion perfect. Faith is beautiful." Are there any other platitutdes that are endlessly recited by Biblical apologists that you will spare us from in this thread?

As for "redeeming factors," can you cite any that come close to compensating for the obvious truth that Islam as practiced today is actively detracting from modern scientific discovery?

And why is it "just stupid" to call a religion on the Dark Ages-esque policies of its practitioners which are actively encouraged by that religion?

Detracting? How stoned are you right now? First you declare that Muslim=Arab, then you leap from "relative paucity of scientific work" to "obviously actively detracts from scientific knowledge". So tell me, how many facts disappear each day because of the presence of Muslims in the world? Or is this you just applying the old joke about "not working overtime is stealing from the company" and not getting why it's funny?

For that matter, wouldn't Christianity be even worse, seeing as even the Dark Ages lacked the death penalty for homosexuality, such as missionaries introduced to Uganda? Wouldn't there be regular honor killings across nations with Muslim citizens? Would Italy and Greece, both of which have similar traditions involving honor killings, therefore be Muslim nations, then? I mean, far be it from me to suggest that there may be differences of interpretation between different people concerning religion. After all, that's why Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox are all quite meaningless, since all Christians believe the same things.

Maybe we should quantify the amount of scientific papers produced in the African continent, and try to correlate it with certain ethnographical features of peoples dwelling in that continent also?

Why, Shroom, it's not because of race, my good man, it is solely religion that is the problem. Why, pagans and Mohammedians, which my trio of flat-screen TVs and the church Mission Fund tell me are the only religions in Africa, simply lack the mental capacity to perform science, unlike Jews and Christians. [/thick sarcasm]

[Kanastrous]

'Race' (a la phenotypical obsessions) doesn't really figure much in ethnography, does it? If at all...?

[Bakustra]

'Race' (a la phenotypical obsessions) doesn't really figure much in ethnography, does it? If at all...?

Read what Shroom said again, please. I'll give you a little space, and a spoiler.

Spoiler

The point is that Shroom is suggesting that we correlate scientific achievement with ethnicity, and if we did so, we would find that African nations produce few scientific papers, and by Ossus's standards, we would then conclude that this is due to ethnicity, because religion does vary, seeing as I was being sarcastic above. So we would conclude that African ethnicities are incompatible with scientific achievement, and thus detract from science, again according to the Ossus method. I predict furious objections to this.

[Simon_Jester]

I think for 2011 -- the 10th Anniversary of 9/11; I will set up a local BBQ in my part -- we'll burn everything, from US Flags, Korans, Bibles, the Talmud; etc.

Should be fun to count the number of death threats I get and from what corner.

Burn Confederate flags, too. Hell, if there's a Confederate flag burning I'd be tempted to show up; I've always wanted to see one of those.

No, I'm not joking.

there are other factors, and there are plenty of historical context that makes the offensive verses less hateful even if they don't remove it entirely. Is islam perfect. Lord no. But to say that it's all bad with very few redeeming factors is just stupid.

So... "Different cultural context. Can't judge by modern standards. No religion perfect. Faith is beautiful." Are there any other platitutdes that are endlessly recited by Biblical apologists that you will spare us from in this thread?

As for "redeeming factors," can you cite any that come close to compensating for the obvious truth that Islam as practiced today is actively detracting from modern scientific discovery?

By the way, how do Muslim countries compare to other nations with equally dysfunctional educational systems, nations that like the Muslim world went directly from pre-modern social systems to a long period of colonial exploitation, that like the Muslim world have had to cope with the disruptive aftereffects of being part of someone else's empire... but that have different religions?

How many scientific papers does, say, Christian Ethiopia produce? How about Christian Uganda? Or Buddhist Burma?

[Kanastrous]

'Race' (a la phenotypical obsessions) doesn't really figure much in ethnography, does it? If at all...?

Read what Shroom said again, please. I'll give you a little space, and a spoiler.

I did read it again, and then I went and re-read (admittedly Wikipedia's) definition of 'ethnography' again, and I still don't see the correlation of 'race' with accomplishment. The definition of 'ethnography' there had to do with environment, customs, practices, etc but made no mention of 'race.' And since a society's customs, practices, habits, superstitions, whatever, etcetera have a big impact upon that society's progress...how is it problematic? You mention 'ethnicity' in the spoiler but the word never appears in said article re: 'ethnography.'

Unless that's not what you're driving at, in which case...sorry, you'll have to make it even simpler.