Kudos to Terry Jones
Terry Jones finally did burn a Koran, and I am glad of it. In doing so, he confirmed our freedom of speech, as American citizens. And I am pleased to see that others have been following in his footsteps
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There are so many things wrong with this statement.
I'll start off by pointing out that you've just published a statement which, to any sincere Muslim, would be doubly offensive. You've just compared Muslims to "dogs" (an unclean animal in their faith) and used this comparison to imply that their reasoning powers are subhuman (they lack moral agency and cannot be held to human standards of moral conduct). By your own standards, you should be "called out as an asshole" for posting this comment.
(by my own standards, of course, comparing Muslim terrorists to dogs merely insults the dogs -- dogs are in general morally superior to Muslim terrorists).
Secondly, we are in a war against an enemy who started the war because they wanted to intimidate us into showing Islam greater respect. Consequently, anything that we do to show Islam greater respect than we show other faiths is giving aid and comfort to the enemy; and conversely anything that we do to show our despite for Islam defeats the enemy purposes. Terry Jones, whatever his motives, has just struck a blow for our side, and hence should be praised. When a foe wishes to transform our own society, we achieve his ends if we execute the required transformation ourselves.
Finally, if we want to keep the right to free speech, we must morally de-couple, in our own eyes, our free speech and violence by crazy people abroad. If we accept that moral couple, then we embark upon a chain of reasoning which ends with deciding "We must limit our speech at home, lest someone abroad take offense and harm others, for then we shall be responsible for that harm." That, we must avoid, at all costs.
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I just think this Jones guy should not be held up as the shining paragon of free speech that he is when his only intent is to draw attention to himself. Just because a bad person does something that turns out right, it doesn't make that person any better.
I agree that we can't and shouldn't be cowed into 'not provoking' the extremists; if we don't deliberately give them an excuse to murder people foreigners and infidels, they'll find one on their own just as well. this Jones character though is so clearly in it just for the publicity that it is sickening. Regardless of other factors, innocent people are being murdered as a result of this man's choice, and he pretty much knew that would be the result when he made it.
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Salman Rushdie was also attempting poetic literary devices, and that did not stop the Iranian government from putting a price on his head. What might have stopped the Iranian government from doing that was tangible measures taken against Iran for this act of war against Britain, but nobody was willing to take such measures at the time.
You are trying to put yourself, psychologically, in a category of "decent and reasonable people" at whom "of course" the Muslims would not take violent offense, while keeping Jones in the category of obnoxious fools who invite physical attack. You don't get it -- the Muslims regard the authority of shari'a as universally paramount, and in Islam there is "no sense of humor," as the Ayatollah Khomeini famously declared.
The thing which protects you against murder by Muslim fanatics for your horrible sin at comparing them to dogs is that, domestically, any such fanatics would be arrested even for conspiring to commit such acts and that, internationally, Muslim regimes fear that if they started sending death squads into America to murder Americans against whom they had taken offense, their own countries would be bombarded and invaded and their leaders finish up swinging from gallows. That is the only thing that keeps your freedom of speech secure -- not their (non-existent) moral sense of self-restraint, but rather their fear of the superior might of Civilization.
If that might declares itself unable or unwilling to protect you, you're SOL.
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Of course, if we took them at their word, we would take the first set down to the pound to have them spayed, and all of them in general, we would treat as is only proper to treat people who stand in relation to us as children to adults or the mentally incompetent to the sane -- namely, colonization in its most paternalist form.
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It isn't the first time that Muslim males have compared themselves to wild animals. They just can't control themselves when an evil woman bares her head in public! It's not their fault!
It's disgusting is what it is.
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But colonization is EVIL AND BAD AND... yeaaaaaah you know the drill as much as I do. ^ ~
Of course, if we took them at their word, we would take the first set down to the pound to have them spayed,
The sterilization would begin at the proverbial puppyhood, like how you have kittens spayed before they hit maturity to ensure they never breed. But on the other hand, with Muslims breeding the way they do, with multiple wives.... I don't know if that would work.
Tangented thought: if the Muslims are uncontrollable animals who ravage and rage and it's considered natural... and what is generally done with similar animals that attacked humans is to put them down... shame we can't take their own metaphor as a collective warning for their own behavior and pre-emptively do what we'd normally do with violent animals...
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Well, for one thing, we could regard jihadism as "child abuse" and routinely take children out of families in which Terrorists were being held up as role models. Hey, we've created a tyrannical and unaccountable agency in Child Protective Services, why not use it against actual evil for a change?
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