Let's see if I have this straight...
Burning an American flag is OK...that's just "expression."
A cartoon of Mohammed...is that OK today still?...that's just expression.
Burning a Bible is just expression, last I checked.
Beating your wife in Sharia is acceptable.
Executing a convert to another faith is acceptable in Sharia.
Institutional hatred of Jews *and* Christians *and* Buddhists is acceptable in Sharia.
But burning a Koran, that's just hatred!
Have I got this correct?
It's a totally different culture with completely different morals and ethics. I understand your analogy 100%, but try explaining that to a Muslim who lives under Sharia law -- a person who hasn't grown up under the influence of a Western social and political system.
They don't think in terms of "expression." You burn the Quran. The Quran is a message from God. You insult the Muslim's intelligence by debasing Quran. Your boldness, audacity, lack of fear and lack of respect by burning the Quran means that you are calling the Muslim an idiot for thinking it was written by God. The Muslim takes this personally.
This is how you violate the dignity of the Muslim, not by denying his right to free expression of an opinion, but by humiliating and insulting him. You provoke him into fighting harder and harder to defend his honour. He intends to achieve that by directing his anger at Christians or other minorities living in his country. Burning the Quran is likely to lead to more persecution of Christians.
Just like the anger that Westerners often feel that their countries are being infiltrated by Muslims and immigrants who don't assimilate, Christians are like a thorn in the side of Muslims in Middle Eastern and Muslim-dominated countries.
To the Muslim, honour is more important than expression.
Islam is not a religion of peace as it is applied today...it is a religion of attrition. There is no room for coexistence...and since there is no room for coexistence, I have no reason to molly-coddle.
Christianity is often accused of not being a religion of acceptance, but a religion of rejection, condemnation, damnation, vilification and demonisation.
Salty, with due respect, you're one of the good guys...but if you know so well how to do this...why aren't you doing it?
It's a matter of timing. I was getting a bit ahead of myself there. I know Christianity better than I know any other religion, because I deliberately chose to explore it. But I didn't explore it in the traditional and conventional way of exploring dogma and theology that was driven by literal interpretations. I made up my mind several years back that understanding Christianity was not as straightforward as listening to the kind of rhetoric being spewed out by most pastors and Christian web sites.
I needed to get away from traditional Christianity. I set my mind on "thinking outside the box" and I knew it would take several years to remove myself from the confines of traditional Christianity.
During that time I've been using this message board as a way of passively (not actively) learning about other traditions from what various posters said. It's a process very much absorbing ambient radiation (of various wavelengths). I've been behaving very much like a broadband/wideband receiver.
I wasn't so much trying to use teachings from other religions as looking for insights as to how a religion might work socially, economically and politically. This was what took me out of the box of traditional Christianity. When I now talk to a traditionally-minded Christian, I often get the sense that they are trapped in some paradigm and they think if they venture outside of that "box" or paradigm they are no longer exploring Christianity.
Religions as concepts are too big for anyone to get complete knowledge of them. Almost all of us are tweaking our understanding of some aspect of it. We will never know all of it. Different people are interested in different things.
The traditional-minded Christian gets trapped in the paradigm most often called evangelical Christianity or various creed-driven Christianities. I sought to find one that was not driven by a creed and have recently decided that "my Christianity" cannot be driven by any so-called "fundamentals." Fundamentals will prevent me from achieving Christianity's ideals, its mission, vision and purpose.
I believe, however, that I am reaching a critical point where I can now start to explore other traditions at a deeper, rather than a superficial level (which I was doing before). But I will have to do this one by one. I can now transition from a coarse-grained understanding to a fine-grained one -- well, maybe not -- maybe just a medium-grained one.
At this stage I know very little about Islam, but after years of out-of-the-box thinking, I think I can go into the learning process knowing what to look for -- rather than looking at its theology, I think it's more important to consider how it works than what it teaches.
I will probably be looking first at Judaism before moving on to Islam. There was an interesting thread last year about Christianity's relationship with Judaism. I was reading stuff about that about two weeks ago and what I learnt from that will influence how I explore Islam. But I can't do it all in a fortnight. This stuff happens gradually. I have other things to do. I have plans on what I want to discuss, but keep putting it off.
I live in Gainesville, but I don't know this pastor from Adam. I accidentally drove by that church a year ago looking for yard sales but I can't tell you now where it is...and with all of the media frenzy I have no intention of trying to find it.
Oh no....... Juantoo at the Dove Outreach Centre, caught in the act of burning Qurans!!!! -- or being found among the people doing it. How would you like to be on television?
