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Keith Davies
To Burn or Not To Burn, That Is the Question
September 11, 2010
In the age of new media and high-powered communications, the small story of a
tiny Church protesting with the symbolic burning of Korans sparked off an
international crisis. The president, the secretary of State, the top general in
our military, secretary of defense, every left and right wing media outlet world
wide weighed in with their views concerning this great insult to Islam.
The Pastor who decided to do this is not a person who follows the teachings he
espouses, however the world or to be more accurate the "free" world are just as
guilty of foolishness! Why do you ask? This Pastor does not deserve any
attention, as he is irrelevant. He represents only 50 people in a country of 300
million plus people. He does not represent the views of the 99.99% of this
country, so why bother giving him the attention that he does not deserve. Maybe
the left wish to slam Christianity, maybe the right wish to improve their
ratings, whatever the reason we are where we are at on this issue today. What is
important is now is that this story has got massive coverage, the result of the
controversy shows that we are in a no win situation with the Muslim world.
The Pastor was a fool for proposing to burn the Koran, because as most normal
people of faith this is not how one directs your anger but now that he has made
this story what it is, the consequences for not following through with his
threat are actually potentially greater than his backing down. Many, both
conservative and liberals breathed a sigh of relief that the Koran will not be
burnt. It must be noted that not burning the Koran could have even larger
consequences even though I disagree with the original proposal. The reason is
that you must understand the mindset of the Muslim world. They maybe offended by
the burning, however if the pastor backs off they view this as a victory for
Allah as their threat of violence and intimidation worked and Allah's will was
done. They do not think like people of the Judea Christian culture where
compromise is looked upon as a positive strength not a weakness. The backing off
by the Pastor in effect will cause more violence and more protests not less, the
threat of violent Jihad terror will intensify because of this political victory
which as achieved because of the threat of violence, so in effect violence i.e.
terror works.
The second reason is that the Islamic world needs to prove to us that if one of
their religious symbols are burnt or desecrated that they as a "religion of
peace" need to show to us that this is the case i.e. that words of condemnation,
restraint as well as prayers for peace, instead of riots, violence and killing
when someone from another faith insults Islam; needs to be witnessed from the
West. This will prove to us that tolerance in Islam exists. The West has
witnessed much provocation, desecrating of churches, burning of bibles,
persecution of Christians in the Muslim world yet we do not witness reciprocal
violence form mobs or riots in our Western countries against Muslims. The
current policies and political correctness of our government long term will
actually exasperate violence against Muslims when today we are unwilling to deal
with the true intention of fundamentalist Muslims.
The Imam who is building the ground zero mosque is unwilling to compromise on
his positions yet the USA non Muslim community are expected to compromise for
his faith. On CNN Imam suggests that violence might occur if the mosque is
moved. While he did not threaten to use violence he suggested that many of his
coreligionists might do so if he would compromise. The imam is brilliant at
using language that instills fear but at the same time obfuscates him from blame
for causing that fear. Imam Rauf is a slippery snake, who we have already have
exposed as a supporter of terror in his writings in Arabic in the Middle East
media. He will never compromise if you understand Islamic law like we do. The
Imam cannot move the mosque, as once land is purchased for a mosque, it can
never be sold or disposed of; it belongs to the Umma forever. The only way to
stop the mosque is through local legislation or violence (we condemn violence).
We have the perfect litmus test in front of us? The President should say that he
disagrees vehemently with the burning of the Koran, but Pastor Terry Jones has
the right to do it under the freedoms of the USA constitution, and if he does do
it, this is a chance for the Muslim world to react in a way that proves they are
a peaceful religion.
Unfortunately hell will freeze over first before the current President would
have the wisdom to utter such words. |
