Burn the Koran

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ROTKU, I'm extrapolating, sure, but I still think I'm right. Piss on a Christian and it's freedom of experession. Piss on a Muslim or a Jew, it's a hate crime. I'm so sure of this I'd bet my left man globe that my scenario is correct, and the Imam would never see the inside of a jail cell, much less a court.

 

LKD, If not to proselytize, why would bibles written in Pashto and Dari be sent to Afghanistan? The soldiers couldn't read them. It strains credulity to believe that the bibles were sent for any other reason. As to the fact that the bibles were burned, an essential difference remains. Our Florida pastor intended to burn Korans to make a political statement. What the DOD did was a force protection measure. If those bibles somehow got out, it could have been perceived by Afghans that the U.S. government or the U.S. military was trying to convert Muslims -- a perception that would almost certainly endanger our troops even more than they already are.

While they considered sending the Bibles back to the church, they worried the church would turn around and send them to another organization in Afghanistan. Having already passed through military hands, they feared it would give the impression that they had been distributed by the U.S. government.

The bibles were burned because troops at posts in war zones are required to burn their trash, and sending the bibles back wasn't really an option. Force protection is that important.

This also means that they would have been arrested for burning bibles.

 

LKD,
Drew did well to point out the false dichotomy of the pastor's bible burning (= a deliberately provocative act) and the burning of Dari and Pashtu bibles (= garbage disposal).

The two events, as Drew pointed out, are not only not equivalent, they also do not constitute a discrimination of Christians.

The burning of Afghan bibles has nothing to do with discriminating Christians. Proselyting in Muslim countries is usually a criminal offence; it doesn't help the US cause (whatever that exactly is) if they are not only perceived as occupiers, but as armed missionaries, in US uniform. Indeed, bibles in Pashtu and Dari can only serve one purpose - proselytising. If soldiers feel that proselyting is part of their job in the army they are not just mistaken. They are actually violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice - because they are disobeying standing orders that prohibit, explicitly, proselytising in either Iraq or Afghanistan. They are also violating the US constitution, namely the separation of Church and State. That is why these bibles were ordered to be destroyed.

Calling that Florida Pastor a lunatic and objecting to his deliberate insult to Islam has nothing to do with discriminating Christians either. The damage he causes, however, is comparable to the one in the previous example: For Muslim audience inclined to believe that it serves to underline the perception that the US is waging a war on Islam. An undesirable result.

 

It would appear that it would be a possibility in the UK. It wouldn't be in the US.