In the case of Jones and his church in Gainesville, the Council on American-Islamic Relations decided that the timing of his Koran travesty was simply too hot to ignore. Even though the group regularly ignores the videos that it receives of people burning, shooting or ripping apart Islam’s holy book, CAIR decided to issue a July 19 press release announcing its own protest of “International Burn a Koran Day.” The group handed out free copies of the Koran.
The word was officially out and the media storm kept growing as angry reactions ”” from Arab streets to the White House ”” rolled into the world’s newsrooms.
Lost in the din were the quiet, measured words of many religious leaders who tried to walk a knife’s edge of logic in their public statements.
For starters, they had to note the painful fact that the Dove World Outreach Center was an independent Pentecostal congregation and its members were responsible to no higher religious authority than their own pastor. Thus, there was no one who could stop this event, other than public officials who, in order to do so, would have had to trample the rights of Jones and his flock.
In case after case the federal courts have said that the right to be offensive to anyone is protected by the first amendment. They have done this largely in the realm of flag burnings and flag desecration. The right of the church to burn a Koran is settled law. It is as settled as you can get unless you want to carve out an un-Constitutional Islam exception.
In light of the precedents they have labored so hard to get, the liberal angst over this is absolutely nauseating.
One can acknowledge the constitutional right to think, say, write anything, without having to forgo opposition to profoundly stupid, ignorant, violence-inducing, life-threatening acts by grandstanders who either have no care for or no mental capacity to discern the threats they are posing to the national interests of the United States and the welfare and safety of its citizens abroad, whether military or civilian. The media’s attention certainly is merited if it is commentary on how completely reckless and irresponsible some of our adult countrymen can be even after having apparently completed a basic course of public education. Pastor Jones’s words and actions were extremely newsworthy on that level, at least.
To tell the truth, I’m sorry now he didn’t have the courage to burn them. The response from Islam wold have been more instructive than all the dictionary’s words. Larry