Funny how many of those top tens can be similarly applied to the bible.. and it's most "devout" followers. Fundamental tea parties anyone?

As a black guy, who grew up as a Catholic and in the South, burning the Koran is synonymous to burning the cross - an act of racism towards black/brown people. As we've seen before with that black guy getting harassed at the WTC build site, these fuckers can't differentiate a black muslim from a black christian. Burning the Koran is a great excuse for them to not wear the white hoods.

Holy shit! I'm going to have to burn my personal copy of the Qu'ran, my KJV Bible, Dianetics, Book of the Dead, Native American Myths & legends, and the whole rest of my whole my book shelf of expired Gods.

'Cause you know...Nothing makes for a peaceful world like destruction and insults.

Are you shitting me? This has been in the news for weeks and you guys are just finding out?
The Muslim press has actually been pretty level headed about this, calling the pastor crazy, etc., although some are linking this to other events (Park51, the stabbed cab driver, recent mosque vandalisms) in a (predictable) attempt to label all of America as hostile to Islam. It's not getting that much air, though.

You don't suppose there's any way we could just drop a bunch of flyers saying that we really don't care much for the south either?

From the CNN article:

Plemon el-Amin, the imam of an Atlanta, Georgia, mosque, said that Jones' criticism of Islam is "really quite uninformed."
"But in America, there is the freedom to be ignorant," el-Amin said. "The only problem is in the world, many people don't understand that particular freedom. So what he is doing is like shouting fire in a theater, in a world theater, and people are upset."

Where's Ozzy Osbourne to bite the head oof THAT dove?

And seriously, burning holy books? That sounds like something only Muslims would do... (jk)

Well, you know, Dominic, you work for one of the papers that cared so much about Islamic sensibilities that they went out of their way to reprint the blasphemous images of Mohammad to make a point about free speech, right?

It seems kind of convenient for you to now be shrieking because some Americans using their First Amendment rights are going to put our troops at risk. Or maybe I'm forgetting about all your protests back then against printing the Dutch cartoons, out of your overabundance of concern for our troops.

I don't know who's right here. Everyone is wrong. Everyone shut up now.

Publicity circle accomplished.

It would be interesting to know if the "Dove World Outreach Center" has its roots in Dominionist theology, which holds that the Kingdom of God cannot begin until a fight-to-the-death showdown is provoked between Christians and non-Christians. These types of people have their tentacles deep into U.S. power structures such as Congress, the National Prayer Breakfast, the C Street house (whateverthefuck they call themselves), etc. They need to be widely exposed, mocked, disavowed, and discredited.

This HAS been in the news for ages now, but no less relevant, I guess. And I think there's a big difference, Elenchos, between a comic strip that pokes fun, and burning someone's holy book, which seems designed to stir up bad feelings. That said, I think the world would be a much better place if everyone's holy books ended up in a bonfire.

And Catalina, love the new fall colourway! The dark rinse and autumnal frock do wonders for your complexion!

This burning might put our servicepeople at risk? Why do Christians hate America?

If there's a response to this like there has been to the silly cartoons I'll burn a fucking Koran.

Burning books is dickish, but killing people over it is much worse.

@8: After 8 years of Karl Rove trying to suppress liberalism because it was "hurting our troops", it's certainly refreshing to see this argument turned against conservatives.

Nevertheless, this reasoning is still complete fucking bullshit. These people have the right to burn the Koran, and it's a right worth exercising and defending.

@8 ftw

You're either for free speech, or you aren't. Cartoonists should be able to make fun of Mohammed and crazy assholes should be able to burn the Quran without us trying to chill free speech with the "it could endanger the troops" line.

And btw - "it could endanger the troops" is also used by homophobes to object to gays in the military. And by the Obama and Bush administrations to try to destroy habeas law.

These people have always been around. They just didn't use to make the news, because the news wasn't on the hunt 24/7 for things to be outraged by, no matter how obscure or ridiculous. "Holy shit" is exactly the reaction they're looking for, and in an odd alignment of desires, the exact reaction you are seeking as well.

Hey, who sanitized the top of the Slog posting? It used to say something about "Christians," which was clearly stressing the quotation marks.

Anyway... I was just thinking that the difference between "Christians" and Christians is enormous. Real Christians are supposed to respect and love their neighbors, and by "neighbors," the Bible doesn't mean literally "only the people right next door to you." It means strangers, people from other places, foreigners.

It's not very neighborly to announce a hate-driven book-burning of another religion's holy book.

Anyone up for a bible-burning outside this particular church? Maybe someone should show them what it means to treat others as you would be treated.

They hope to start an apocalyptic confrontation so imaginary Jesus comes back to take their little, shriveled, hate filled spirits to imaginary heaven.

Meanwhile, the planet is burning.

The troops in Afghanistan need to GTFO anyway. If this speeds them along their way... meh. Let the Chinese build the pipeline.

Thank you, Canuck. What I really need is a plaster job and some better quality wigs, but times are tough.

As for this whole Quran burning thing, it's both stupid and provocative, but that's nothing new. it does occur to me, however, that there seems to be more boorish Christians than there Are boorish Muslims. After all, there a lot more of them than there are Christians- even when you count the baptized-but-no-longer-interested like myself.I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that the ratios don't match.

I do wish that Islam would hurry up and go through its reformation, or schism, or whatever you call it so that it wouldn't take itself so seriously. It worked wonderfully for Christianity. But gentle satire from inside would work much better than a handful of psycho hicks doing street theatre down in Dixie.

@15

Way to completely miss the point.

The argument was essentially with internal logic, not external logic. Burning someone else's sacred book because it was written decades after that fact, used to oppress women, and the justification for wars when your own is at least as guilty of all the same things is beyond stupid.

Burning someone else's sacred book because they are endangering your troops and a source of terrorism in such a public way to inflame exactly those sentiments still further is beyond stupid.

Declaring someone else's holy book invalid because it isn't historically supported by all expert scholars and scientists is a pretty damn stupid thing to say while holding the Bible sacred.

And so on.

Nobody here is claiming that people don't have the symbolic right to make this kind of statement. But you don't have the "right" to do so and demand people agree.

He has the right to do this. We have the right to think that he is a stupid wingnut doing far more to endanger the country than peaceful American citizens who happen to follow Islam.

Anybody who thinks a book is "sacred" has already completely missed the point.

I think Dominic's post title is an eye-rolling "Here's some more ridiculous shit that is 'holy'" and not a panicky "OH NOES!!!"

John 11:35

@24, sure I'll meet you at the john at 11:35. Same glory hole as usual?

8 & 15 - This isn't about constitutional rights, it's about the moral rightness of the action. As far as the first amendment is concerned, the arses have ever right to burn whatever the hell private property they choose provided they have all the relevant associated rights, ie; they own said property, they are not in violation of a current burning bad related to air quality, fire risk, etc.

Book burning is substantively different kind of act to a cartoon, both historically and currently. It is a blind effigy, it is an act of extreme intellectual and moral violence, and it is designed to do little more than inflame... pardon the pun.

The cartoons (for example) differed because they exposed and explored a cultural rift, and told us something real about western perceptions of Islam. You can have a conversation about that. Book burning, not so much.

Personally, as a lifelong atheist who thinks it's all a bunch of nonsense, I don't really give a shit about the religious implications, but I do care about the kind of violence toward ideas the asshats planning and participating in this shindig demonstrate by holding such an event. Even though I find the ideology of both sides totally and utterly without merit, I still find real or symbolic violence towards those ideologies morally reprehensible and worthy of moral reproach. Granted, reason tends to mean little to nothing to those of faith, but it's the price of living in an ideologically free society, and one I'm willing to pay.

On a side note, if Democratic administrations had the balls of republicans, this would already have been deemed treason by the defense department, and that pastor would be getting dragged in front of a federal court for providing comfort to the enemy...

@20, there are significantly more Christians in the world than Muslims. Wikipedia says 2.2 billion to Islam's 1.6 billion.

Wikipedia has been wrong before.

@28, do you know what a footnote is?

has anyone been to the Dove World website? http://www.doveworld.org/
The info page for the burning the qoran day takes you to a facebook page that is just chockfull of hateful horseshit.
I'm going to give DW a call and ask 'em to take a break and reflect on their vitriol. You can, too: 352-371-2487

@28: Wikipedia is often wrong on controversial topics, where enough people care to falsify the article. If you go looking for an article on say, pi orbitals, it's actually an incredibly reliable source. And most worldwide statistics fall into this category.
Also, footnotes, like the Fnarfmeister said. (Well, I think they're technically endnotes on Wikipedia, but that's an argument we'll leave to Al Franken and Ann Coulter.)

@14 & @15:

How is burning a book an exercise in free speech?!

Your logic has gone down the rabbit hole. Americans support book burnings now in the name of free speech?

@31, OK, yes, endnotes, but also footnotes, since Wikipedia articles don't have pages per se; they're all one page long whether that page is two lines or two thousand.

Controversial articles actually get more attention from editors and thus bogosity is immediately edited out. The articles that are most likely to be wrong are on obscure topics that fly under the radar. You can also pretty quickly spot controversies, bullshit, and editing wars with a glance at the history and talk pages.

But the main articles for "Christianity" and "Islam" are both major portal pages and receive a great deal of careful attention. There's not a word in either of them that hasn't been gone over with a fine tooth comb by hundreds of experts; the Christianity article has 260 endnotes and 76 cited references.

Overall, Wikipedia has a significantly higher level of factual accuracy than Encyclopedia Britannica, and of course a vastly broader range of topics.

The citation for numbers of followers comes from a Pew Research Center report for Islam and a combination of the CIA World Factbook, an article at foreignpolicy.com, and another at adherents.com, which in turn compiles data from many, many sources, for Christianity.

Will, on the other hand, has absolutely nothing except his prejudices. I'm sure he has a vague memory of some article he read six years ago which argued exactly the opposite of whatever he took away from it. As always.

@17: Anyone up for a bible-burning outside this particular church? Maybe someone should show them what it means to treat others as you would be treated.

Will you read what you just wrote? Oh right, you can't, because your head is so far up your ass it's cut off the oxygen to your brain.

Let's be honest: These people just hate books.

@35 is correct. They're from the South, for God's Sake.

like most of you on here, I'm an Atheist. However, I believe the Bible and the Koran are both extraordinarily great books.

In my opinion, anyone who wishes to burn a book should take a few days to read it first.

But what if it's written in crayon?

I only hope that the fire rages out of control and burns the entire state of Florida to ashes.

Fucking Florida.