COMMENT NOW! Bigoted Christian Extremists Are Our Worst Enemy: Hate Pastor to “Pray” Over Whether to Burn Koran
Despite being warned by none other than Gen. David Petraeus that burning copies of the Quran would do nothing but put U.S. troops in even more danger, and undoubtedly be used as a recruitment tool by terrorists who are determined to do harm to the U.S., the pastor at a church in Florida, the Dove World Outreach Church, is still planning to do it.
Oops, wait, no, now the Pastor, a guy by the name of Terry Jones, says he’s praying over whether or not they will still burn copies of the Quran.
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The purpose of this event, according to Jones, is to protest Islamic extremists. But why now? We are not under attack. If anything, we are in the midst of attacking Muslims, and we seem to be willing to do so even if it provides aid to terrorists. Does it really take an act of God for these idiots to realize how asinine the are? My other question: How do we protest ignorant, bigoted, self-destructive Christian stupidity?
“It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort,” Petraeus said. “It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world, we are engaged with the Islamic community.”
“It’s their Holy Book, so when somebody says that they’re going to destroy that and cause a desecration to something that’s very sacred to them, it’s already stirred up a lot of discussion and concern amongst the people,” said Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, commander of the NATO Training Mission in Afghanistan. “We very much feel that this could jeopardize the safety of our men and women that are serving over here.”
The level of Islamophobia going on in this country right now is enough to convert even modest Muslims to radicalism. The irony is that is supposedly what Americans fear most. Yet, logic, facts and things like “Christian decency” never seem to prevent some folks from doing the dumbest things.
The facts are simple. Anti-Islamic rhetoric in the U.S. continues to be one of the best recruitment tools that terrorist organizations have had sense George W. Bush left the White House. We still have troops occupying Islamic countries who are trying to pursue people of the Muslim faith to side with the U.S. as opposed to Islamic radicals and terrorists.
While some folks are speculating that this whole burn the Quran business is little more than a publicity stunt by a shady preacher, it really does not matter.
(It appears he runs a furniture store out of the church and spends about 70 percent of the money it brings in on “administrative costs,” which in church speak means the ceremonial lining of the pastor’s pockets). The image of those burning Qurans, the image of these Christian zealots, will be used by every wanna-be terrorist recruitment official in the whole world, as proof positive that America is not simply trying to keep its people safe but is actively waging war against Islam.
And the worst thing about it, is they have a point.
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In addition to burning their holy book, we are actively trying to stop them from building places of worship, and not just near Ground Zero. Since that protest got attention, several politicians on the far right have suggested that all mosque construction be prohibited in the U.S. Protests, of course, have ensued. One mosque, shortly after, down in Tennessee was in fact bombed. Then, just last week in Carlton, N.Y. some teenagers drove past another mosque firing guns and yelling obsenities during a church service Friday night. These knuckleheads even hit one church goer with their vehicle. Last month, a Muslim cab driver was stabbed multiple times in New York City. Then, following on the heels of the Ground Zero Mosque protest, an Islamic Center in California was attacked by vandals. And that’s just within the last month.
“An irony of Islamophobes is that they are among the most vehement Islamophobia-deniers. It’s sort of like how White supremacists believe that there is no such thing as racism, that their hatred of blacks is a logical and rational enterprise. Hey, they’re just out to preserve the purity of the White race,” writes a bogger over at loonwatch.com while making the obvious connection between U.S. right-wing extremist rhetoric and the recent spate of hate crimes against Muslims. “There has been a movement for some time in this country blasting an incessant message over AM talk radio, the internet, and the right-wing TV talk shows telling gullible Americans that Mooslims like Sharif and his ilk are really here to ‘Islamize’ America, abolish freedom and democracy and institute a Taliban-brand Shariah. The recent hysteria surrounding the building of the proposed Park51 Islamic center in lower Manhattan saw that Goebelsian message rise to a deafening pitch.”
He’s right, it does resemble white supremacist behavior. Just as this economic climate resembles the environment that preceded Adolph Hitler’s rise to power and the extermination of millions of Jews. It seems to me that bigoted Christian extremists, not Muslim extremists, are our worst enemy.
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