The core issue is that the use of fiction couched as "truth" is being used to misdirect our progressive energy.
The American fundie movement works, lives, and breathes for division and they are usually successful. Just look at how many fundamentalist denominations there are just in America.
Have the liberals, of which I'm one, taken the time to investigate how many commercial, capitalist stores, shops, and offices are already being planned for this so-called WTC sacred site?
If the WTC property were truly considered a sacred site it would now, after nine years, be a park with tasteful monuments, paths, flower beds, and docents offering tasteful, non-offending guided tours in soft voices, much as the Alamo is now exhibited in Texas. Liberals have allowed themselves to be used by those who have no need for the First Amendment and would squash basic freedoms like unwanted vermon.
Leftie religionists tell us to read the Koran and see for ourselves what a peaceful religion it is.
Okay, let's look. The following quotes are taken from the website "The Religion of Peace" ( http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Quran/023-violence.htm ).
Quran (8:12) - "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them"
How's this one sound to those progressive Christians who defend Islam as a religion of peace:
Quran (9:30) - "And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah; and the Christians say: The Messiah is the son of Allah; these are the words of their mouths; they imitate the saying of those who disbelieved before; may Allah destroy them; how they are turned away!"
Had enough?
Now it's the turn of the bible, the same "good news" used by progressives and regressives of the Christian kind.
"The righteous shall rejoice when he sees the vengeance. He shall wash his feet in the blood of the wicked." (Psalms 58:10)
( http://www.nobeliefs.com/DarkBible/darkbible3.htm#raping-and-killing )
And one more for balance.
"And Israel joined himself unto Baalpeor: and the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel. And the LORD said unto Moses, 'Take all the heads of the people and hang them up before the LORD against the sun, that the fierce anger of the LORD may be turned away from Israel.' (Numbers 25:3-4)
( http://www.nobeliefs.com/DarkBible/darkbible3.htm#decapitate-them )
Lest I be accused of using bible/koran excerpts selectively, I say this: If it's permissible for Christians to shore up their respective beliefs by using the bible, then I certainly am able to use the same book to point out the discrepancies of both side's arguments using their own verbal ammunition.
What is taken to be a liberal position among progressives is actually the same kind of selective reasoning used by the regressives--which is to say using a book of fiction does nothing to strengthen an argument.
One either believes in a super-natural force that operates in the acts of human beings or one doesn't.
With the dust-up over the Koran BBQ that was planned by Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida, we have another misdirection of the liberal need to defend those who do not see that this was a purposely created event for anti-social behavior to be used.
None the less, all Christians believe in the same god, correct? The liturgies, ceremonies, POVs are different, but it's the same middle-eastern god as the Muslims and Jews believe in.
My point is that in this country under the Constitution, nominally, we have the First Amendment's first clause about freedom of religion, only later do speech and the press get mentioned.
Therefore, progressive religionists MUST honor the need for the fundamentalists to act out their own POV even as the fundies would deny to progressives, absolutely, the separation of church and state that I think most progressives would agree is essential to a free society as outlined in the Constitution.
Religion has painted the fundamentalist and the progressive religionists in opposite corners of the box of their beliefs. Even as the two Christian factions worship the same god there can be little chance of reconciliation. The left is giving all the benefit of the doubt to the right even as the right is taking more and more of the political pie as they preach salvation in the most abhorrent and bloodcurdling way.
Eventually, the religious left must understand there is no compromising with the right.
Arguing with those who think book-BBQs are the productive thing to do will only result in the left getting divided among itself. That's why I'm of the opinion that as long as they're burning their own property let fundies burn what they wish.
Those Muslims who are outraged are probably of the same ilk as the Christian burners.
The throngs of Muslims who threaten to act with violence or threats only prove the assertion that it's a primitive, bloodthirsty religion, less sophisticated than their more insidious leaders who, just like in any warfare action, are safely behind the front lines, not so different from the Christian regressives..
Progressives are cowed with threats or the accomplishemt of religious murder such as that directed at Salman Rushdie, Theo van Gogh, Kurt Westergaard (Dutch cartoonist), Ayaan Hirsi Ali (former Dutch legislator) and ridiculously, Matt Stone and Trey Parker (creators of "South Park").
I'm not offended by the idea of the koran BBQ since it was Jones's own books he wanted to burn. The "horror" of book burning is not convincing for me unless the book has great artistic/historical value as an antique object. Burning a book in past centuries had the intended effect of wiping out the thoughts and ideas in the book due to the scarcity and expense of hand copying or printing. But to be "outraged" now is a holdover from what many of us were taught in school to associate with repressive regimes such as the Nazis, Krystallnacht, Stalin, etc.
Book burning is a welcome substitute for burning people at the stake, where thoughts and ideas were really wiped out for all time.
Unless progressives want to help initiate a new Dark Age, we'd be wise to stop using religion as if it were a legitimate peaceful weapon of thought and action.
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