How do you see the burning of Holy Koran by pastor Terry Jones

You don't have an ax to grind, do you? Have you been paying attention to the reaction of Americans to this bullshit?

He is an idiot and a dickhead. He, not Islam, is "of the devil". He is also a crook. I read in the newspaper today about his time in Germany.

Some people need to learn the difference between respect and tolerance. America stands for tolerance, which includes tolerating people that disrespect others. Burning a book or a flag, it's all the same, protected free speech. If you don't like it, that's your problem. Get over it.

How do you see the burning of Holy Koran by pastor Terry Jones

i hope to see it on TV, as i have no desire to be anywhere near (in order) Florida, rednecks or church folk

I see it as an inconsequential story about some random zero burning stuff. I also see the (apparently excessive) coverage of this as typical unmitigated laziness of the media.

This question is not logical as biblical christianity does not demonstrate tolerance and respect of other religions.

The US may officailly toe this line, along with many many others. The US stands for alot of things. And yes, he is one of them.

I like most of the answers given thus far.

Where on Earth did you get the idea that Christianity values tolerance? Besides tolerance of itself, I mean.

I think it is a stunt. I think it is a foolish thing to do. If it is true that it will put our soldiers into danger (if) then I think that it is a bad thing to do. But I think if he did it, it would have nothing at all to do with "embracing nation for all religions, sects, casts and creeds" if that is what "America stands for" since Terry Jones is not America. Furthermore, if America stands for anything, it seems to me that it stands for the right of people to dislike and even hate anyone, or any group they want to dislike and hate without being ragged and set upon for it. And if Terry Jones want to hate Muslims, or bicycle rider, for that matter, he has a perfect right to do so. If America stands for anything, it stands for my having whatever views or opinions I like to have without you or the government pounding on me because I have them.

Stunt, yes.

So stunt, so what? If some fanatics pay attention to it (and if a lot of that isn't itself a stunt, and caused by our paying so much attention to it) what has that to do with us?

This idiot has used this burning thing to increase his church membership. More money for him and all the like thinking idiots in the area will flock to his church thanks to stupid newspapers and media making an unknown famous.

All right, you don't like him. Now what?

OMG

We have muslims galore killing thousands of infidels whenever they can and we are supposed to believe they don't represent Islam.

We have one jackwagon in FLA pulling a publicity stunt and there is a mad rush to assert it is a representation of American Christianity.

Well, i think that is a pretty accurate description of the initial motivations for this international debacle, but it hardly sums it up.

It seems to me that the situation shapes up like this: Small-time charismatic preacher, kicked out of the German pentecostal church he set up for being too much of a nut-bag, sets out to make a name for himself with an inflammatory act. The motivations: aside from those already mentioned? To draw national (and possibly international) support to his intolerant agenda, and by uniting its numbers in defense of a central symbolic act, increase a fanatical fringe group's social influence on national (and international) events.

Once the obvious drawbacks of the scheme were (metaphorically) beaten into the pastor's head, i.e. increased anti-US sentiment, the increased danger to US soldiers in various parts of the world, global moral outrage and mockery, etc, etc, he decided to postpone the burning of the Koran.

In this short interval, he either came upon the idea of finding a political way of equating the building of the mosque a few blocks away from Ground Zero with book-burning, or the idea was fed to him by those of his party or his religion that quietly supported his ridiculous crusade. Now he is trying to hold the American builders of that church ransom, hoping that they are more concerned with the American way of life, and actual American lives, than he is. He still threatens to hold the book-burning, which while symbolically supporting his faith's self-righteousness will ultimately undermine its effectiveness on a world-wide scale, hoping to blackmail other Americans into betraying their own faith.

Who would have imagined such a thing could happen? ...I can think of a few people who could, and would, imagine it...

my final answer on the question: "How do you see the burning of Holy Koran by pastor Terry Jones?":

An act of cocksure bravado turned into an act of terrorism.

"Is he what America stands for?"

Sometimes. The US is a big place with lots of different points of view. Some people, i don't have any accurate count of them, support Jones. "America" doesn't stand for something, so much as it is an abstraction of a lot of contrary things.

razzleg, thank you for that excellent post.

He is a guy with not much to lose looking for a cause and some attention. For a few minutes he got both, he was pretty skilled at it actually.

Yes. I hope we see more of him outside the strictly philosophy threads.

Thank you...you have no idea how many obscenities were held back when i wrote that. This whole affair is incredibly shameful to me.

I am a US left-winger in an overwhelmingly "red" state. And while i make my small bid to oppose the right-wing agenda in my own region, and at the same time live amicably in the conservative surroundings in which i find myself--i find hypocrisy to be the most unforgivable sin. I try to forgive the genuinely devout their misunderstandings, but this entire affair is above and beyond reasonable ecclesiastical concerns.

However, i would like to qualify my foregoing remarks with a disclaimer: just as i regard many Southern Baptists and pentecostal church members as worthy of disdain-- as being foolish to follow extremists without regard for the personal, social, national, or global good, so too i include many Muslims for being the followers of extremists. Extremism, of the type often exercised by all of the sects named (certainly including the ecclesiastical Chrisitian sects,) tends to express itself in the social form of terrorism. While partaking of both political and religious rhetoric, terrorism is a social construct, and its enactment not only destroys the lives of its victims, its actors, and the social fabric as a whole, but also of its own goals.

This whole affair, minus the entirely reasonable desire for a mosque built near Ground Zero, is shameful. The fact that this one asshole has garnered a multiplicity of reactions from other similar, committed assholes is another disturbing note to an often disturbing history of Earth's human history

I think I understand your reasons for making the above remark, but I do not feel that it was particularly necessary. There are extremist Jews, animal rights activists, homophobes, John Lennon fans, etc. You do not have to add a disclaimer when you criticise an example of one variety.