Six Christians rip pages from Koran in White House stunt

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Yahoo News:

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A small group of conservative Christians tore some pages from a Koran in a protest outside the White House Saturday to denounce what they called the "charade of Islam" on the anniversary of 9/11.

"Part of why we're doing that, please hear me: the charade that Islam is a peaceful religion must end," said Randall Terry, a leading anti-abortion campaigner, and one of six people who took part in the protest.

Another activist, Andrew Beacham, read out a few Koran passages calling for hatred towards Christians and Jews, and then ripped those pages from an English paperback edition of the Islamic holy book.

He carefully put the torn pieces into a plastic bag, in order not to litter, and said: "The only reason I will not burn it at the White House is because to burn anything on the Capitol grounds is a felony."

Beacham, who describes himself as a leader of the rightwing conservative Tea Party from Indiana, added: "The Twin Towers were taken down because of the Koran and other religious teachings."

A few curious tourists stopped to watch the huddle outside the White House, while police took down the names of the participants but did not intervene.

The tiny protest came as the United States marked the somber ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks amid heightened tensions following a radical Florida pastor's threat to burn the Koran.

After days of global outrage and protests, pastor Terry Jones, from Gainesville, said Saturday: "We will definitely not burn the Koran, no."

"Not today, not ever," he told NBC television when pressed for his plans.

President Barack Obama told a deeply polarized America on Saturday that Islam was not the enemy as the 9/11 ceremonies took place.

"As Americans we will not and never will be at war with Islam. It was not a religion that attacked us that September day. It was Al-Qaeda, (a) sorry band of men, which perverts religion," Obama said.
________

All of the morons seem to be coming out of the woodwork now. Thanks a lot, Terry Jones.

[Pepper]

 

All of the morons seem to be coming out of the woodwork now. Thanks a lot, Terry Jones.

 

 

No, it should be: Thank you, Mr. Obama.

 

It may be from the fringes but the I think that the moron honorific goes to Obama.

 

And Moron would be the incorrect word for Obama. Obama is complicit in all of this.

 

Had, or rather, if Obama had been able to take a firm stand against terrorism when he took the oath of office and been explicit in identifying Islamic terrorism as the problem, we would not be seeing this behavior. What we see now is a natural expression of outrage by people who are getting sick and tired of his kowtowing to those who want to destroy our way of life.

[pollyannaish]

 

All of the morons seem to be coming out of the woodwork now. Thanks a lot, Terry Jones.

 

 

No, it should be: Thank you, Mr. Obama.

 

It may be from the fringes but the I think that the moron honorific goes to Obama.

 

And Moron would be the incorrect word for Obama. Obama is complicit in all of this.

 

Had, or rather, if Obama had been able to take a firm stand against terrorism when he took the oath of office and been explicit in identifying Islamic terrorism as the problem, we would not be seeing this behavior. What we see now is a natural expression of outrage by people who are getting sick and tired of his kowtowing to those who want to destroy our way of life.

 

 

I understand the frustration, and I think that Obama has really, really caused problems with his inability to call a spade a spade...but this kind of stuff does not move the football down the field so to speak. It just muddles the goals and messages further. That's what frustrates me.

[WestVirginiaRebel]

It's a stupid way of reacting. These creeps just want publicity. Obama is right on this one-we're not at war with an entire religion, but the fanatics within it.

[Pepper]

 

I understand the frustration, and I think that Obama has really, really caused problems with his inability to call a spade a spade...but this kind of stuff does not move the football down the field so to speak. It just muddles the goals and messages further. That's what frustrates me.

 

I agree. But the idea of Petraeus stepping in and saying a book burning endangers troops? They are already in danger. That's why they have guns.

 

And now Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the idjit who is building the Mosque at Ground Zerom says now he would not have built it there but gee he cant back out now because the Islamofascists will go just a little more nuts?

 

Back to my basic point. Obama is a major cause of this frustration and anger. He could move the football down the field, using your words. He could (but will not) defuse this anger because he is not aligned with our founding American principles.

 

How Obama Thinks, Dinesh D'Souza

[pollyannaish]

I agree. But the idea of Petraeus stepping in and saying a book burning endangers troops? They are already in danger. That's why they have guns.

 

And now Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the idjit who is building the Mosque at Ground Zerom says now he would not have built it there but gee he cant back out now because the Islamofascists will go just a little more nuts?

 

Back to my basic point. Obama is a major cause of this frustration and anger. He could move the football down the field, using your words. He could (but will not) defuse this anger because he is not aligned with our founding American principles.

 

How Obama Thinks, Dinesh D'Souza

 

I think Imam Rauf and Rev. Jones are basically the same person...two sides of the same coin.

 

And I think you are absolutely right about Obama. I have to wonder if he gave Petraus a direct order. Does it work that way?

[Pepper]

It's a stupid way of reacting. These creeps just want publicity. Obama is right on this one-we're not at war with an entire relition, but the fanatics within it.

 

WestVirginiaRebel

 

You hit the nail on the head without intending to:

Islam is not a religion and that's the problem. It is a political movement that intends to dominate and extinguish opposing thought by violence.

 

Here's something to read, from a person who is close the the situation, Nonie Darwish:

 

Islam and the Definition of Religion

 

In her book Cruel and Usual Punishment, Nonie Darwish makes the rather stunning claim that Islam is not a religion. Darwish, the daughter of an Egyptian Islamist “martyr,” describes her first thirty years of life in the Middle East under Sharia law, and her gradual awakening to a fuller understanding of Islam. Towards the end of the book, she offers the following: “The conclusion that I – and others who have studied it – have reached is that Islam as a whole is not a religion. It is Arab Imperialism and a protectionist tool to preserve what they believe to be a supremacist Arab culture.”

 

Islam – not a religion? Is this just hyperbole? Or can she really mean it?

 

Ms. Darwish offers three arguments in support: Her main argument is concerned with voluntariness. Although Mohammad in the early (Meccan) portions of the Koran states that the choice of religion must be voluntary, this position undergoes a sea change in the later (Medinan) segments, after Mohammad had become a warlord, gaining power and booty from raids on neighboring tribes, and putting apostasy from the Islamic faith in the same category as treason in the military. Darwish comments, “The most glaring evidence that Islam is hardly ‘religion’ is in its apostasy law – the order to kill those who leave it. That immediately moved Islam from the realm of religion to the realm of totalitarian political ideology.” In other words, the apostasy law, still prevailing in modern Islamic societies, is incompatible with authentic religion; a non-voluntary religion or non-voluntary continuance in religion would be a contradiction within the very concept of religion.

 

 

Many commentators and critics of Islam have pointed out that Islam is inherently political, without anything comparable to the distinction between church and state, Caesar and God, in Christianity and the Western world in general (although the separation of the religious and the political is never nice and neat). But Darwish goes still further: Islam is not even a religion often willy-nilly intermixed with politics, but rather a political ideology, purely and simply. Could she be right?

 

Going beyond such criticisms, Darwish offers some thoughtful and seemingly incontrovertible criteria which must be met, before classification of Islam as a “religion” becomes feasible:

1) a religion must be a personal choice;

2) no religion should kill those who leave it;

3) a religion must never order the killing and subjugation of those who do not choose to be its members; and

4) a religion must abide by basic human rights.

[Pepper]

And I think you are absolutely right about Obama. I have to wonder if he gave Petraus a direct order. Does it work that way?

 

He probably did not, Petraeus was probably acting out of self-preservation for his troops. The problem is that anything sets the indignant off. If it is not that widely and stupidly publicized book burning by a nameless idjit in Gainesville it will be something else.

 

Now, if those few soldiers in Afghanistan are guilty of those atrocities from that other post, that's another story. Then the SWHTF.

[pollyannaish]

I agree. But the idea of Petraeus stepping in and saying a book burning endangers troops? They are already in danger. That's why they have guns.

 

And now Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the idjit who is building the Mosque at Ground Zerom says now he would not have built it there but gee he cant back out now because the Islamofascists will go just a little more nuts?

 

Back to my basic point. Obama is a major cause of this frustration and anger. He could move the football down the field, using your words. He could (but will not) defuse this anger because he is not aligned with our founding American principles.

 

How Obama Thinks, Dinesh D'Souza

 

I think Imam Rauf and Rev. Jones are basically the same person...two sides of the same coin.

 

And I think you are absolutely right about Obama. I have to wonder if he gave Petraus a direct order. Does it work that way?

Holy cow that is a good article by D'Souza. It is the first thing I have read that puts all the pieces together consistently.

 

I needed the Anticolonialism glasses to get it. Thanks Pepper!

 

Edited to add: It also explains why the application of the Illegal Immigration policy is so inconsistent and odd. We are dealing with a completely alien way of thinking.

[NCJim]

Pastor Terry Jones, the Center's leader, and his 50-member congregation gave many reasons for the event, all of which revolve around standing up to radical Islam. Given how Muslims rioted and killed in 2005 over simple cartoon caricatures of Mohammed, the odds of an ugly reaction were guaranteed.

 

The plans led to calls from almost everyone, including the White House, the State Department, the Vatican, and numerous Christian churches, among others, for the church to cancel the event. Even General David Petraeus, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, waded into the controversy, saying that the Koran burning "could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort." Demonstrations in Afghanistan had already occurred.

 

Needless to say, the proposed Koran burning was nothing more than an ugly provocation, and, aided by the American Leftmedia, it likely would have put, at least temporarily, American troops, as well as civilians and Christians worldwide, at greater risk from Islamic violence than they already are.

 

That said, the incident gives rise to some hard questions. For starters, should it have been stopped because it's a horrendously bad act of Christian faith, or because of the fear of Islamic violence? Is Islam exempt from criticism *because* of its violent reactions? (We should note that we don't think church participants would have "blood on their hands," as some in the Leftmedia have charged, because Islamic rioters and insurgents are responsible for their own actions.) Are Islam and Liberty mutually exclusive? And what about the church's First Amendment rights?

 

For years, Westerners have been murdered by Islamists, and then blamed for having provoked the murders. America has been lectured on the need to accept Islamic culture, then falsely accused of intolerance by that same violent, intolerant culture, as the Ground Zero mosque controversy illustrates. Indeed, the same "tolerant" Leftists who find no problem with the mosque were aghast at the planned Koran burning.

[Pepper]

I agree. But the idea of Petraeus stepping in and saying a book burning endangers troops? They are already in danger. That's why they have guns.

 

And now Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the idjit who is building the Mosque at Ground Zerom says now he would not have built it there but gee he cant back out now because the Islamofascists will go just a little more nuts?

 

Back to my basic point. Obama is a major cause of this frustration and anger. He could move the football down the field, using your words. He could (but will not) defuse this anger because he is not aligned with our founding American principles.

 

How Obama Thinks, Dinesh D'Souza

 

I think Imam Rauf and Rev. Jones are basically the same person...two sides of the same coin.

 

And I think you are absolutely right about Obama. I have to wonder if he gave Petraus a direct order. Does it work that way?

Holy cow that is a good article by D'Souza. It is the first thing I have read that puts all the pieces together consistently.

 

I needed the Anticolonialism glasses to get it. Thanks Pepper!

 

It's a classic.

[Pepper]

Pastor Terry Jones, the Center's leader, and his 50-member congregation gave many reasons for the event, all of which revolve around standing up to radical Islam. Given how Muslims rioted and killed in 2005 over simple cartoon caricatures of Mohammed, the odds of an ugly reaction were guaranteed.

 

The plans led to calls from almost everyone, including the White House, the State Department, the Vatican, and numerous Christian churches, among others, for the church to cancel the event. Even General David Petraeus, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, waded into the controversy, saying that the Koran burning "could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort." Demonstrations in Afghanistan had already occurred.

 

Needless to say, the proposed Koran burning was nothing more than an ugly provocation, and, aided by the American Leftmedia, it likely would have put, at least temporarily, American troops, as well as civilians and Christians worldwide, at greater risk from Islamic violence than they already are.

 

That said, the incident gives rise to some hard questions. For starters, should it have been stopped because it's a horrendously bad act of Christian faith, or because of the fear of Islamic violence? Is Islam exempt from criticism *because* of its violent reactions? (We should note that we don't think church participants would have "blood on their hands," as some in the Leftmedia have charged, because Islamic rioters and insurgents are responsible for their own actions.) Are Islam and Liberty mutually exclusive? And what about the church's First Amendment rights?

 

For years, Westerners have been murdered by Islamists, and then blamed for having provoked the murders. America has been lectured on the need to accept Islamic culture, then falsely accused of intolerance by that same violent, intolerant culture, as the Ground Zero mosque controversy illustrates. Indeed, the same "tolerant" Leftists who find no problem with the mosque were aghast at the planned Koran burning.

 

 

Great post, NCJim.

 

I highlighted the word intolerance in your post.

 

I don't write well, so I offer to you Karl Popper on tolerance

 

"* The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.

o Vol. 1, Endnotes to the Chapters : Notes to the Introduction.

 

* The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.

 

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance:

 

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."

 

Now if that line in bold doesn't strike to the heart of the matter, nothing does.

 

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

 

We are supposed to be tolerant of the intolerant? If we do, in this case, we shall surely be put to death.

[NCJim]

With all the uproar about a pastor who claims only 50 people in his flock. The media has deliberately neglected to mention that when a religious group sent hundreds of bibles to Iraq, so the troops who wanted a bible to pray to their God would have a bible. The Army burned all the bibles so they would not offend the Muslim population we were there to liberate from Saddam!Where is the justice in this!

[Pepper]

With all the uproar about a pastor who claims only 50 people in his flock. The media has deliberately neglected to mention that when a religious group sent hundreds of bibles to Iraq, so the troops who wanted a bible to pray to their God would have a bible. The Army burned all the bibles so they would not offend the Muslim population we were there to liberate from Saddam!Where is the justice in this!

 

NCJim

 

Now, Jim, you don't understand. (They were unsolicited Bibles.)^sarcasm

 

 

Military burns unsolicited Bibles sent to Afghanistan

"The decision was made that it was a 'force protection' measure to throw them away, because, if they did get out, it could be perceived by Afghans that the U.S. government or the U.S. military was trying to convert Muslims," Wright told CNN on Tuesday.

 

Troops at posts in war zones are required to burn their trash, Wright said.

[NCJim]

Pastor Terry Jones, the Center's leader, and his 50-member congregation gave many reasons for the event, all of which revolve around standing up to radical Islam. Given how Muslims rioted and killed in 2005 over simple cartoon caricatures of Mohammed, the odds of an ugly reaction were guaranteed.

 

The plans led to calls from almost everyone, including the White House, the State Department, the Vatican, and numerous Christian churches, among others, for the church to cancel the event. Even General David Petraeus, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, waded into the controversy, saying that the Koran burning "could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort." Demonstrations in Afghanistan had already occurred.

 

Needless to say, the proposed Koran burning was nothing more than an ugly provocation, and, aided by the American Leftmedia, it likely would have put, at least temporarily, American troops, as well as civilians and Christians worldwide, at greater risk from Islamic violence than they already are.

 

That said, the incident gives rise to some hard questions. For starters, should it have been stopped because it's a horrendously bad act of Christian faith, or because of the fear of Islamic violence? Is Islam exempt from criticism *because* of its violent reactions? (We should note that we don't think church participants would have "blood on their hands," as some in the Leftmedia have charged, because Islamic rioters and insurgents are responsible for their own actions.) Are Islam and Liberty mutually exclusive? And what about the church's First Amendment rights?

 

For years, Westerners have been murdered by Islamists, and then blamed for having provoked the murders. America has been lectured on the need to accept Islamic culture, then falsely accused of intolerance by that same violent, intolerant culture, as the Ground Zero mosque controversy illustrates. Indeed, the same "tolerant" Leftists who find no problem with the mosque were aghast at the planned Koran burning.

 

 

Great post, NCJim.

 

I highlighted the word intolerance in your post.

 

I don't write well, so I offer to you Karl Popper on tolerance

 

"* The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.

o Vol. 1, Endnotes to the Chapters : Notes to the Introduction.

 

* The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek. The idea is, in a slightly different form, and with very different tendency, clearly expressed in Plato.

 

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance:

 

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal."

 

Now if that line in bold doesn't strike to the heart of the matter, nothing does.

 

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

 

We are supposed to be tolerant of the intolerant? If we do, in this case, we shall surely be put to death.

 

As a Christian, I've had to tolerate every left thing in society for years but somehow no one can man up when it comes to denouncing anything inherently evil. I'm tired of 'let evil lie' while every assault on our freedoms and truth marches on.

 

Are those that hate us, going to hate us more or less now? Don't we look weaker and weaker each day?

[Pepper]

As a Christian, I've had to tolerate every left thing in society for years but somehow no one can man up when it comes to denouncing anything inherently evil. I'm tired of 'let evil lie' while every assault on our freedoms and truth marches on.

 

Are those that hate us, going to hate us more or less now? Don't we look weaker and weaker each day?

 

NCJim

 

Well said.

 

BTTT.

[SrWoodchuck]

 

Now if that line in bold doesn't strike to the heart of the matter, nothing does.

 

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

 

We are supposed to be tolerant of the intolerant? If we do, in this case, we shall surely be put to death.

Pepper!

 

I know what you mean, but it all sounds like this, "Doesn't expecting the unexpected, make the unexpected, expected?"

 

I'd like to add ignorance to this thread......not mine......but varying levels on both sides of the argument. It's easy to argue that Islam prevents young girls from going to schools & is also the main source of nutrition and education, for the young men & boys that are housed, fed & taught in Islamic madrassas. It's evident, in the book burners, who are afraid of words written on a page, that threaten the marrow of their "safe" thinking. Unfortunately it has long been readily apparent in the Obama administration, liberal press & action groups, as a single minded campaign against all things not liberal progressive Democrat. In this it seems a spiteful, as well as deadly dangerous posture. Their insistence of only actions that are non-Bush, is the main reason for our perilous stagnant economy, horribly weak foreign policy & the division of our people.

 

An interesting thing that I read today, about the name change by Imam Rauf, from Cordoba House to Park-51, reflects his utter contempt for the 70% of Americans that oppose the Ground Zero mosque. Cordoba house was originally tested, to show "Muslim's, Christian & Jews living peacefully together" until it was exposed that: Spain had been brutally conquered by Muslims, a major church knocked down to the ground, and a mosque built upon it, and the "peaceful living" was a form of highly taxed servitude & debasement of the conquered, by Muslims who took their code directly from the Quran, in the form of Sharia law. It was called dhimmitude. The penalties for walking, sitting or standing higher than a Muslim was.....immediate death by beheading or burning. Google the "Cordoba Martyr's."

 

The interesting part is that "51" in the Park-51, refers to the Quran's 51st Shura, verses 44 to 47, that detail how,"....unbelievers were knocked down by the blinding light of Islam & were unable to resist their destruction, just as the descendents of Noah; a wicked people. It also states that,"...Muslims build the sky out of their own hands..."

{Paraphrased]

 

Imam Rauf solicits donations for the Ground Zero mosque, with these "enlightenments", and we are to believe he is a man of peace.

[Pepper]

Good post, SrWoodChuck.

 

I was aware of the Cordoba reference but not the Park 51 connection.