It strikes us that there are four levels of response to the plans of Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center, an evangelical church in Gainesville, Fla., to burn the Koran on Sept. 11, 2010.
The first level is the obvious response:
This plan stands in a long line of similar, hateful and, indeed, plain stupid acts, beginning with the Catholic Churchs burning of the Talmud in the Middle Ages to the Nazis burning of Jewish books before and during the Holocaust. To burn a book is to say: I am incapable of arguing against the books ideas. I am mindless. Put plainly, I am stupid. Pastor Terry Jones qualifies. It is worth noting that the National Association of Evangelicals, the nations largest umbrella evangelical group, has denounced Jones plan. The problem here is not Evangelical Christianity, it is one isolated pastor, who, frankly, sounds like he ought to join the Westboro Baptist Church, another notoriously uninformed and similarly tiny, if noisy, group.
The second level of response is this:
We have argued that to build a mosque at Ground Zero is an act of gross disrespect to the victims of 9/11, and those victims surely included more than the people who actually died there. For Muslims supposedly interested in building interfaith bridges, the construction of a mosque in that place is to embody the meaning of tone deaf. The converse of that misguided idea is the equally misguided Koran-burning plan of Pastor Jones, also disrespectful in the extreme. Disrespect is disrespect, whatever its source, whatever its intended message and whatever its polemical edge.
The third level of response is this:
On free speech grounds, we would not support an attempt to ban Pastor Jones plan, any more than we supported the ban of the publication of cartoons in Denmark that occasioned not caused riots and killings by various defenders of Islam. A murderer who kills in response to a symbolic act, however ugly, cannot claim, somebody made me do it. The people who perpetrated violence in response to the Danish cartoons were responsible for their own deeds. If violence results from Pastor Jones’ book-burning, the violent people will be responsible for their own deeds.
The publication of a cartoon, or the burning of a Koran, is not equivalent to crying fire in a crowded theater, the classic example of the legal limitation on free speech. In the case of the theater, the response a likely trampling of people to death is inevitable. Woe unto us if it is argued that a human choice to take violent offense to an ugly, symbolic act is an inevitability. If that argument is accepted, the idea of free speech is dead. Anyone, any time, may murder someone in reaction to an ugly symbolic act and then claim he couldnt help it. People who kill in response to cartoons or to book-burnings are murderers, plain and simple.
Note: A recent, most despicable artistic rendering of Jesus (well spare you the scatological details in case youve forgotten), and the all too typical vicious renderings of Israeli leaders in various Arab newspapers, have not elicited murder perpetrated by Christians or Jews, only outrage. Murder is not an inevitable reaction to ugly free speech. Keep this clear. Any violence in response to a Koran-burning is the responsibility of the violent actor. Period.
The fourth level of response is this:
The worst sin of Pastor Jones, with his Koran-burning plan, is not the burning per se. Most people will see this for the stupidity that it is, for the disrespect that it is, for the exploitation of free speech that it is. Far worse, Pastor Jones buys into, and reinforces, a most unfortunate pattern that has gripped our republic, and probably other democratic societies, too. That is the radicalization of response to all things Islamic, such that only black-and-white, not gray, has become permissible. It should be permissible to say that it is a bad idea to build a mosque at Ground Zero without being accused of being anti-Islam; it should be possible to point out a down side to a freedom. But no, youre with me or youre against me: that is the tenor of the public discussion of Islam. Youre for the mosque at Ground Zero, or youre anti-Islam. Translated: I have the right to impose my religion in any way, in any place, consistent with the US Constitution; and if you deny that, youre anti-Islam.
Pastor Jones plan to burn the Koran plays into this polarized public discussion of Islam with pure genius mad genius.
Copyright © 2010 by the Intermountain Jewish News
