I am sure there are tonne of blogs about this topic out there already. But it bugs me, so I shall write about it. Apparently, an alleged man of god, somewhere in Florida decided to burn a few holy Korans to make a point. Somehow, he equated Islam to terrorism and decided that September 11 would be a great day to set them alight on a bonfire. This man is a pastor of a tiny church, supposedly bringing the word of god to his parishioners. Except this man isn't applying many of the lord's suggestions. Like love thy neighbour.
It is incredible that one lunatic person has managed to cause such a lot of trouble for so many people. I think I saw the American President talk about this whole book-burning-Islam-bashing event two or three times. It is sad that so many people take this man's threats to heart and believe that he is the voice of reason and representative of America. Because he's not. I am not American, but by all the gods, there are many that I know and they are not so petty.
America does not hate Islam. Nor does Islam hate America. It is really sad to see extremist bigots on either side of this argument use religion as justification to spread hatred. How is it that the nuts in Kabul and elsewhere not realise that this guy is nothing but a mirror image of themselves? All he is doing is using religion as a shield to spew his brand of hate? These two religions who have so much in common, of which Isa is a prophet for one (and the son of god for the other), how can their collective god allow one set of fools to hate another set of people based on the actions of a small minority? He's not.
America is not a Christian country in the strictest sense. The sane folks who wrote that constitution made sure of that. This was a country which was after all founded by a bunch of people fleeing religious persecution. Their money says, In god we trust. Not in the Christian version of god. Or the Islamic version of him. Just god. America is a country with a lot of people. People who believe in all sorts of things. Men who choose men as partners. People who are vegetarians. People who are new immigrants like me. While I may not agree with what some of them do, I could not imagine that the collective America was out to get anyone. Maybe their government is misguided from time to time, looking for imaginary weapons of mass destruction in the desert and causing lots of damage to their reputation as a result, but America is also the country that helps others. How many sacks of USAID wheat has been sent to various disasters around the world (including the floods in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan)? Is it Christian wheat? Did Jesus stamp the USAID logo onto it? No. Americans did. People did. People who felt the need to help their fellow man because of whatever compunction they have.
If there is a god and he/she/it reads my blog, here's my plea:
Please dear god, can you fix these people all around this green earth of ours who use your name to perpetrate the worst kind of nonsense out there? Feel free to smite them down with whatever you happen to have handy. Diarrhoea works. A swift kick in the ass works too.
And if you're one of these cretins that is doing this, can you please stop? Lets try and worry about the stuff we need to worry about, not about who is going to burn what book. Burning books is stupid. Go burn some wood or something if you're bored. Books are meant to be read. And God is not some kind of football you use to kick around when you please and use as justification to tie suicide belts and blow yourselves up in.
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