Dr Jones, the Florida Pentecostalist Pastor who is portrayed – maybe correctly – in the media as a man who has bit off more than he can chew by organising a bonfire of 200 Korans/Qur’ans in a field next to his church, yesterday backed off his plan and cancelled the “koranflagration” as it has been entitled, having been called up by some bigwig Chief-of-Staff in the Pentagram, er, -gon.
He stated that he had made a deal with the local imams related to the ground zero Mosque in New York. However the Imam responsible for that particular mosque, whose name is Imam Rauf called the deal off within minutes, pretty much showing that the Florida Imam had been practising that noted pillar of Islam known as Taqiyya, which being translated is ” you’re allowed to lie to non-Muslims if it helps you or any other Muslims along, and in fact lying is even obligatory and not optional for a good Muslim if it’ll help save your skin from a kafir”. This certainly puts the Judaeo-Christian tradition of ” thou shalt not commit false testimony” and being willing to die for truth somewhat at a logistical disadvantage, especially as we seem to have a disease in our tradition of interpreting Islam through our own eyes, and assuming that it means something roughly similar to what things in the Judaeo-Christian tradition mean, when in fact it is pretty much wired around a completely different set of ideas, whenever you might say about the philological similarities. There is no similarity between light and darkness, and there is no similarity between faiths of freedom and enlightenment and the ones of enslavement, bullying and cowardly deception.
Nevertheless burning has not been called off even though it seems fairly apparent that whoever Dr Jones meets in New York today, he may as well be spending today in contemplation with Imam Bayildi. This is likely to be the fact that very few people in high positions of authority gave him any support, whereas all the great and the good, and obviously I use that term very loosely, seemed to be queueing up to either condemn him outright all reason with him to stop his planned action.
One particular example was Tony Bliar, who, in his quest to become the biggest brown nose of the coming ecumenical Antichrist, gave rise to the following quotations in the Daily Telegraph:
In a statement, Mr Blair – who founded a Faith Foundation after leaving office to promote understanding between the world’s religions – said: ”I deplore the act of burning the Koran.
”It is disrespectful, wrong and will be widely condemned by people of all faiths and none. In no way does this represent the view of any sensible person in the West or any other part of the world.”
The former PM added: ”Those who wish to cause religious conflict are small in number but often manage to dominate the headlines.
”You do not have to be a Muslim to share a sense of deep concern at such a disrespectful way to treat the Holy Book of Islam.
”Rather than burn the Koran, I would encourage people to read it.”
For me I have to admit these few lines were the most amusing part of the whole debacle. I find it hilarious that Tony Blair who claims to be an apostle for understanding between religions shows tremendous lack of understanding of Islam in what he chose to say publicly about this issue.
First of all he says ” I deplore the act of burning the Koran”. Well in that case he knows a lot better than the Muslims themselves then, since in fact the burning of Koran’s is one of the accepted ways of dealing with copies of the book which are not needed. There are even verses which say how copies of the Koran should be dealt with, and they recommend burning it. So in the course of his quest for understanding between religions, Tony Bliar has shown the kind of level of understanding that got us all into trouble in the Middle East in the first place by showing once again that he only sees Islam is a slightly deviant form of Christianity to people who like wearing tea towels. Had he actually have had any understanding himself, he would have known to check what educated Muslims (as opposed to those who are always happy to go out for a flagburning whether that whether or not there is any basis for it) were immediately saying on the matter. He says no sensible person would follow the very directions of the Koran on how it is supposed to be destroyed in the case of surplus copies. Well done Tony, a case of “friendly fire” if ever there was one!
He then goes on to say ” those who wish to cause religious conflicts are small in number but often manage to dominate the headlines”, well Tony, you know, mate, you should know! Apart from anything else, the very fact that you jumped on the bandwagon to comment on it, along with Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, Pope Benny 16 and numerous others, you made jolly sure that Dr Jones would be in the headlines. But that’s okay really as long as it keeps you in the headlines, eh?
He finishes off by saying ” rather than burn the Koran I encourage people to read it”. I seriously doubt he spent much time himself reading the Koran. Most of the people who recommend reading the Koran have usually not spent much time reading it. If they do read it they usually find out what nonsense it is, which is in fact the reason why Islam actually insists on people not translating it and not reading it in languages other than classical Arabic. That way most people will never find out how ridiculous it is. In fact it is not Muslims who have produced most of the translations of the Koran that exist on the market, but rather scholars of Oriental studies, as a classical term for this is.
So in short, our self-styled understander of faiths deplores what is essentially an act of obedience to Islam, and encourages people instead to go reading the Koran in their own languages which is frowned upon in Islam. Can this person actually be any more ridiculous than he is already? It wasn’t for the fact that he is a walking tragedy, Tony Blair would be the number one religious clown of the 20th and 21st centuries combined.
Nevertheless Mr Blur does give us all one good idea. I’m not in favour of burning books, although I did put a copy of the Hare Krishnas’ book in the bin publically one time. I didn’t spend 11.99 (there’s a nice symbolic price) on my qopy just to burn it – do I look like I’ve got money to burn? But Bloggers or YouTubers really ought to take him up on it and make this read the Koran day every September 11. Once every year, those who wish to remember the atrocities of Islam could produce blog posts or videos of themselves reading the Koran or quoting the Koran in various orders talking about the killing of the infidel. One of my own personal favourite parts of the Koran is the Sura where Mohammed instructs his followers to kill his uncle for not following the right Deen. It is near the end of the Qur’an and leads very nicely into that other man-made religious book, the Book of Mormon, which at least had the courtesy of being allowed to be translated into other languages, which is pretty lucky actually, as nobody speaks Reformed Egyptian (and probably never have). In the first chapters of that appalling tome some guy also gets instructed by an angel to kill his uncle for not following the religion also. Uncles generally don’t get a good press in the Koran, the Book of Mormon and their depiction varies in other comic literature also. P.G. Wodehouse, for instance, has some quite likeable avuncular characters, but Bertie Wooster seems to be lumbered with uncles who continually threaten to stop his allowance or make him steal cow shaped silver creamers. Maybe Bertie Wooster was Mohammed and Joseph Smith’s target audience?
Related Articles
- Breaking: Qur’an Burning Called Off? (themoderatevoice.com)
- U.S. pastor puts Qur’an-burning on hold, Muslim world seethes (globaltvbc.com)
- Qur’an burning could proceed, says jilted Pastor (thestar.com)
- Qur’an burning un-American: Obama (cbc.ca)