Muqtedar Khan

If you are reading this I hope it has dawned on you that while OLO posters may differ on many things we are resolute on the right of people to express themselves freely. And yes that includes the right to say and do things that may wound Muslims deeply.

Note, this is a RIGHT, not a privilege. We have a RIGHT to burn your koran.

Poster may be interested in this piece by Johann Hari in The Independent.

DESPITE THESE RIOTS, I STAND BY WHAT I WROTE

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-despite-these-riots-i-stand-by-what-i-wrote-1608059.html

[quote]

"...My column reported on a startling development at the United Nations. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights has always had the job of investigating governments who forcibly take the fundamental human right to free speech from their citizens with violence. But in the past year, a coalition of religious fundamentalist states has successfully fought to change her job description. Now, she has to report on "abuses of free expression" including "defamation of religions and prophets." Instead of defending free speech, she must now oppose it.

"...So now, whenever anyone on the UN Human Rights Council tries to discuss the stoning of "adulterous" women, the hanging of gay people, or the marrying off of ten year old girls to grandfathers, they are silenced by the chair on the grounds these are "religious" issues, and it is "offensive" to talk about them."

[/quote]

THIS IS SHOCKING!

Book burning is barbaric, especially symbolic book burning.

stevenlmeyer .. is that the same UN who we get smacked by about our"human rights" violations, the one the leader of the ACTU complains to about our government, the one our government regularly sidles up to to sign things the populace knows nothing about? The one our previous PM has spent a fortune of OUR money on to get himself a job, (why don't we just give him some money, a jet and a crew and let him do whatever he wants, it will probably be cheaper and less embarrassing in the long run. He's rich anyway so it's not the money, it the ego isn't it?)

Sorry to be sarcastic, but the more I hear of the UN, the more I want us out of it, since it appears to be becoming a corrupt tool of various regimes to enforce their lack of tolerance, on the tolerant.

This theme keeps coming through to me I guess .. predominantly western (civilized) societies tolerate primitive tyrannical and medieval regimes and all that changes is we give up more and more.

I saw Ban Ki Moon making all manner of comments on this, so he's not in favour of freedom of speech either, as he's under pressure from all these despots and tyrannies as well.

Your example is horrifying, and I'm sure is not isolated. I for one want to get out of the UN, it serves us badly and has become a tool of oppressors.

The Koran is primarily a concoction anyway, put together by bunch of his henchmen after his death, and most of it was just variations of the old jewish texts.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200112100017

or

http://www.jihadwatch.org/2004/03/scholar-researches-origins-of-the-quran-fears-for-his-life.html

or

http://www.christoph-heger.de/palimpse.htm

The real tragedy in all of this has been and will always be, the inability of the Muslims to give there religion, or more properly their ideology, an open critical analysis ...to the same extent that other religions have undertaken.

Threatening violence upon others just demonstrates how medieval and violent it really is.

The author writes:

"The Constitution does not permit this. The Constitution forbids cruel and unusual punishment. For Muslims this is worse than torture."

This is a novel and self-serving definition of something worse than torture. Nobody has a right to shut somebody up if they feel offended by what they say.

I am offended by your article in distorting the Constitution of my country, but you have a right to write it. Olo has a right to print it. I have a right to set you straight.

A truly astonishing and terrifying article.

The author states 'A society must abandon basic decencies in order to muster the immoral courage to burn books..'
I remind him that it was his mob - Muslims - who burned Rushdies books in Bradford years ago. (Was that 'abandoning basic decencies'?) I was appalled when that happened because it marked how degraded some people were, but I did not rush around threatening death and destruction. It was his mob's leaders who placed a sentence of death on Rushdie. It was from a place a few miles away from Bradford that some of his mob set out to kill people on the London underground. It is his mob who killed the Dutch film maker and placed a death sentence on Hirsi Ali. And so on and so on.

For this Muslim author to talk about the evil of book burning is either pig ignorant or, more likely,an exhibition of cant and hypocrisy. Perhaps ignorance might still be relevant, after all it seems to have taken the threat of burning a book that has made him realise the pain infliced by his mob on others

That is why I called the article terrifying. It is bad enough that he talks to the unborn and the dead, that is just weirdo behaviour that does no harm; but it is frightening to think that there are intelligent people about who would rather be burnt than see a book burnt. That is the 'thinking' that leads to people becoming mass murderers calling themselves 'martyrs'.