'Burning the holy books which are interconnected with the hearts and souls of millions of people around the world is one of the most heinous and dreadful actions which one can think of.'

Actually, I would say beheading someone and proudly posting a video of the act on youtube, blowing up dozens of innocents in a market square, throwing acid into the face of a young woman for the 'crime' of speaking to a man who is not a relative, stoning or flogging rape victims for 'adultery', murdering one's female relatives for having boyfriends, mutilating the genitals of young girls ... THOSE are the most heinous and dreadful which *I* can think of.

Burning a book? Stupid and ignorant, but ... big woops, really.

What needs to change, is the entirely unprovable assertions of a stone age poeples' belief system? Stone age, in effect, because it validates a stone until dead practise, outlawed centuries ago, by more enlightened people.
The 11th and 12th centuries?
I don't remember much about that era, except that competing superstitions, had very different versions of what transpired, whenever ordinary if extremely ignorant advocates gave themselves authority to speak and or kill in God's name.
[Apparently 6 million Muslims were mindlessly put to the sword and killed during the era now referred to as the Great Crusade, simply because, they and or their Christian counterparts, couldn't ever agree on the name they used in reference, to a one true God/Creator; they all apparently believed in?] Extraordinary?
And even more extraordinary, in that some groups believe that there any justification whatsoever, in killing/persecuting the entirely innocent descendants of those warring in God's name Christians.
Or rather, almost anyone not wielded to their own and endlessly revised and edited, paper and ink supported belief system? Which by the way, completely outlaws the spilling of even so much as a single drop of innocent blood, or, restricts Holy Jihad, to only an entirely internal struggle against one's own internal demons!
However, if I had my druthers, an extremely juvenile Jones would be punished by the very means he advocates for all others, and bent over a beam or some-such and publicly flogged in front of his entire congregation, until his burning backside was the only thing feeling the heat? Rhrosty.

Book burners can do harm to individual copies of a book. They can't by the action of burning a book harm the reputation of that book. The burning is at best a symbol unless the burners are able to get at most of the copies of the book or deprive others of access to a copy of their own.

Those who do the most harm to a book are those who claim that it's of value, that it plays a significant role in their lives then proceed to live in a way that brings the book into disrepute.

That harm comes when people commit atrocities in the name of the book, it comes when other followers are willing to mass in the streets in protest at the actions of those who don't claim to follow the book but are almost silent when great evil is done in the name of their book.

The lack of balance displayed by the authors comments if as widely known as the book burnings would do more harm to the reputation of the book than Terry Jones could possibly hope to achieve.

R0bert

I do so love it when authers write trite little pieces that assume that Islam is such a wonderfull and enlightening religion, when the documented reality is something quite different and so easy to demonstrate.

I wonder whether any of them have ever read their books ...but given that they are not stories a such, but a random collection of verses not in order..it is not surprising.

The biggest irony is that the oldest versions are actually written in Aramaic, which is a semitic language.

Finally the Koranic trylogy have more verses/words dealing with violence and anti semiticism than Hitlers Mein Kampf ..and that takes some doing

I doubt that anyone in the West takes Terry Jones too seriously.

You might be better off lobbying politicians to either criminalise or enforce ancient blasphemy laws.

To clamp down on stupidity can only be achieved by beating around the bush i.e. diplomacy.
To confront it head on only gets us to where we're now.
There's ample evidence that stupidity is a huge percentage in every generation & every generation has to deal with it. Some generations have dealt with stupidity successfully but the next generation undoes all the tough work. That's the nature of stupidity.