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Honey is Sweet

On terrorists, on this day. - 2010-09-11

There is something going on here, which at the very *BEST* I can only call an insane double standard. I won't even say what I would call it at the worst - I may talk about incest and cannibalism here, but some things are just too gross (that's a joke. Laugh).

I have heard WAY too often now, in the past --what is it, two days? -- people referring to this minister who wants to burn copies of the Koran as a 'terrorist.'

So let's try a thought experiment. Okay? Let's say, some Muslim in another country (let's say Turkey, someplace not normally known for religious extremism), decides to burn a bunch of Christian bibles. Let's say this delightful person decides to announce the fact for a week or two before the event - possibly to drum up a crowd, or for some good publicity in the home country or whatever. With me so far? Now let's say this fellow (I'm assuming it's male), goes ahead and burns some hundreds of copies of the bible -- hopefully offending and horrifying Christians all over the globe and inciting them to murder and mayhem.

Now let's pretend that some fundamentalist Christians are so angry - raging - that they decide to blow up a busload of otherwise uninvolved Turkish tourists in Florida. Why, you may ask, are there Turkish tourists in Florida? I don't know. It's a condition of the thought experiment. Regardless of that aside -- who is the terrorist here? Who in this country, or the U.S. or U.K. for that matter, is going to blame the delightful individual (please note the sarcasm, I don't want to have to explain to anyone that I don't *really* consider him delightful) who was so motivated as to burn all those bibles. No. There will be a hue and a cry, a huge blame-fest against the Christians who killed a bunch of innocent tourists for no very good reason.

Let's try this again. Someone in some country, it can remain nameless, decides to burn some ancient Torah scrolls that they just happened to have lying around, or even collected for the purpose. Black hats - otherwise known as Chassidic Jews - in several European countries riot, and take it to such an extreme that dozens of locals in France, Belgium, Holland and Estonia are injured, burned or killed. Who is going to be blamed? Is it the person who burned the Torah scrolls? Did he kill those people? Get real.

Okay, someone in India takes some holy cows and decides to have a huge auto-de-fey (don't ask me to spell it), and invites the surrounding population to join him in the hamburger feast. A sizable portion of the Indian population of England, in retaliation, blows up two tube stations. CLEARLY the fellow killing the cows is the terrorist responsible for the thirty-seven dead, some two hundred wounded and the millions or tens of millions of pounds of damage?

So - there's this guy. In Florida. He's not someone I probably would like very much. He doesn't seem to me to be the most diplomatic envoy for why one should not hate Xtians. He is dead set on burning the Koran. He may be stupid. He may even be hateful. But -- A terrorist? I ask you!

I am really, really tired of this. If you can't tell the difference between someone who would burn a book, and someone who would happily burn 3000 people, then please have the sense to shut the F*** up.

If you can't recognize that there is something wrong claiming that an Xtian burning a Koran is equivalent to a Muslim cutting the heads off of western reporters or blowing up public busses, then please, please, take yourself back to kindergarten.

Pick up a primer from, oh, say, seventy years ago, and try to learn the basic facts of life as people used to be taught them. That the bad guys are the ones who actually pull the trigger on innocents. That the good guys aren't necessarily people that we like, they are the people who we can live next door to and not be afraid that our next weenie roast will cause them to hack us to bits in our sleep.

That sometimes there is no *reason* why bad things happen, and that blaming the victim is never correct.

Yes, we need to speak up against the evils that exist in our world. If you think that this guy in Florida is really one of the worst evils the world has to contend with, then I am sorry for you. Also, I won't let my children play with yours and I won't invite you into my back yard.

Perspective, please, and balance. If a bunch of REAL terrorists end up trying to kill, or killing, a bunch of innocent people and claim it is because this guy burned a book? It is a lie. They would take any excuse, or none at all. That is who they are, that is how they choose to live.

It's a lie.

You don't honour the innocents killed on this day nine years ago, by pretending their lives are the equivalent of so much ink and paper, regardless of how the ink is arranged.

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:: Yesterdays : Tomorrows ::

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