Ah, The Smell Of Biblioclasm In The Morning…
7 December 2008 by KA
And of course, since Islam is a ‘peaceful’ religion:
Mumbai Muslim couple arrested for burning Quran
Mumbai, August 28:: A Muslim couple was arrested for allegedly burning a copy of their holy book in suburban Govandi area.
Mastan Shah and his wife Noor Bano Shah told the police that they were burning the book as it was very old and tattered and they did not want to throw it.
Angry neighbours who saw the holy book being burnt, assaulted Noor and Mastan. The couple’s house was also vandalised.
And for another little ditty of dangerous delusion:
Students burn US flags in anger at Koran shooting
STUDENTS in Logar and Balkh have staged anti-American demonstrations in protest at a US soldier in Iraq who shot a copy of the holy Koran.
The protesters asked the United Nations and the international community to put the soldier on trial in an Islamic court.
More than 1,400 students from Porak High School, as well as tribal elders from 20 villages, took to the streets in Pul-e-Alam, the provincial capital of Logar in protest at the soldier’s actions.
During the two-hour protest, students blocked the Kabul-Gardez highway and burned effigies of President Bush and the US flag.
In fact, these are just books, people. Being an avid bibliophile, there was a time when I thought that was a sin (till I learned that the word ’sin’ was just a fancy way of saying “Oops!”). Human beings are not only vaster repositories of knowledge, but are by and far more valuable than some musty old anachronistic book of rules.
Knowledge is a commodity, and life is priceless – and a book comes in a distant third by my calculations.
Till the next post, then.
7 December 2008, on 4:31 pm
Book banning is by far worse than book burning as far as I am concerned. The religious nuts who get all spastic at the burning of one of their mythology books are the same ones who would burn down libraries full of thousands upon thousands of books.
7 December 2008, on 6:57 pm
Hiya Star.
Ah yes, the proverbial double standard. Cliched, but fact. The religious have been famous for this for centuries ( especially the Abrahamic ones).
7 December 2008, on 10:37 pm
These people are totally unhinged. This is also one reason we must always maintain a separation of church and state. Why would anyone be arrested for anything like this. If the theocrats have their way not only would htat happen but we would have this site shut down as well. Fuck, I jsut hate the idea that they get away with this nonsense.
7 December 2008, on 10:47 pm
Well I like the burning an effigy of Bush part. I do it from time to time myself.
8 December 2008, on 2:09 am
Wish we had a nice rhyme like PZ had with “It’s a frackin’ cracker” to fit with “book.”
8 December 2008, on 2:38 am
Well, for the bible, “Don’t be tribal, it’s just a bible.” This one’s a little pretentious, but I’ve always liked, “I don’t care a smidgen about your religion.”
8 December 2008, on 7:54 am
Hey – if a dozen people can get killed over a CARTOON, I shudder to think how unglued these loonies will become when somebody burns their fairy tale book.
8 December 2008, on 12:36 pm
Jimmer,
i know. I do it too. Are we sure it was related to the koran burning and not just plain ol’ bush hating.
8 December 2008, on 12:47 pm
Grimm’s are the better fairy tales. The junk these people are getting all upset over isn’t even worth reading.
I mean sure, it’s funny when you realize that thousands of people read books full of ridiculous fairy tales looking for wisdom and understanding. But when you really think about it … it’s just sad.
8 December 2008, on 7:29 pm
The first story is definitely a good example of religious nuthattery; no book is worth more than a human being.
In the second one, I suspect that the soldier’s shooting the Koran presented a great excuse and opportunity for anti-occupation feeling to bubble up and boil over (in conjunction with religious nuthattery). The situation in Iraq is so volatile that something even smaller than this would probably have done it, let alone an action that would clearly be seen as a direct attack on and disrespect of local native culture (which of course includes religious nuthattery).
I mean, the story doesn’t give full details of the book shooting, but it seems a pretty dumb thing to do in an occupied territory, and one that isn’t cooperating whole-heartedly with the occupation. Of course the action is meaningless in and of itself and the soldier has the right to do it (unless it was someone else’s Koran and he did it without their permission, in which case he was clearly vandalizing private property on top of it all), but sheesh, dude: you’re forcibly occupying a country where you’re highly resented by a large portion of the population. And what do you do? Give them a great excuse (in their eyes) to commit violence against their own and you!
Then again, given the volatility of the Iraqi situation, this story is also another example of why we should be getting the fuck outta there as of yesterday!
9 December 2008, on 11:49 pm
This is not the first time Muslims have burned books.