Koran Burning

I always cringe a bit when I talk about subjects like this, but I had to give my 2 cents on the burning of the Koran by a pastor down in the United States which resulted in very violent protests abroad.

Perhaps burning that book was rude, but why are we more hard on the pastor than people rioting? This is 2011; book burning was a tragedy in the past when the information was being erased in that process. But these days, the koran is at no risk of being erased. If I burned a copy of Harry Potter, nobody would give a shit beyond my sister. If I deleted a "Holy" ebook, nobody would flinch. This still comes down to a religion intimidating and bullying to have special status, it’s no different from when they rioted over cartoons being drawn of Mohamed.

Is it bad form? Yes. I had suggested a long time ago that if you want to send a message by showing the book is not something that should be put on a pedestal any more than other forms of fiction, you would be better off burying it and letting it naturally decay, or even reading it, and challanging its ideas using your rational mind. People do need to recognise that the type of groups in the past who have burned books, have done so because they were looking to change history, destroy information and supress others. How ironic that in this situation, it’s the other way around, and to make things more sad, this is incited between two religions, neither one of them capable of learning any of those lessons or even recognising the real problem.