HE’S GOING TO BURN A KORAN? ‘LET’S RUMBLE WITH TERRORISTS AND MASS MURDERERS”
NRO — The Corner
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/246118/hes-going-burn-koran-quick-lets-go-join-terrorist-organization-mass-murders-people-and
“He’s going to burn a Koran? Quick, let’s go join a terrorist organization that mass-murders people”
September 9, 2010 1:09 P.M. By Andy McCarthy
Hi gang, nice to be back. Unfortunately, as I describe further in today’s column,[1] it’s like I never left.
In the column, I suggest we can assess the silliness of the rationalizations of the Ground Zero mosque by applying them to Pastor Terry Jones’s similarly provocative Koran-burning escapade — entirely legal, but a gratuitously offensive thing to do.
But that doesn’t begin to cover how vapid the commentary continues to be, particularly from the commander-in-chief — as President Obama took pains to remind us he is in an interview[2] by George Stephanopoulos this morning.
According to Obama, Jones’s “stunt” (a fair description) is already “a recruitment bonanza for al Qaeda.” That’s absurd. No sensible person joins a terrorist organization dedicated to mass-murdering human beings because somebody torches a Koran.
If the president, who is principally responsible for American national security, actually believes what he says, what is his excuse for not confronting Islamic regimes? Not looney-tunes pastors with followings smaller than the First Lady’s traveling caravan; Islamic governments that confiscate and destroy bibles, crucifixes, Stars of David, and other articles of profound religious substance and symbolism to non-Muslims. That goes on, systematically, every single day — although not as often as you’d imagine because Islamic societies are so innately intolerant that there aren’t a lot of non-Muslim religious items to be found in, say, Saudi Arabia.
Jones is going to burn a Koran; sharia states kill human beings who renounce Islam. Does the president have an explanation for why Christians and Jews are not forming terror cells with the bonanzas of recruits that must be forming up on a daily basis given the sorts of “stunts” that, in Saudi Arabia, are known as law-enforcement?
Terry Jones is a jackass. I wish Americans would trip over themselves with a fraction of the zeal on display here to condemn the torching of the American flag — a symbol of freedom and sacrifice. But that’s beside the point. Burning a book sacred to Muslims is a stupid, provocative thing to do. Yet, it is conscious avoidance — okay, willful blindness[3] — to claim that he is causing the threat to our troops, in addition to the threat of other attacks and rioting by Muslims (of the sort we’ve seen with the Danish cartoons, the false claims of Koran-flushing at Gitmo, the school teacher who named the teddy-bear Mohammed, etc.).
Those are all pretexts. The cause is Islamist ideology, which is dehumanizing of non-Muslims (or, in the case of the Ahmadi,[4] even of Muslims who reject core parts of Islamic doctrine). It is the ideology that puts the world’s Muslims on a hair-trigger.
What Jones is doing is a desecration, not a national security threat. It merits being derided, as any desecration does. And it may indeed provoke a spike in the violence that will go on, spike or no spike. But the national security problem is not Koran burning. It is a civilization indoctrinated by an ideology ever on the prowl for any excuse, real or imagined, to make mayhem. Wouldn’t it be nice if, while they publicly chide an American citizen for striking the match, our public officials took the occasion to chide the culture that turns its societies into dynamite?
[1] http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/246033/burning-questions-andrew-c-mccarthy
[2] http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/president-obama-terry-jones-koran-burning-plan-destructive/story?id=11589122
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Willful-Blindness-Andrew-C-Mccarthy/dp/1594032653/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1284051767&sr=8-2
[4] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/244750/re-heres-some-religious-intolerance-you-andy-mccarthy
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