On the cusp of hearing the very good news about gay marriage being permitted in California, I read this article about severe douche baggery perpetrated by morons. Far be it for someone from the state of Florida to do something so mind-bendingly stupid (I’m looking at you, electoral returns officers…okay, that’s not fair. When the Bush family whines loud enough, you recount in their favour just to make them go away).
But hey, listen, if you’ve already a hate-on for Catholics, family planning, Jews, and fags, then why not just add Moose-limbs to that list? I mean, you wouldn’t want to leave anyone out, right? And everyone knows that nothing brings together a community like a book burnin’. Particularly when the books in question are religious in nature! It’d be like that time when y’all burnt witches! If you *burn it*, it can’t hurt you!
Ohhh…riiiight. In that article, there is nothing saying that this church or group of churches actually does hate Jews and Catholics. I’m reading the *subtext* here.
Anyone who thinks that Islam is a religion that promotes hatred, intolerance, and violence and then demonstrates this belief by burning the Qu’ran on the anniversary of a terrorist attack clearly doesn’t understand irony. And irony is wasted on them anyway. You want to know what’s really effed up? The following:
Jones emphasizes that his church does not just speak out about Islam, but also [speaks out about] homosexuality, same-sex marriage [which is somehow magically different from homosexuality?], and abortion. To Christian critics who say the Quran burning event is not the way to show Christian love to Muslims, Jones’ response is they should stop criticizing and find another way to raise awareness about Islam..
What is there to raise awareness about? That those dirty Moose-limbs will break into your house and eat your babies because they’re all a bunch of religious lunatics who hide their faces behind veils and who hate us because we’re not Moose-limb like they are? Do they realise how ridiculous they sound?
Never mind that folks who think like this choose to conveniently forget the Crusades, during which time, it was the Christians murdering infidels because the Bible tells them to (it does!). I wonder how many of the 42 percent of Protestant pastors the article cites who “believe Islam “promotes violence”” actually know their history. Or perhaps it’s okay for Christians to kill infidels because that was a “different time” and it was the “actions of a few corrupt people who started the Crusades”, but somehow, it’s mystically different when the *most recent* infidel-killers are targetting anyone but themselves (which is kind of the natural path of religious/cultural intolerance, you see?). It’s okay to hate an entire body of people because you’ve heard about a couple of lines from a religious text that talks all fire and brimstone? But it’s okay for that to be in YOUR OWN RELIGIOUS TEXT!!??
Seriously, you’re making it more and more difficult for me to have faith in anything: God, humanity, rainbows, double rainbows, karma, freedom of expression…anything. You just don’t get how hypocritical you are. (I don’t mean you; I mean THOSE asshats.)
And I’m not even talking from a Christian/religious standpoint here. I’m not even going to talk about charity, or acceptance, or love for your fellow humans (though those are all Good Things). I’m talking from the standpoint of someone who is able to understand that saying : “I hate intolerant behaviour” and then acting like an intolerant prick are kind of mutually exclusive, if you want to be taken seriously. And I’m talking from the standpoint of someone who thinks that trying to destroy ideas, even symbolically, is not only pointless, but it’s heinous.
I realise I will never be able to talk sense into people who prove, through their actions, they are just as ridiculous, fanatical, and intolerant as the people they “raise awareness about” [read: persecute]. And do you know what? This has NOTHING TO DO WITH RELIGION. I mean, it has everything to do with religion, but for everyone who’s going to say “Christianity is bad because it does this stuff ALL THE TIME”, you’ve completely missed the point. And for people who’re going to say “organised religion is wrong because this kind of thing happens ALL THE TIME”, you’ve also missed the point.
All the idiots need is an excuse to hate. How sad is that? Seriously. Think about that for a minute. If it we hadn’t any organised religion to blame it on, we’d be back to skin colour (like that’s ever left our parlance). And once we get rid of hatred and intolerance based on skin colour, we’d go to eye colour, or geography of heritage, or income level, or education, or gender, or…for Chrissakes, pick what you want to hate people for.
You don’t like that Aboriginals get “special privileges”? Why not burn a bunch of Aboriginal art and then tell people that if they really want to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem, they should go door-to-door distributing literature that talks about acceptance and respect.
You don’t like that people with University educations tend to get higher-paying jobs than high-school dropouts? You should probably burn a bunch of University degrees and then tell people they should go door-to-door and talk about how education is undermining our society, and how we should do away with higher thought and knowledge.
Sick of women having a “leg up” in modern society? Maybe you should burn the legislation that provides women an equal standing and encourage people who don’t like your methods to go door-to-door to explain to women why they shouldn’t aspire to such lofty goals as education and employment.
I mean, why stop there? Children and animals probably don’t deserve tolerance – why not go door-to-door and offer to beat other people’s children and torture their animals so that you can advance some of your own interests at their expense?
What is it you’re so afraid of? What threatens you *so much* about Islam that you need to make an utter fool of yourself over and over again just to vilify it? What scares you so much you need to embrace that kind of …is it fascism? What is it? I can’t imagine ANYTHING threatening me so much that I needed to burn the books/effigy of those people.
i make squee noises when you tell me stuff.