this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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Governments should not be allowed to burn books.
Private citizens should be allowed to burn any books they own.
Neither governments nor private citizens should be allowed to harm or threaten people who burn their own damn books.
Example: you can purchase a dozen copies of "On The Origin of Species", burn them, and I will very happily not threaten to behead you. Easy.
I agree with Hummelgaard. Those "protests" are used to create hatred. Even though it is also for me not comprehensible how people can be so sensitive about this, we all know the reaction it provokes. And even though we don't agree and comprehend those feelings, we can still respect those feelings and just not senselessly create disruption. And hey.... You can still burn as many Qurans in your private oven as you want.
The intent is secondary to the effect. If certain muslim people cannot put their religious sensibilities BELOW the secular human rights of their fellow country men, they LITERALLY need to leave. They are literally bad for us, and our social, secular order. EXACTLY like the hardcore christians are bad for human rights in the USA.
Are you asking the hardcore Christians to leave? Or is that reserved for those you deem as foreign?
This isn't an exaggeration: a few weeks ago in Ottawa we had anti-LGBT protests where rainbow flags were burned down -- guess who was there? And while many of us were offended and appalled, nobody was threatened or beheaded in response, and we didn't have politicians trying to pass a new law forbidding the burning of rainbow flags either.
The whole point of this is that in Europe we have fought for centuries in order to establish liberal democracies where freedom of speech and the separation of church and state are enshrined. We must not appease extremists who achieve change with threats of violence. There is a name for that.
In a democracy the act of burning a book, or a flag, is a canary in the coal mine: you know there is trouble when it dies.
The message is simple: we don't threaten people who have different ideas.
you do realize that the people burning lgbt flags now, will burn lgbt people, or whoever they think to be lgbt, if they get the chance to?
Destroying symbols of a group is a step in the escalation to killing people of that group. Source: two millenia of antisemitism in europe. First you attack the symbols, then the places and finally the people.
Yes, that is part of the point I'm trying to make. I am queer and thus scared of our governments appeasing these dangerous idiots. It starts by banning burning their stupid books, and god knows where it ends.
People should be able to burn a stupid book without fearing for their lives. Just like they should be able to burn a flag or any other symbol.
People like me don't harm Muslims. I wish I could say the opposite.
The common thread between both is religious extremism.
How is this blasphemy law different from the draconian anti-LGBT or anti-abortion laws in the USA? BOTH ARE JUSTIFIED with purely with religious feelings/opinions.
Burning books is not compareable with having the right to life your sexuality. You can life a happy and fullfilled life without ever burning a religious book. Having to closet your sexuality does not allow for that.
Also it is wrong to speak about blasphemy laws, implying the state would try to enforce its religion by forbidding criticism against it, you know like the actual blasphemy laws were about. This here is about preventing public hate speech, which serves nothing except to incite violence.
We can not have a modern society where people feel strongly about religion. And there is really no point in appeasement of fundamentalists - they don't want a compromise they allays want it all.
I agree with that statement. However - the world is not a modern society in most places yet and we can´t expect the rest of the world to simply adopt our values because we would like them to. They have to get there by themselves, in a long painful process of social evolution - just as we did. We need to make sure to not allow any of our hard earned freedoms to be taken away, which are under constant attack from multiple sides, not just religious forces but also authoritarians of different political directions, capitalists and so on. At the same time we have to respect other cultures and their individual development. It´s a challenge and sometimes there might have to be compromise but I think not burning books in public is really acceptable and nobody will suffer from not doing it. Full expression of thought is perfectly possible just by speaking, no book burning required for that.
Imo it also should be considered that western colonialism often had a devastating effect on the social evolution of eastern countries. Just think of the history of Iran for example. Iran was on the way to become a lighthouse of democracy in the region by it´s own development and would now probably have been a democracy for decades if the west would not have intervened and prevented that (Operation Ajax). This caused Iran to become one of the worst theocratic dictatorships instead. That does not make the fundamentalists any better of course but it can also not be ignored in the context of this discussion.
Again there is no point in appeasing fundamentalist. They don't want the finger or the hand, they want the whole state to run by their rules - they are not searching for a compromise. Sure, nobody sane is really in favor for burning books - but what is the point, they won't be any happier with that and will work on the next thing that is offending their archaic views of the world.
Where do you draw the line of what is considered acceptable form of expression?
It's not that I like, I would say - I even despise people burning books. But in my opinion, everyone has the right to do so - since in the end no direct harm is caused to anyone.
One important point is imo that publicly burning the Quran as a provocation does not just offend the few fundamentalists but all believing Muslims in the world, also the moderate ones. That they don´t get angry and violent like the fundamentalists does not mean it´s not offensive to them. Because of this I consider not burning the Quran publicly simply as normal and polite behavior towards all Muslims -especially the moderate ones- and not at all as a form of appeasement to fundamentalists.
Than all believing Muslims are fundamentalists. But we both know that that's not the case. Moderate Muslims per definition don't give shit. Like moderate Christians don't care if you burn a bible. Or I don't care if you burn a biography of Darwin. Sure I will think you are a dumb person to avoid. But ultimately it's up to you, not my business.
Also where do you draw the line? Homosexuality and modern view of women rights is offensive to conservative Muslims. Therefore, I prefer to draw a line at actual direkt harm to other people. Burning books, dumb and provocative - but so is a good portion of art.
It´s not that simple. There is a wide spectrum between feeling offended and reacting with terrorism, don´t you agree?
All kind of folks is offended by all kind of things. The question is rather simple where do you draw the line.
Well I think it´s obvious, the line is where just feeling offended ends and reacting with violence starts, is it not?!?
Now I'm confused about your opinion - since burning Quran does exactly that, offend feelings - no-one is harmed directly.
I starting to think that you will probably never understand the finer nuances of things, sorry ....
Sure buddy.
yeah, clearly the compromise needs to be burning symbols of a group in public to stir hatred and violence against that group. That is totally the reasonable compromise. Clearly the people wanting the right to burn things in public are not fundamentalist, after all basically everyone burns a Quran, or Torah or Bible for breakfast amirite?
Look at the real-world consequences of mocking Islam, of drawing prophet Muhamed, or burning the Qur'an.
Compare them with the real-world consequences of mocking any other religion (or atheism), or burning their "sacred" books.
Are they comparable? Who is then the oppressor, and who is the oppressed?
The US conservatives and Hillary Clinton were calling for war against Iran because the people there burnt US flags. Trump then bombed a person invited on a diplomatic talk with the US, which is one of the worst crimes against diplomacy imaginable.
Or look at footbal fans hostile to each other, where symbols of the enemy team are burnt vice versa until it escalates to violence.
Attacking symbols of groups in hate causes escalations all the time.
Indeed, football fans are famously known for their acts of violence, such as flying airliners into skyscrapers, countless suicide bombings, etc. All in the name of football.
I have no interest in Muslims being harmed in any way. They are literally my neighbors. At the same time, one must recognize that among them there are people with a a willingness to support and commit atrocities that is unparalleled today.
People who deny this are blind to reality. All sides are not equal.
and among us civilised western europeans there are many fascists murdering muslims or people assumed to be such or deemed as supporters of them. Anders Breivik murdered over 70 teenagers because of his ideology of fearing a muslim takeover of europe. When you measure muslims by their worst, then you need to measure yourself by people like Breivik too.
I hope you see why that doesnt make sense in either case and is certainly no justification for allowing hate speech in the form of burning symbols of a group subject to discrimination.
Good point but Islamophobes are usually not particularly fond of any logic that questions their believes ...
I'm a pacifist queer atheist progressive green-party voter Canadian with a POC family. What do I have in common with a Norwegian Christian authoritarian right-wing ethno-fascist murderer? The number of chromosomes? You won't see me supporting violence against anybody, but you won't see me supporting a religion that stones people like me either. Do you?
I personally really do not like religion. And if you buy a quran and burn it at home, nothing will happen. Nobody will care.
But what is your desired outcome, if you take the book that is holy to some, and burn it infront of their eyes? There is only one answer to this and that answer is the reason for these laws. You cannot go to a pride parade and burn rainbow flags in front of their eyes either. It is rather obvious why.
What are you talking about? This is pretty much what happened in Ottawa a few weeks ago, so there is no need to hypothesize. What happened to them? Nothing at all.
Queer folks don't behead Muslims. Queer folks do not stone Muslims.