Learn, don't burn

It’s a strange world in which the literary event of the season in the US threatened to be, not the publication of Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, but the burning of a holy book.

It seems a pastor in Florida recently vowed to publicly burn copies of the Quran as his way of “marking” the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001 (he called it “International Burn a Koran Day.”) As of this writing, after a flood of criticism coming from the US President and the top US general on down to Angelina Jolie, the pastor, Terry Jones, has “suspended” his book-roasting activities. Temporarily. But he has not recanted.

Predictably, what followed in parts of the Muslim world were riots and protests against the US in which — you guessed it — American flags were burned. If you can’t lick ‘em, light ‘em.

It turns out the pastor, Terry Jones, is a lone loon, out on the fringes; even his congregation (whoever they might be) have been quick to distance themselves from him and his opinions. Indeed, silence is golden.

An important point here is that most Americans, from what I’ve seen, view Pastor Jones as just an inflammatory jerk. They understand, on a gut level, that burning a book (or a flag, for that matter) is a violent act, loaded with meaning: it dramatically expresses hatred toward an enemy. Most Americans don’t feel this way about Muslims, I’m willing to bet, and wouldn’t share this pastor’s views. I have faith in the average American’s ability to see through the clouds of B.S. to understand what’s going on here.

The irony of the situation is hard to miss, though. In America, you’re free to express your views, short of hatred speech. But religious freedom is also enshrined in the Constitution. Balancing these two sometimes contradictory freedoms can be difficult — leading to the absurd scenario ACLU leaders defending Klansmen and suspected terrorists on occasion, while some people burn flags, and others burn books.

On the other hand, everyone from US General Petreus to Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called the pastor’s silly and pointless crusade a threat to the “safety” of American troops. Obama called it a “stunt” and begged the guy to listen to the “better angels” of his nature. It sounded a lot like negotiations with a terrorist or hostage taker.

So what is it with religious extremists and their animosity toward books in general?

The list of banned books in the US over the decades — not just banned, but burned, usually in the Bible Belt south — includes Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Catcher in the Rye, Slaughter-House Five, Nineteen Eighty-Four, To Kill A Mockingbird. It’s tempting to say that the common denominator here is thought: if a book contains ideas that are challenging to certain ways of thinking, those ways of thinking respond in unthinking ways: Burn the book! Bad book! Bad, bad book!

(My favorite quote in this brouhaha came from Medhat Singab, a 47-year-old Egyptian-born Briton, who said the media was making a circus of “a church with 30 followers and an idiot.” “They can go on burning the Quran,” he told Associated Press. “It’s not going to destroy Islam.” Now that’s religious conviction.)

But it’s doubtful Jones has actually taken the time to sit down and read the Quran, to compare its ideas with his Bible; no, rather, the Quran is just a forceful symbol to him. The pastor, clearly seeking publicity during a national memorial day, was interested in igniting fires of passion that are already rippling through disgruntled, unemployed American citizens. You know times are weird when Obama is elected by a majority of voters who then seem to forget he’s Christian, not Muslim. Then again, a dedicated group of conspiracy nuts refuses to believe Obama was even born in the US. Thus the flames are fanned, obscuring much sense. It’s a familiar scenario: Times are tough, so blame someone else. (See: Rise of National Socialist Party in post-WWI Germany. Or see: Fox News talking head Glenn Beck’s recent D.C. “rally” conveniently scheduled on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s most famous civil rights speech.)

Another symbolic football here is the World Trade Center site in New York City. Jones, obviously well versed in the tactics of terrorism, has tried to link his call to burn the Quran to a supposed “agreement” with Muslim clerics in NYC that a mosque would not be built near the site of the 9/11 attacks. Neither Jones, nor the clerics he supposedly negotiates with, has the power to promise any such thing.

Yet the World Trade Center mosque has become another flashpoint of smoke and mirrors for many Americans. When even Donald Trump offers to buy the controversial site outright to prevent Muslims from building a mosque there, and when the issue gets name-checked during the Miss Universe pageant, you know it’s a hot-button issue.

But isn’t the very issue whether or not America is a place of religious tolerance and freedom? If so, should it not be able to tolerate religious expression, even at one of the most emotion-laden addresses in the country?

Or to flip the issue around, why should Pastor Jones try to deny others the right to religious expression — wherever they choose — while he reserves for himself the right to burn the Quran as his act of religious expression?

That doesn’t sound very American at all.