Florida's own "Westboro Baptist," the Dove World Outreach Center (DWOC) has launched a Facebook campaign to make September 11, "International Burn a Koran Day."
You may fondly remember the DWOC and its recent and eloquent, "No Homo Mayor" sign, an effort to campaign against recently elected Gainesville Mayor Craig Lowe. The chickens changed their sign to read simply, "No Homo," after they learned their tax-exempt status may be threatened. But now that the campaign is over, on August 2, they'll stage a "No Homo Mayor" protest on the steps of City Hall in Gainesville, from noon til 2 pm.
The DWOC stands against homosexuality because the Bible stands against it. You can read all about it on the web page. But of course, the Bible, as we all know, is boring, so just show up that Monday with your "God Hates Shrimp" sign and have a good time.
The DWOC is also against Islam, because the Bible says that the only way to the Christian God is through Jesus, therefore "any religion which would profess anything other than this truth is of the devil." They've put up crude, ugly signs on the church's property that say "Islam is of the Devil."
Clearly DWOC does not have an objective understanding of the word "truth."
Because the DWOC is all about "outreach" (it's right there in the name, after all) and the "truth of the Bible" which is "love, healing and prosperity, but it is also about getting up," (huh?), naturally, they want to encourage everyone to join together and burn the holy book of their biggest rival religion: Islam. And what better day to burn it, than the day insane Muslim extremists destroyed the World Trade Center in NYC, among other horrific acts?
The DWOC is free to do so. They can burn Qur'ans all day if they like. But one has to wonder how they would feel if people joined together for a mass burning of the Bible.
There is clearly a problem in Christianity. Some groups take all the hateful things in the Bible--of which there are plenty (these particular parts must touch something deep inside them)--and create sects devoted to hate and hateful acts. Of course they call their hate "love," or "outreach," and they call their acts "necessary."
And then other groups ignore all the horrors of the Bible and create googly-eyed, rainbows and butterflies sects that even middle-of-the-road Christians have a hard time accepting.
Clearly, both extremes are a little loopy; but the googly-eyed are preferred.
It would be fine if Terry and Sylvia Jones, senior pastors of the DWOC (which leads one to believe it is a small, family affair, not unlike their cousins in Westboro), just wanted to grow their religion on their hatred of all things blasphemous. But clearly, they would like to conquer the United States for their god and their brand of Christianity.
As rationalists, we can't support the burning of Qur'ans by persons filled with seething hatred. We can support it as a reasoned act of protest against a religion we find oppressive and immoral. But can atheists support an act of protest against one religion by another? Why should we?
We must allow them their rights, but we can certainly speak out against their puerile, disgusting acts of hatred. We must not allow American extremists to turn 9/11 into a day of religious animosity.
The Qur'an and the Bible are both books filled with a little bit of good and a lot of bad. Perhaps a fitter tribute to 9/11--an act spurred on and supported by a certain interpretation of one of our world's religions--would be a bonfire of all religions' holy books.
Comments
I’m so torn. First of all, I want to express my appreciation for your reasonableness with this rather unreasonable group of people. For my own part, it’s hard to be reasonable when you’re emotionally raw. Being one of those people whom Christians hate, and having watched them go after every civil right they can take away from me in the name of God, I find myself struggling to be reasonable around them. Thank God you are. That helps.
There is a part of me that would like to see the tax exempt status for all churches revoked across the board, and then each church would have to go through a process where they had to prove that they are not political, and would then have their tax exempt status reinstated… unreasonable, I know. But it frustrates me to no end that my tax dollars are, in essence, supporting the very same people who are trying to destroy me, and my government is letting them do it without recrimination.
Now for the second part of the unreasonableness: I wonder what would happen if the Muslims decided to protest by burning bibles. It would be a holy war. It would be extreme, but I wonder, if having it happen to them, they might understand how it feels. You’re right; I’m supposing that these are reasonable people in the first place and that they would have a reasonable response. My mistake.
And the real irony here, is that the DWOC claims that they are the ones being persecuted.
Great article. Thanks for being reasonable.
I used to think Texas was the religious nutjob capitol of the US.
Florida now takes the crown.
Maybe it's the heat?
Here on the coast of the Pacific NW, it was maybe 62 today. We were fogged in.
But not nearly as much as Florida it seems...
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