The Dove World Outreach Center, based in Gainesville, Fla. is observing the anniversary of the September 11th attacks this year in the most offensive and irreligious way possible — Terry Jones and his flock will burn a Qur’an (Koran). Jones is the author of “Islam is of the Devil.”
The Church is calling the occasion the “International Burn a Koran Day.”
By the way, if prejudice against Islam is not enough, the Church also offers homophobic observances. They are protesting Gainesville’s openly gay mayor with a “No Homo Mayor” protest.
What is fascinating is that Christian and Muslim extremists do not seem to realize how much they have in common with each other.
On the website selling hateful mugs and tee-shirts as well as the book, readers are told:
It is not a contradiction to say that God is a God of love AND hate. The Bible has plenty of references to godly hatred. Which is only logical. Don’t you hate anything that would try to destroy what you love? A hurricane that rips your house apart? Cancer that threatens a loved one? What is truly astonishing to see is that people, even so called Christians, have such little knowledge of the Word of God. God has not changed. He is the same, yesterday, today and forever.
Source; Yahoo
AY said:
“Oh well, his Jesus can be the one of intolerance.”
Sounds like Tootie’s capitalist Jesus (I prefer the Big Butter Jesus – I hope they get it rebuilt quickly ;-)).
Isabel,
I’m sure it will get a bunch of American flags burnt in retaliation (unfortunately that is probably both literally and figuratively true).
Then GB, he is not taking the new testament as written but either subjugating his thoughts for what it says of scribing to the law of Moses. The God that Jesus supposedly taught love as the answer, not hate and or violence. Has the preach even began to forgive someone 70 times 7? Hmmmmm, He’s not teaching the subject matter as I learned it. Oh well, his Jesus can be the one of intolerance.
AY
One man’s ‘cult’ is another man’s careful reader.
Frankly, I find the minister’s(?) take quite refreshingly honest. He is simply reading for comprehension without selective editing – just like the people who wrote the wretched stuff down 2000 years ago. And just like most of the Christian world did for nearly 2000 years after.
And he is certainly right about one thing – the Christian God is not merely a loving God if he can be called a loving God at all. He is, quite plainly, a vengeful and demanding deity who will only love you if you adore him upon pain of eternal agony.
“What is fascinating is that Christian and Muslim extremists do not seem to realize how much they have in common with each other.”
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Ain’t that the truth!
Ron Ramsey, Tenn. Lt. Gov: Islam May Not Be A Religion (VIDEO)
Aside from the intellectual freedom issue, these people are really stupid. Some cartoonist in Sweden who depicts Mohammed with bombs in his turban is getting death threats. Salman Rushdie has to go underground for years. What do these people think will happen to them when they burn the Koran, a physical object which is regarded in Islam as sacred in and of itself? Remember the outrage at the claims that Americans were flushing Korans down the toilet at Gitmo?
Tootie,
You are simply wrong about hatred.
Hatred requires no context for understanding it and any context you might provide is simply another weak rationalization for why you won’t or can’t dispense with your own hate – an emotional response that is entirely individual and owned by the individual. Hatred is your sin when you grasp on to it for whatever reason. It is destructive not only to the object, but to the holder.
1 John 3:15 say “Anyone who hates another brother or sister is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don’t have eternal life within them.”
That would be because if God is love as Jesus asserted, then hatred as the opposite of love is the opposite of God and holding hatred to your heart for whatever reason displaces the light of love (i.e. the Holy Spirit).
That’s the logic of Jesus’ message. The logical mirror of your illogic when you fail to grasp that your homophobia is worse than a simple waste of time.
Buddha:
I think it is a waste of time to burn books. Period. Unless of course you need the tinder. But in that case my books would be the last thing I’d burn. The furniture would go first.
And about hate. Hate and love are not mutually exclusive and are dependent on context. It is good to hate Nazism, for example. And bad to love it.
Hate and love must be understood within a definitive context in order to discern whether or not they are misdirected or used to serve evil or good.
Tootie,
I’m just curious . . . would you be so dismissive of these people if they were burning copies of “Heather Has Two Mommies”?
Hmm?
Or is it not so much what books they are burning but that they are burning books period that bothers you?
“It is not a contradiction to say that God is a God of love AND hate. The Bible has plenty of references to godly hatred. Which is only logical. Don’t you hate anything that would try to destroy what you love?”
That’s not perfectly logical.
That’s mere pandering to emotion over logic.
Hate is not a logical operand or form.
“But I tell you not to resist an evildoer. On the contrary, whoever slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well.” Matthew 5:39 (ISV)
“If someone strikes you on the cheek, offer him the other one as well, and if someone takes your coat, don’t keep back your shirt, either.” Luke 6:29 (ISV)
To which these clowns might answer –
“Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?” Psalm 139:21
Putting aside that the Psalms are part of not just the Christian, but the Judaic and Islamic traditions as well, I think this is a fine analysis of what is wrong with the idea of God is hate:
“God’s counsels concerning us and our welfare are deep, such as cannot be known. We cannot think how many mercies we have received from him. It would help to keep us in the fear of the Lord all the day long, if, when we wake in the morning, our first thoughts were of him: and how shall we admire and bless our God for his precious salvation, when we awake in the world of glory! Surely we ought not to use our members and senses, which are so curiously fashioned, as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. But our immortal and rational souls are a still more noble work and gift of God. Yet if it were not for his precious thoughts of love to us, our reason and our living for ever would, through our sins, prove the occasion of our eternal misery. How should we then delight to meditate on God’s love to sinners in Jesus Christ, the sum of which exceeds all reckoning! Sin is hated, and sinners lamented, by all who fear the Lord. Yet while we shun them we should pray for them; with God their conversion and salvation are possible. As the Lord knows us thoroughly, and we are strangers to ourselves, we should earnestly desire and pray to be searched and proved by his word and Spirit. If there be any wicked way in me, let me see it; and do thou root it out of me. The way of godliness is pleasing to God, and profitable to us; and will end in everlasting life. It is the good old way.” Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary [emphasis added]
Or as the bumper sticker says, “Hate is not a family value.”
It’s good to see that there are people of conscience protesting outside of the pastor’s church.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iowxcW_xUdg&hl=en_US&fs=1]
Maybe Rev. Jones and his cohorts can move this protest to the World Trade Center’s proposed site of the new Muslim outreach center, if they really want a crowd on Sept. 11.
A Y
Sorry to hear that. I think we could probably get along if we really tried.
AY,
Yup. SOME atheists are genuinely honest. Suffice to say there are genuinely honest people out there.
Wootsy,
As soon as someone says to be that they are a faithful christian, I move away as quickly as possible. Not only do I check to make sure I still have my wallet when I leave, but to assure that the knife is out of my back.
Call me a skeptic, but I have met more atheists that have the attributes that I look for in a person. They are genuinely honest.
AY, we all worship something, be it justice, G*d (as we know or define) or a good pot of coffee (NOT comparing these things so don’t get a panty wad…). But we don’t all go out and behave in direct opposition to the thing we propose (vocally and vociferously) to ‘worship’.
That’s just silly
I think the distinction between these two is the term “Moral Code.”
Cult:
The word cult pejoratively refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are reasonably considered strange.[1] The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices. The narrower, derogatory sense of the word is a product of the 20th century, especially since the 1980s, and is considered subjective, and is a result of the anti-cult movement, which uses the word in reference to groups seen as authoritarian, exploitative and possibly dangerous. The word implies a group which is a minority in society.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult
Religion:
Religion (from O.Fr. religion “religious community,” from L. religionem (nom. religio) “respect for what is sacred, reverence for the gods,”[1] “obligation, the bond between man and the gods”[2] is the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or more in general a set of beliefs explaining the existence of and giving meaning to the universe, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.[3]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion
from thier website:
‘About Us
Dove World Outreach Center is a New Testament Church – based on the Bible, the Word of God.’
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This is not a Church. It is a mob. Perhaps a ‘gang’ is a better descriptive. The New Testament is directly opposed to this behaviour.
By Christs teaching…in the Bible…Word of G*d….
Is this Jones any kin to Guyana Jones? The Cool-Aide Kid? When this church or what ever you may call the observants of this cult get torched will the US and/or Florida be there to rescue them? They are asking for it is all I can say……
The American Taliban is the correct term for these idiots. They are the same people who want the Bible to replace the Constitution. Does the Bible outlaw idiocy?
This is very foolish. Don’t these people have something better to do?