Offend people the right way

Nobody would ever accuse me of being on the cutting-edge of topical content when it comes to my blog, but I feel a little bit more behind the curve right now. Personally, I blame it all on the baby and the fact that I've had to return to work. Still, I've been thinking about some stuff lately, and now I finally have a chance to write about it. (Although Logan's getting a bit twitchy and Mommy's not home...)

When I heard about that one moron pastor's decision to have a "Burn the Koran" day, my reaction was to think that he was doing something stupid. Yeah, yeah, he didn't actually go through with it, but I understand that there were some other yahoos out there who went and did it anyway. Now, you might be wondering, what did I have against it? After all, didn't I participate in "Draw Mohammed Day"? That's something that would offend Muslims. Why would I be on board with one and not on board with the other?

I already explained my reasoning for drawing Mohammed, so if you want to know why, click on the link. The reason why I don't think that one should burn the Koran is because burning a book, or a flag, album, picture, etcetera, is the lowest form of expression. All it communicates is "I don't like this and I don't think anybody should get to look at it and make up their own mind." If one is inclined to critique the Koran, then create something like The Skeptic's Annotated Koran. Burning books is just dumb. I have some serious problems with holy books myself, or rather, I have a problem with people who think that these holy books should become the basis of law for a modern society. Still, I think that there is much that one can learn from The Koran, The Bible, The Vedas, etcetera. At the very least, you can understand what exactly it is that people believe about their various gods.

The one thing that I want to make absolutely clear is that I don't think that people shouldn't burn The Koran because people might get offended. A person has every right to burn it. If people get offended - too damned bad. This is a free society. I also don't think that our actions should be dictated by what would and would not offend the Muslim extremists in other parts of the world. If we let them do that, then they're controlling us, and therefore "winning".

It should be made absolutely clear that in this country, we have the freedom to destroy the holy books of others. However, wouldn't it be nice if we all could find more intelligent ways to critique things?