Protests against US Koran-burning sweep Afghanistan
This is totally ludicrous (link to BBC story: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11258739). The Koran is just a book, like the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Pride and Prejudice, Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto; printed ink on sheets of bleached tree pulp, bound with leather and glue. It has little or no intrinsic value, it isn’t magic or holy, and there is no need to preserve individual physical copies or protect them from “insult”. Whatever we might think about someone who chooses to burn their own property (and I honestly couldn’t be bothered to acquire a load of books just to burn them - what a pointless exercise), it is wrong to attack them or threaten violence against their countrymen; this behaviour is utterly irrational and a sign of a diseased mind and a corrupted intellect where fantasy and reality are no longer distinguishable. Here’s a simple question: if I download a copy of the Koran to my phone or computer, then delete it, have I committed an offence equivalent to the burning of a physical book? I have, after all, destroyed an instance of the text just as thoroughly as if I had burned a physical book. What about if a PDF of the Koran is copied from one hard drive to another and the original file is deleted - has a book been destroyed? Should we expect bunches of ignorant peasants to roam the Afghan countryside looking for British soldiers to shoot in revenge for my Koran-deleting escapades? Of course not. It’s totally ridiculous, but then so is the response to the initial book-burning threat. Anyone so incensed by Koran burning that they are considering violence should have a serious think about their priorities in life; they might even like to get a little professional help and consider switching to a better religion.
(1 year ago)
