Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Read Books, Don't Burn Them

El Yuma just received the following brief e-mail from one of his closest friends, a career Marine, who recently returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. I also have one of my best and brightest former students currently serving in Afghanistan as a Army reservist. This is the third time he has interrupted his studies to serve in the Middle East.

While I can think of a lot of other good reasons not to burn the Koran, my old friend's point is well made.

I just have a pair of questions - Do you think this guy actually read the Qur'an first before deciding to burn it? And does he know that Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Mary, and Jesus are all celebrated as messengers of God in Islam's holy book.

Bill wrote:

"On Sept. 11, 2010, the Dove World Outreach Center, a church in Florida, plans to burn Korans. This will result in dead Americans in Afghanistan, maybe elsewhere as well.


I ask that we each offer a prayer to change the mind/heart of the pastor in Florida, Terry Jones. America does not need this. Our soldiers and Marines over there do not need this."

See here, here, and here for two related NYT articles.

Video here.

1 comment:

  1. Hey professor this is Eddie Amaya skimming through your blog I came across this post which I have been personally advocating my own opinions about on various other sites. First I would like to say that the pastor Terry Jones is with in his rights as a citizen to burn the books in protest. However his actions are a blatant contradiction of this nations values and an immature instigation of violence by one whom is suppose to be an advocator of peace. He is the personification of religious and cultural intolerance the same intolerance which was responsible for the attacks.

    ReplyDelete