US church to go ahead with Sept. 11 Quran burning

[hani_backup]

I read this article and my mouth dropped.

Apparently "International Burn a Koran Day" is September 11th.

Comments

[tothedreamtime.livejournal.com]

Oh it is quite representative of international issues. While not openly this extreme, the US often has an ethnocentric foreign policy and this leads to problems. The Middle East has seen this often. Such as the way in which the US encouraged the Iraqi-Iranian War by selling weapons to both sides while telling each nation they were selling weapons only to them. I can write a huge paper on the ways in which diplomatic, economic, and military action involving other nations has been, and continues to be, ignorant. To the current issue, the current conflicts have become a glorified back and forth game. Right-Wing Christians have become a major group in the military and many have views similar to this pastor. Some join to "kill heathen sandpeople" in revenge for 9/11 and denying Jesus as their savior. The presence of belligerent "holy" men and leaders in the region do not help. But the current wars were also started by a belligerent leader whose re-election proves the stupidity of many of my fellow Americans. Too many mistakes were made by incompetence that has made the US appear the villain that radicals accuse it of. That only swelled the ranks of extremism. It would be quite a sick joke if at least one of the many conspiracy theories about this whole issues being manipulated by someone with agents on both sides were true. Sad to say, but if that turned out to be true I don't think I would be particularly surprised.

Many people seem to not understand what patriotism is. A patriot is not someone who blindly follows/supports the government, military, etc... It is someone who holds to the ideals and wants to make their nation truly better. Religious tolerance is a patriotic thing as it is a foundation that this country is based on. Separation of Church and State was designed to free these two institutions from influencing the other. Religion and government together are dangerous. Contrary to popular belief while some of the founders were Christian, several were not. Ben Franklin was an Occultist and Thomas Jefferson was a Deist who believed in a God, but not in the divinity of Jesus. You can find a lot of quotes where these and other individuals indicate no Christian basis for the US government or their disbelief in the the religion. Protesting the military when it does unethical things (Which, sadly, it has done a lot of in the Middle East as of late) is patriotic. The individuals who usually go on about patriotism are those who do not know the meaning of the word. Sarah Palin's (A good example) desire to deplete our natural resources and wildlife, use the military in unethical ways, reinforce plutocracy, support of extreme religious ideology, desire to regress are all fall short of what the hopes for the US were.