Burning Korans: Lessons in Hypocrisy

The agony that was visited upon our governing class, the media, cultural elites, religious leaders, and even top military brass at the prospect of Reverend Terry Jones burning Korans says much about prevailing cultural attitudes, norms, and prejudices.  None of it, I'm afraid, is good.

Before the pastor had backed away from his decision, we had heard from President Obama, Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, General David Petraeus, and General Ray Odierno, all of whom condemned it.

Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious leaders and organizations lined up in opposition to the planned burning along with several G7 leaders, and even the Vatican, which denounced it as "outrageous and grave." 

Muslim nations and various international Muslim organizations have also signaled their strong displeasure.  And, of course, there have been the requisite death threats and calls for the pastor's killing by Jihadist groups around the world.

And, so, the 58-year-old Pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, with a congregation of 50, was very much at the center of the universe for a brief time.  And the world very much in a panic.

We can consider the many slights against other faiths and note the relative lack of response by the media and the world community, or, for that matter, the members of the offended faith. 

When the Taliban blew up the giant Buddha statues in the Bamiyan valley in Afghanistan there was no violence by Buddhist communities around the world.  The "Piss Christ" exhibit that featured a crucifix submerged in urine, while offending many, did not elicit riots by Christians.  Bible burnings occur commonly throughout the Muslim world with generally little fanfare or media interest.  Flags of Israel and other Jewish symbols have been desecrated throughout the Muslim world routinely without violent unrest.  

But if someone upsets Muslim sensitivities, the picture is different. 

In 1989, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa against Salmon Rushdie for his book, Satanic Verses, which led to any number of brutal slayings.  There were violent responses to Theo Van Gogh's film, Submission, not the least of which was the butchering and partial decapitation of Van Gogh himself by an angry Muslim.  There have been violent Muslim reactions to the Danish and Swedish cartoons, the Pope's speech at Regensburg, Geert Wilders film, Fitna, and the erroneous Newsweek story of Koran desecration at Guantanamo, among a multitude of other lesser-known infractions, all of which led to death threats, riots, and killing.

Indeed, the Muslim world is a prickly place with selective displays of outrage.

Let us examine the hypocrisies. 

First, from our political and military elites. 

Obama, Gates, Clinton, Petraeus, Odierno, et al., busied themselves over the antics of Pastor Jones who did not issue death threats, burn down a mosque, or blow up a crowded market. 

His actions, however offensive, were well within accepted norms of a free and lawful society. 

Why do our leaders not occupy themselves with more significant pathologies such as honor killings, genital mutilation, or the stoning of apostates, say, as they do toward an obscure country infidel threatening to torch a book?

Obama and other liberal leaders were also quick to defend Imam Rauf's first amendment rights to construct a Mosque near the sacred soil of Ground Zero, something that was profoundly offensive to most Americans. 

Is it necessary for our leaders to genuflect every time Muslims are offended and yet treat our own sensitivities with condescension and scorn? 

What, then, of the hypocrisy of secular liberals and the media, who display such solicitous concern for the sensitivities of Islam; yet defend vigorously the freedom-of-speech rights of pornographers, newspapers revealing national security secrets, traitors, terrorists, Nazis, Muslims, and, of course, bible and flag burners.

Liberals have no problems with images of the Virgin Mary covered in excrement or books and movies that lampoon Jesus.  If Christians protest, they label them as intolerant boobs - even as they aggressively defend Muslim pieties, such as the Koran or Mohammed.

The third and greatest hypocrisy, though, comes from the Muslim world itself, which ignores the exponentially greater sins occurring under its own nose.  For if Islam is a “religion of peace” than many Muslims defile their religion routinely, and in far more grievous fashion.  

What, for example, are we to make of the poverty and illiteracy of so many Muslim nations?  Or the corruption and autocracy of Muslim regimes, their absence of human rights or civil liberties?  Or the genocidal behavior of the Sudan?  Or the killing of apostates and the stoning of women?  Or the banning of churches in Saudi Arabia?  Or the daily massacres perpetrated by Muslims against themselves and others.

Muslim outrage over perceived slights by the West has become an effective political tool, an instrument of censorship – and intimidation.  But we need not cede the Muslim world veto power over our Constitution. 

Individuals have the right to express themselves in the West even in ways considered profane or insulting.  And our freedom of speech is as sacred to us as the Koran is to Muslims.

Someone burning a Koran in Florida does not threaten Islam.  And there are far more urgent problems confronting the Muslim world.