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In Scandinavia, this has been the summer of Koran burnings – scores of them. Opponents of Islam, and of the steady Islamization of Western Europe, have chosen this means of protest – which is usually carried out in public squares, or in front of mosques or important government buildings, in some of the region’s larger cities – to register their hostility to the totalitarian ideology spelled out in Islam’s holiest book. Some of these Koran burners are ethnic Scandinaivans who have felt their countries and cultures slipping gradually away from them for years; others are freedom-loving immigrants from the Muslim world who are alarmed to see the countries to which they escaped looking more and more like the countries from which they fled.
These burnings have occasioned extensive (and often intense) domestic debate and discussion, not to mention displays of outrage by Muslims around the world, who have called for these burnings to be outlawed and for the perpetrators to be punished. Iran has called Danish and Swedish diplomats in on the carpet to castigate them, and Iraq has expelled Sweden’s ambassador. Instead of asking how the rulers of such ghastly rubbish heaps can dare to treat free Western nations in such a manner, both Denmark and Sweden have buckled under the pressure. Fearing that acts of Muslim terrorism may well be around the corner if they don’t act to curb civil liberties, both countries’ governments have been moving toward criminalizing the burning of Korans. According to surveys taken during the last few months, such a ban would be supported by 57% of Danes, and 53% of Swedes, and 36% of Norwegians.
In Denmark, the change is all but made. In an August 25 statement referring to the Koran as the “Holy Koran,” the Danish government announced that it would ask parliament to pass a ban on Koran burning, with violations punishable by up to two years in prison. Presumably in order to make it at least somewhat less clear that this is an entirely cowardly act motivated by a fear of Islamic terrorism, the Danes decided that the law would forbid not just Koran burning but a whole range of blasphemous acts – in the words of the official statement, “the public mistreatment of religious objects.”
With this law, the Danish government wants, it says, “to send a signal to the world.” It certainly is doing that. It’s signaling to international bullies that Denmark can be pressured by threats of violence into restricting its citizens’ freedoms. Danish intelligence, reported the BBC, “has warned that the latest incidents have intensified the terrorist threat.” Let’s parse this one. If the Danish government hadn’t let armies of Muslims into the country in the first place, there wouldn’t be a terrorist threat; so if a small, rather pathetic, and frankly desperate protest against decades of reckless mass immigration “intensifies” that threat, that’s on the politicians who created this mess in the first place.
Peter Hummelgaard, Denmark’s justice minister, defended the ban on Koran burning by saying that such actions “serve no other purpose than creating division and hatred.” In case Hummelgaard hasn’t noticed, there already is plenty of division and hatred in his country – especially in Copenhagen, where certain neighborhoods have become (more or less) Islamic enclaves. And that division and hatred aren’t caused by Koran burning but by, ahem, the contents of the Koran, which is an instruction manual in division and hatred. Hummelgaard has also opined that “there are more civilized ways to express one’s views than burning things.” In a similar vein, Denmark’s deputy prime minister, Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, has said: “It is a cornerstone of our democracy that you have the right to express yourself. You also have to behave properly.” Note to both of these stalwart gents: it is not for governments to tell free people what it means to be “civilized” or to “behave properly.” Besides, if they and their ilk cared so much about everybody being “civilized” and “proper,” why did they invite armies of backward savages to become their “new counttymen”?
You may wonder what is meant by “the public mistreatment of religious objects.” What it means, for one thing, is that you wouldn’t have to go to the extent of burning a Koran to get arrested; you’d only have to be observed handling it with something less than pious respect – for example, stepping on it or dropping it in a mud puddle. Would dog-earing a page count? I suppose that would be for a court to decide. Hummelgaard has suggested that other abuses of the Koran, such as wrapping it in a rainbow flag to protest the Islamic death penalty for homosexual acts, might also be punishable under the law. What fascinating jurisprudence we can look forward to.
Another question: what would count, or not count, as “religious objects”? Apparently objects like crucifixes and prayer beads will be protected, but not items of clothing, such as yarmulkes or hijabs. Government officials have stressed repeatedly that strong and lively criticism of religion would still be permitted. But it certainly seems as if certain ways of criticizing religion would be verboten. I’m no fan of Andreas Serrano’s repulsive 1987 photograph Piss Christ – which, to quote Wikipedia, “depicts a small plastic crucifix submerged in a small glass tank of the artist’s urine,” and which gained notoriety when it won an art prize sponsored in part by the National Endowment for the Arts – but I do wonder whether the proposed Danish law artists would permit artists to use symbols of any religion in the way Serrano did.
There are, after all, many different kinds of artworks that involve what might be considered “the public mistreatment of religious objects.” What, for example, about the mass crucifixion scene at the end of the movie Monty Python’s Life of Brian? Or the play The Book of Mormon? Or the “Inquisition” dance number in Mel Brooks’s History of the World Part I? How is it fair, moreover, that while a Danish citizen could be imprisoned for two years for setting fire to – or just slightly banging up – a Koran, a devout Muslim would be entirely free to burn a copy of the Danish Constitution, to blow his nose on some pages from the Federalist Papers, or to rip up a copy of Magna Carta. No, these aren’t religious documents, strictly speaking, but some of us hold them far more sacred than we do the Koran.
Anine Kierulf is a jurist, an associate professor at the University of Oslo, and the author of a recent book on freedom of expression. In an early August op-ed, she acknowledged that some of the Koran-burners are less than appealing characters, which can make their actions seem undesirable. But what if the Koran burners were, say, a same-sex Indonesian couple who, in accordance with Koranic dictates, had been publicly whipped in the streets of Jakarta for being gay? What if a Koran was set aflame by a girl who’d been tortured by ISIS to within an inch of her life? Would people with such grievances against the religion of peace really be taken into custody by Danish police and sentenced to prison in a Danish courtroom?
For every Anine Kierulf, to be sure, there is a Carsten Jensen. He’s a celebrated Danish writer and political columnist who, In his own recent op-ed, described Koran-burners as “the heirs of Nazism” and accused them of “inciting violence.” One wonders whether Jensen has ever actually read the Koran, which makes Mein Kampf look like Eat, Pray, Love and which, from beginning to end, is one long call for bloodthirsty jihad against the infidel. Jensen distinguished Koran-burning from the drawing of Muhammed cartoons, which he says should be permitted – even though outraged Muslims who are out to silence all Western criticism of Islam make no distinction whatsoever between the two actions.
Jensen quoted Steen Schaumburg-Müller, a professor of law who’d defended the legality of Koran-burning on the grounds that it’s not just an action but also a means of communicating an opinion and hence protected. Jensen disagreed: “Is it therefore also a form of expression if I force an opponent down from a rostrum?” Only someone who’d already bought into the Islamic claim that a copy of the Koran is uniquely sacred would compare damaging it to physically assaulting a human being. In any event, Jensen made one thing clear: he considers the governments of Poland, Hungary, Sweden, Finland, and Italy to be “far-right,” and he’s more scared of a “far-right” takeover of all of Europe than he is of its ongoing Islamization. Cockeyed though his views may be, the fact is that he speaks, by and large, for Scandinavia’s bien pensant cultural elite – which goes a long way toward explaining how these countries got into the mess they’re in now.
As noted, Danes, according to surveys, have been more gung-ho about a ban on Koran burning than their cousins in Sweden and Norway. A couple of points about those poll figures. First, in Sweden, and probably in all three countries, the figures break down dramatically, if not very surprisingly, by sex: while 63% of Swedish women want a ban on Koran burning, only 42% of men do. Second, while the level of support for a ban has increased in Denmark and Sweden as Muslim pressure has mounted, it’s actually decreased In Norway. I’m not terribly surprised that Norwegians seem to cherish their freedom at least a bit more than Danes or Swedes do, but it’s hard not to be reminded that things looked very different sixteen years ago, when the Danish government, in the face of international Muslim outrage over Muhammed cartoons, stood up for the Danish newspaper that had published them, even as the Norwegian government squeezed a groveling apology out of an editor who’d reprinted them. But then the Norwegian people had no say in that craven action.
And what of Sweden? Swedish officials have yet to propose a law against Koran burning, but many of them are champing at the bit to do so. They’ve explored their options: Sweden’s prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, says that a law like Denmark’s would probably require a constitutional amendment; Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer has suggested a change in the public order law; on August 30, Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats announced that her party wanted to look into the question of whether Koran-burning could be banned on the grounds that it’s offensive or, alternatively, that it amounts to harassment of a group. She confessed her admiration for Denmark in this regard: how wonderful, she felt, that its government had managed so quickly to formulate legislation restricting the people’s freedom of expression!
It’s not looking good, then, for what Americans would call First Amendment rights in Sweden. The lack of self-awareness on the part of these people is reflected in Krissterson’s recent lament that his country ever allowed “dangerous people” to enter its territory – by which he meant not the devout Muslims who are crowding out the natives but the handful of freedom-lovers from Islamic countries who don’t want to see sharia law in Scandinavia. Kristerrson has also said that the Koran burnings pose Sweden’s most serious national-security challenge since World War II. And we all remember how Sweden dealt with the challenge posed by World War II: it kowtowed shamelessly to Hitler, turning itself into a veritable vassal state without putting the Nazis to the trouble of invading and occupying it, as they had Norway and Denmark. Now as then, it’s looking as if Sweden will take the easy course of bending the knee to totalitarians.
Yes, these plans to restrict freedom of expression in Scandinavia have their prominent opponents. Apropos of the proposed Danish law, Mette Thiesen of the Danish People’s Party has said that it would be “hideous and shameful” to “allow ourselves to be ruled by Muslim mørkemænd” – mørkemænd being a terrific Danish word (the Norwegian equivalent is mørkemenn) to describe an enemy of Enlightenment values and freedom of thought. Jimmie Åkesson, head of the Sweden Democrats – who have gained more and more support in recent years because of their opposition to mass Islamic immigration – said that banning Koran burning would be “cowardly.” Nonetheless, it looks as if it will happen. And it will be simply one more step down the road that the countries of Scandinavia, and the West generally, have been stumbling down for almost two generations now.
I love these dispatches, from exotic foreign lands, I have no interest in visiting.
Here is an idea so everyone is on an equal footing. Since the Muslims like to riot, kill Christians in the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Asia and have destroyed hundreds of Christian Churches as well recently.
Europe should close down every Mosque permanently. Deport all Muslims back to their country. Only accept Christians from those areas as refugees or asylum seekers. This way they do not have to deal with Christians in their countries and Europe doe not have to deal with Islamic Muslims in Europe.
Nah, that’s too logical. Nobody will buy it.
But don’t you think that if people stop burning Korans they’ll just start burning Muslims? I mean, live by the sword, die by the sword. Don’t pick a fight with the whole world if you don’t want the whole world to retaliate violently.
If I understood your argument correctly, I think you said Koran burning is an unnecessary provocation? Personally I have no desire to burn a Koran, but I’ve never lived under islamic tyranny.
Well, if you live in any western country, you’re about to experience it! I think it’s best if Islamic people live in one of their 58 countries, and leave the west.
Why do they come and live in western nations if they hate everything we stand for and who we are? Why should any western nation change their ways for immigrants? Are we going to continue to ignore their history? Are we just going to wait until they make full blown war on us? Are they just sitting and waiting for what they call Hudna, which is when they get enough of them into a nation – they just conquer that nation? The answer is YES!
Better for all people to wise up and educate yourself, because it’s coming!
They are burning books not people. Its not about swords but freedom of expression. What they did in France recently, attacking people and destroying properties, is about living by the sword, in other words, initiating and using violence to get their way. Its a savage ideology in which butchery is their means to an end, hence the response from the book burners.
Jello I presume refers to your courage. and your defence of your religious and moral principles.
Yet the world has shown a remarkable reluctance to fight back against Islamic tyranny. They riot and commit atrocities, the West looks the other way.
Cowards! Shame!
One thing about appeasement, it will only embolden Muslims to ask for more.
How many Korans have been burned? Is it equal to the number of beheadings, rapes, arsons, or bombings done by its readers in any of the nations mentioned? Would they give up any such activities in exchange for a ban on Koran burnings to go along with their welfare payments?
Terrorism works.
It worked for the cowardly Irish Republican Army because the cowardly Tony Bliar released every single terrorist criminal.
It worked for Islam because since 9/11 and thousands of other cowardly acts, they have invaded the world and now dominate it. The cowardly Bush declared it a religion of peace.
Cowardly terrorists and cowardly politicians.
That got us where we are today and it continues with cowardly woke nonsense.
It’s interesting how the civilized world prosecutes it’s citizens to please a few savages.
Unfortunately, there are far more than a few savages.; there are 2 billion of them and they have learned how to wield their power – money and violence.
The number is 1 billion or less actually. The 2 billion number is in fact a part of the islamists intimidating the world.
Most of them are concentrated in two countries, the rest spread across Middle East and North Africa.
In their countries they don’t have a valid way of counting the population. They count non-muslims as muslims. There’s a high percentage of apostates among them, but they won’t reveal themselves. It all adds up to more than doubling their falsely reported numbers, just to intimidate more.
A few savages is what their numbers are in the free world.
Eventually it’ll come to Crusades 2.0 to get rid of them, there’s no other way around it.
The free world leaders have been bribed to sell their nations and opened the borders. The right wing coming to power is the only way to seal the borders and send back the invaders.
That is if the free people want to survive.
I have been re-watching Vikings for the last couple of weeks. Denmark could use a few of those 9th-10th C. Danes.
They didn’t screw around and they took no prisoners.
Where are they?
They became Aryans and joined the Nazis.
As usual your knowledge of any European history is as thin as a reed.
I’m talking about now. Where are the patriotic Danes fighting the current Muslim takeover, or is that too hard for you to understand.
Obviously it is because your knowledge of history doesn’t go beyond your preconceived notions that confirm your unhistorical and childish Objectivist biases. Is it any wonder that no one takes you seriously.
Obviously you’re too much of a blockhead to understand sarcasm.
As I have said more than once you are terrible at humor and really shouldn’t attempt it.
As for sarcasm you are terrible at that too. Effective sarcasm always has element of truth in it. Your sad attempt had none.
So stick to what you know…..religious bigotry and historical revisionism.
Alas, the Vikings actually became trading partners with the Muslim Moors of North Africa, selling white slaves especially European women captured during raids on coastal European cities.
They did , indeed. :-/
Vikings also attacked and looted Iberian cities such as Lisbon and Seville as early as 844. Staying too long in Seville, Vikings there were defeated by local Islamic forces. Scandinavian attacks on the Iberian Peninsula continued into the 1,100’s by Christian Scandinavians and Normans on their way to the holy land.
To the East, the Varangian Guard initially consisted largely of Scandinavian and Rus soldiers who protected the Byzantine Emperors and fought in their wars against Byzantine enemies including Muslim forces.
” Those 9th-10th C. Danes.They didn’t screw around and they took no prisoners. Where are they?”
Amongst other places, northern England where they raped and pillaged Anglo-Saxon villages and towns, and where, at that time, there were nary any of those Mohammedans to be found.
Many north English people bear surnames of those marauding Viking rapists – who were almost as bad as the Mohammedans responsible for the more recent child sexual exploitation scandal in the town of Rotherham, England. A pox on all of them.
Thank you, all over the planet history is an awakening from a nightmare. Unfortunately mankind seems to be headed towards another Dark Age Nightmare.
Those Vikings, during the period of their greatest influence in the 8th through 13th centuries (coinciding with the Medieval Warm Period, when sailing was good), were close allies of the Muslims. They raided Slavic countries by taking their shallow-draft boats along Europe’s rivers and stole countless numbers of women and children to be sold to their Muslim allies and enslaved. They also found England and Ireland to be fertile ground for their deprecations, especially as coastal monasteries put up no resistance, as well as Iceland. Don’t romanticize those money-grubbing slavers the way TV series do.
Every Dane knows that the only religious objects that will be cause for legal action will be those related to Islam. The rest are weasel words.
Yes, will the Danes ever prosecute a muslim that breaks a cross or defiles a church? I think not.
Same in France.
Muslim pricks burned down Notre Dame, and the indifference cowards in authority blamed it on contractors . . . in spite of the fact that a muslim bitch tried to park a car-bomb in front of the cathedral the day before.
Judaism prepared the ground for Christianity and both prepared the ground for Islam and modern, secular, totalitarianism. Socialism is religious mysticism cloaked with the pretense of secularism.
Just as religion prepared the ground for secular totalitarianism, secular totalitarianism is preparing the ground back to religious totalitarianism. Because secular totalitarianism is so to speak a fish that jumped out of its religious waters thinking it could survive on land but it cannot, it must jump back into religion to survive.
“Socialism is really helping religion. The bigger the statism, the more people are accustomed to government rule over everything. The more people are ready for religionists to take over the lead away from the more secular side… the socialists are building the basis for totalitarianism but only the religionists are going to cash in on it and take over….
I believe that the medievals understood much better than the moderns on what basis to build a totalitarian society that would last and not collapse in less than a century. They did it. And the people in the rising religious movements today know that full well. They’re the ones who have millions, upon millions, upon millions, of followers and a real insight into the fact that economics is not the crucial factor in history but philosophy and culture [are the crucial factors that determine the course of history]….
Religion was the root of [totalitarianism] from the beginning. It has ruled in disguised forms and still is. And now the disguise has to be stripped off if there is to be a lasting totalitarianism. For a lasting totalitarian state, religion is the only means.” – Leonard Peikoff
I think I actually agree with you. The Soviets, for example, had it all wrong, international socialism needed, not God, but some religious elements, to be more effective?
Thank you! Holy cow someone is seeing and connecting some of the dots!
Religion and Marxism both share the same fundamental philosophical points. Marx simply replaced an Almighty God with Almighty Society. For Marxism society is not a group of individuals living in close proximity. For Marxism society is a supernatural entity in itself dwarfing and canceling out all individuals. For Marxism society is a super-entity, like Allah is for Islam, that the individual must submit to in obedience to it, like the individual Muslim must submit to and obey Allah.
Another crucial point, which dooms Marxism as an effective means for totalitarianism is that Marxism promises abundance, peace, and prosperity, here on earth in the future, a future that can never materialize because totalitarianism destroys freedom and freedom is absolutely necessary for economic progress and abundance. But religion promises this happiness, prosperity, utopia, not here on earth but in an after-life, therefore the true-believer is willing to suffer any pain, suffering, misery, and privation throughout his whole life because as a true-believer he believes he will be rewarded in Paradise for all his suffering after he’s dead.
See? What I said about your historical revisionism will always hold true. Are we really supposed to believe something from some no account philosopher/historian that you keep beating into the ground over and over and over? If this crackpot theory of yours had any weight you wouldn’t be so desperate to repeat it over and over and over again.
So just when will they start burning copies of Origin of the Spiece’s by Darwin and Rules for Radicals
Very interesting feed-back nothing sympathetic on the issue of Burning of the Koran ( A rash act of defiance)
Which is only written text defining the a systematic take over of the human individual freedoms (Threw Killing Gehad and differential hatred ) promoting the linier dominated by single minded Masculine Profiled mindless intimidation .
Hmmmm. And how will this new ‘law’ affest the other 4,300 religions of the world. Talk about opening Pandora’s Box.
If Jesus wasn’t coming this year, I would reccomend that people become lawyers. 🙂
Rev. Roy………………<
Once you know yow to a crazy ‘religion’ there is no stopping their even more insane demands.
And this will be coming to the US.
Islam is not a ‘religion’.. it is a murderous sex cult led my a ‘prophet’ who was a brigand, murderer and child rapust
Don’t burn your koran,
you never know when you might run out of toilet paper
Actually ,a much better and more intelligent way to handle many problems caused by that “holy book” is not burn the Qu’ ran but to study and examine it and then expose all the errors and contradictions that it contains.
As revealed on pages 145 through 157 in THE ISLAMIC INVASION by Robert Morey in which he wrote a section on the Qu‘ran with its self-contradictions. Just two of the many he cited are the following “The Qu’ran differs on whether a day is a thousand years or fifty thousand years in God’s sight’ and “Who was first to believe? Abraham or Moses [Sura 6:14 versus 7:143]? The above is inconsistent and illogical. Further, Morey wrote about “The fact that Judaism and Christianity broke up into different sects was used in the Qu ‘ran to prove that they are not of God [Suras 30:20-32. 42:13, 14]. Yet Islam has broken up into many warring sects and therefore cannot be true if the Quran is right.”
Moreover, Morey in his book shows many more contradictions and absurdities in the Quran, there are and how Muhammad incorporated extra Biblical and Jewish folklore along with pre-Islamic Arabian myth and parts of Zoroastrian and Hindu stories into the Quran.
In conclusion, the Qu ‘ran is not only a fiction, it’s also a hoax.
I’ve read somewhere, (Robert Spencer?) that unlike the Bible the oldest surviving texts of the koran different significantly.
“Consistency is a requirement of reason, not of faith.” – Ayn Rand
It is absolutely futile to show the true-believer of any religion the philosophical, rational, logical, scientific, contradictions, or inconsistencies of his faith. The true-believer will reject them and reject them fiercely with anger, hatred, vitriol, even violence.
Because religious faith is ultimately based on emotion not reason.
The magical thinker needs to cling to his magical thinking, it’s his emotional security blanket.
It is absolutely frightening and devastating for the true-believer to lose his faith in his religion. Emotionally and psychologically losing his faith is like the whole universe has shattered and there is no more meaning or purpose in life.
Muslims claim that “the Quran is the direct, literal word of God unmodified in any way by the Prophet who uttered them at the bidding of God.” In addition , in the book UNVEILING ISLAM by Ergun Mehmet Caner and Eethi Caner has shown that the Quran was modified in the following account on pages 45. “Muhammad felt the need to improve on the words of Allah, since he changed Allah’s wisdom for his own on several occasions. A hadith tells of the nonchalant emendations of Muhammad:’ On a number of occasions he [a scribe] had, with the Prophet’s consent changed the closing words of verses. For example, when the prophet had said ‘God is mighty and wise ‘ Adbollah b. Abi Sarh suggested writing down ‘Knowing and wise’ and the Prophet answered that there was no objection. Having observed a succession of changes of this type, Adbollah renounced Islam on the grounds that revelations, if from God could not be changed at the prompting of a scribe such as himself. After his apostasy he went to Mecca and joined the Qorayshites.’ Other writers reveal that later Muhammad and his people did go war with the Qorayshites and he personally killed Abdollah. Obviously Abdollah knew too much and Muhammad wanted Abdollah’s knowledge to die with him.”
Therefore, the Qu ‘ran is a religious hoax.
That Muhammad prick did get it from god – the god of this world, Satan.
It doesn’t matter because,
“Consistency is a requirement of reason, not of faith.” – Ayn Rand
The quran is a cursed satanic book filled with hatred, Muslims WILL NEVER INTEGRATE in our Judeo-Christian based lands. Our Biblical Principles from which our constitutions are derived strive at loving neighbours. Their religion is filled with adultery and they are a bastard people, a house divided that cannot or ever will stand, Untamable donkeys is what God told Hagar. They have cursed themselves by hatred of others, taught at the crib, “be a martyr for allah, kill all Jews and Christians, descendants of pigs and monkeys.” Jews and Christians aren’t responsible for their miseries, for they are a miserable bunch, look at the hatred on their faces, dark hatred-filled eyes, it’s the law of attraction in full motion. Their quran FORBIDS them to leave their lands permanently, if they travel there is a LAW OF MUST RETURN. 100% hypocrite. It’s that simple. Go home Ilhan Omar and the rest of muslims in our governments, it’s high time to obey your cursed book, and we’ll all save billions of Euros and Dollars the world over to spend on our people. If Muslims want to stay, then convert and integrate.
Obsequious, cowed and feckless dhimmitude in obeisance to a manifestly supremacist, totalitarian, hate-filled and pathology-laden ideology can lead to nothing good.
Soros is not a Holocaust survivor, he is a Holocaust collaborator. And he, like his internationalist father, hates Jews. Get that through your head.