My head is spinning.
Almost a month ago, I wrote about the link between the then-infant “Burn The Qur’an Day” and the faux “NYC Mosque” controversy, a link that I described as the rhetoric of hate as I tried to understand how the speakers could have actually read the words of Christ as shared in The New Testament:
Tell me, please, how to get from this message of acceptance to burning the sacred book of another religion (that happens to also be descended from Abraham)? Tell me, please, how to get from this message of love to the rhetoric of hate surrounding a New York City community center?
In other words, I saw the foundational rhetoric as flip sides of the same coin. Peas in a pod. Matching socks. Pick your metaphor.
Now here comes Sarah Palin, Rep. John Boehner, Glenn Beck, et al, arguing that the two contested objects — the Qur’an and the mosque-that-is-really-a-community-center — are themselves peas in a pod. And that the leaders of each have the “right” to do what they are doing, but that in the name of all that is good and humane (and, by implication, “Christian”), they shouldn’t.
Correction: my head is not spinning, I think it is going to explode*.
Let’s deconstruct this comparison for a moment. From the U.S. Holocaust Museum (emphasis added):
“Book burning” refers to the ritual destruction by fire of books or other written materials. Usually carried out in a public context, the burning of books represents an element of censorship and usually proceeds from a cultural, religious, or political opposition to the materials in question.
Book burning has a long and dark history; and perhaps the most famous of these events, the burning of books under the Nazi regime on May 10, 1933, had a precedent in nineteenth century Germany. In 1817, German student associations (Burschenschaften) chose the 300th anniversary of Luther’s 95 Theses to hold a festival at the Wartburg, a castle in Thuringia where Luther had sought sanctuary after his excommunication. The students, demonstrating for a unified country — Germany was then a patchwork of states — burned anti-national and reactionary texts and literature which the students viewed as “Un-German.”
Thus, at its core, the conservative right’s argument that these two objects are equivalent shines a light on their true opposition to the Islamic community center in New York: religious intolerance and an appeal to nationalism.**
Hate speech is hate speech, however it might be disguised. That said, I side (yet again) with New York City Mayor Bloomberg: in the U.S., Terry Jones has the right to burn the Qur’an.
This is a separate issue from the question of why Jones, an obscure preacher in a small (50 person) “church” in semi-rural Florida who was kicked off the board of the church he founded in Germany, has been elevated in the mediascape as Saturday’s anniversary of 9-11 approaches. I firmly believe that had the conservative right not gone postal, so to speak, on the topic of the Islamic cultural center that Jones would not be in the media spotlight today.
Welcome to the crusades of the 21st century. Osama Bin Laden has, indeed, won.
* I have been using this phrase, my head is going to explode, a lot lately. I’m not sure why. The earliest use of the phrase that I can find that does not relate to headaches or pain is a sports reference from February 2000. It seems to have moved into the political vernacular during 2007, in the Presidential nomination race. By 2009, it had moved to “talk” TV: here is a Bill O’Reilly reference.
** Before you argue that I have invoked Godwin’s Law with this citation, know that it was the first citation post-Wikipedia that dealt with the phenomena of book burning.
The copyrighted cartoon by John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune, Missouri, is licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorizered reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com