Complex Numbers

On a serious note...

Lots of media attention on attempted Koran/Qu'ran/(you know, the Muslim holy book) burnings, lately. And I get all my information from the internet - no cable or newspapers - so I can only imagine the media carnage on those platforms.

Of course, even on the internet, there's been plenty of hot air (pun intended) blown around about it. And a person's opinion doesn't seem to have much to do with the political or religious leanings of the person - that is, not all Jews believed one way or another; not all atheists were in agreement; not all Christians agreed or disagreed. I'm not exposed to enough Muslims to know, but I figure they might be an exception; I can't imagine a Muslim being okay with it. But I suppose it could happen.

Me, I'm conflicted. And even though - or more likely, because - the time for Qu'ran burnings and other inappropriate 9/11 commemorations has past, I'm going to put my thoughts down here, to try to organize them and give y'all a chance to tell me how wrong I am.

My first response, upon hearing about the concept of "Let's burn a Qu'ran," was, "Book burning is Bad." This is my visceral response to any book burning, and I'm not even sure why. I think it's because the Nazis liked to burn books, and my family's Jewish - and we all know that they didn't stop the burning at books. It's also because I personally think that the greatest atrocity against world knowledge, science, and progress was not the Holocaust (which is arguably the greatest atrocity against humanity), but the burning of the Library at Alexandria. Interesting stories behind that, but basically, you had then what you have here today: an intellectual elite that wasn't very religious, and a subset of Christians who had enough intelligence to know how to make fire, but not enough to keep them from using it to burn books (and torture and kill one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, but that's another issue).

Okay, that was my first reaction before I knew anything other than "this preacher wants to burn a Qu'ran." Then my inner libertarian kicked in. "Is the book his property; i.e., did he obtain it through legal means like buying it? And is the fire going to be on private property? And are there safeguards to protect damage to others' property?" If the answer to these questions is "yes," then I believe that the First Amendment grants us the right to free speech, which includes burning private property on private property, assuming you're not causing direct harm to someone else's property.

Nothing, of course, is ever as simple as libertarians like to pretend it is. In this case, there was the threat of retaliation from some of the people whose holy book it was. Now, if the original 9/11 attacks were the result of angry, radical Muslims, is it really smart to make more angry, radical Muslims?

But then I thought about it further, and I thought, "So what?" Freedom isn't free, as they say. I know they think this means that we should support the military, but what it really means is this: The reason we have things like freedom of speech and freedom of religion enshrined in the Constitution is that, by and large, these things didn't much exist except as philosophical constructs before the late 1700s. The thing is, freedom of speech is a radical idea. Before that - and even after, before we decided that the Constitution overrode local ordinances - there were blasphemy laws in this country. Other countries still have blasphemy laws. The basic idea of a blasphemy law is that you can't say something to offend (whatever religion is in power), or you get punished through the civil system. And people died to defend the radical idea that a person's freedom to speak his or her mind, even if it goes against conventional wisdom, is sacrosanct.

To me, nothing is more offensive than the idea of blasphemy laws. Plenty of worse laws out there, yes, but they don't offend me on a personal level.

Now, I didn't hear anyone saying it should be illegal to burn a Qu'ran (or a Bible, or a Torah, or the Book of Mormon, or whatever), just that it was a Bad Idea. Probably someone did; I don't know. I just didn't hear it. Naturally, if I owned a copy of one of these and wanted to chuck it into my fireplace, no one would be the wiser. But these people tried to do it publicly for the express purpose of pissing people off. Well... Okay. I believe we have the Constitutionally guaranteed right to piss people off. There may be consequences. People may get mad and kill other people over this.

That's because free speech is a radical idea.

And the only way to protect this radical idea is to use it, and face the consequences. Face them boldly, willingly, and with full knowledge that you may die for the idea. That, because we as a society hold freedom of speech to be one of our highest ideals, we need to support this freedom no matter the consequences.

Personally, I think we'd do better as a society if we'd actually bother to read the Qu'ran. And the Bible. I don't see how anyone can read either book from start to finish without realizing that religion - all religion - is made-up bunk.

But your opinion will differ. And that's okay. Because we're all free to have one - and we're all free to have one because we're willing to face the consequences if someone doesn't like our ideas.

Me, I'm working on a community center and mosque with some Muslims in my neighborhood. I've worked on church site plans, too. If they asked me to work on a temple, I'd do that. If the secular humanists wanted a headquarters, I'd give them the same professional consideration. I wouldn't burn any of their holy books (not that secular humanists have a holy book, but you know what I mean), because I believe in finding commonalities, not differences. But that's just me.

Do what thou wilt.