Burning question on the eve of 9/11

Knowing my strong opinions on the events in the aftermath of 9/11 including the proposed mosque near Ground Zero, several people have asked me what I think about the Florida pastor who's been threatening for the past two weeks to burn copies of the Koran tomorrow.

I understand his anger. I sympathize with his obviously visceral reaction to the possibility of Muslim worshipers observing Islamic traditions near the place where so many innocents died one tragic morning nine years ago. I, too, fight the temptation to brand all Muslims as terrorist wannabes or, at the very least, sympathizers.

But I can't condone or agree with his decision to set another religion's holy book on fire.

True, Muslims have burned the Christian Bible. They've burned the Jewish Tanakh. When they do these things, civilized people revile them and call them hateful. If that Florida preacher burns the Koran, he will be no better.

Book burning is just wrong. It smacks of Stalinist Russia, Hitler's Germany, and Mao's China.

It's what people do when they want to stamp out thoughts and ideas they find too threatening to deal with. It's what the Muslims in some places do out of vitriolic hatred for Christians and Jews. It's what ignorant people of all faiths do when they can't think of anything more intelligent.

If we're going to be so threatened by what the Koran represents, how will we ever summon the courage to go up against the elements of Islam that resulted in that horrific September day?

Burning all the Korans in the world will not make radical Islam go away. If anything, it will throw fuel on a fire that we're neither physically nor spiritually prepared to douse.


The September 11 attacks were a series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States on September 11, 2001. On that morning, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners and intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Pennsylvania after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C. There were no survivors from any of the flights. The death toll of the attacks was 2,996, including the 19 hijackers. The overwhelming majority of casualties were civilians, including nationals of over 70 countries.