LogFAQs > #964377291

MrMallard posted...

Criticizing Islam doesn't make someone a bigot, but threatening to burn their holy book does.

No, that alone doesn't make you a bigot. In a free society, you're allowed to mock a person's religion and burn a copy of their "holy" book if you want to.

Also, I was responding to a comment calling this thread "racist trash." Neither I nor the person to whom I responded was referring to the politician who burned the Koran.

MrMallard posted...

Let's face it, this douchebag antagonized a religious minority to get this type of reaction so he could point at their indignation and go "see! look, they really are violent, hostile people who won't assimilate into our culture! we should enact laws making it harder for them to move and live here!"

And they sure played right into his hands, didn't they?

Look, I'm not going to pretend that a small number of Christians in the West might not react the same way. But when there was that whole controversy over "Piss Christ" years and years ago, I don't recall Christians committing arson and rioting over it. They protested and acted stupidly, sure, but that's fine. I can't remember a Christian group marching into the office of a newspaper that published something they found offensive and murdering its staff or killing filmmakers they dislike. It's not a matter of race; it's just that conservative/fundamentalist Islam is incompatible with democratic principles like freedom of speech. Hopefully the trend in the near future will be toward a more moderate or liberal interpretation of Islam.