Sweden raised its terrorism alert level on Thursday one notch to the second-highest, following a recent string of public desecrations of the Qur'an in the Scandinavian country by a handful of anti-Islam activists, sparking angry demonstrations across Muslim countries.
Because I support free speech. That means protecting speech I disagree with. If we only defend the speech we like, we no longer have a democracy.
There’s also a difference between burning one book and burning all examples of said book.
It’s also a question of not applying your religion to others. Your religion does not allow you to burn your own book, but you can’t impose that restriction on others, as long as it’s a book that they own and are not burning someone else’s book in the legal sense of ownership.
No, I mean what is the MOTIVE for the people doing the book burning? What do they hope to achieve in burning it?
The recent example in Sweden was of an Iraq refugee who was protesting his treatment by Muslims in Iraq. He claims his right to free speech was suppressed in Iraq because of Islam.
So it’s the same reason everyone protests: to raise awareness of an issue. A more polarising figure, Rasmus Paludan, has also burned qurans. He did so to raise awareness of the growing violence in Muslim communities in Sweden. They proved him right.
Right. Because burning a fundamentalist’s most holy book is the best way to promote a reasonable debate on the subject. It wasn’t to goad the extremists at all? Because that’s really what it looks like to me. It’s like me raising the issue of fights outside pubs by punching someone’s girlfriend outside a pub.
It’s clear you don’t believe it’s a good way to use his free speech, but that’s the beauty of free speech: he doesn’t have to ask your permission first.
I don’t think extremist-baiting is anything more than pointless self-aggrandizing. It’s been obvious to the whole world that extremism is bad, ever since extremists flew planes into buildings in 2001. There is no point to make. We know. Stop pointlessly winding them up and boosting their cause. Do you think the extremists are personally hurt by it? No. They love it when someone does something like this. It shows they are right by proving how terrible the infidels are. They gain followers and the cycle of hatred churns on. Thanks for using your free speech to make the world a little bit shittier for everyone.
I think you have a well-reasoned position. He feels differently. Perhaps you need to come to terms with democracy, and how different people are permitted different opinions?
Burning books isn’t promoting free speech. It’s literally the opposite. It’s sending the message that we don’t accept your ideas. That’s why the Nazis did it.
Of course it’s free speech. Burning the American flag is free speech. Shitting on a picture of Donald Trump is free speech. Burning Bibles is free speech. All of these happen frequently.
Sure, you’re allowed to do it because you have free speech. But don’t say that you’re promoting the freedom of speech because you’re doing it. Book burning is an act that stifles the ideas of whoever wrote that book.
More on topic, the two groups in question are both extremist groups that are opposed to the existence of the other. This isn’t about speech, this is about inciting violence.
Moving those goal posts pretty quickly…
The Koran really doesn’t have any ideas that need help. Humans have historically been pretty good at turning little girls into chattle and torturing people for gold. Are you really worried that there could be a day where those ideas are stifled?
In this context, I was mainly referring to book burning in general; not specifically the Koran. In my mind, they are done only as a tool for hatred. But, fair point, I haven’t read it and if that’s what it depicts then I don’t think I’m missing out on anything.
There’s a difference between burning one instance of one book as a protest and blacklisting hundreds of books and erasing all mentions of them and forcing everyone to not read them. One is declaring your dislike for something without affecting anyone, the other is erasing history. What you just did is a false equivalence.