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.
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.