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Denmark is considering banning protests involving burning the Quran or other religious texts over security and diplomatic concerns – Sweden looking to follow suit
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as a rule, i think its a good idea not to make laws that single out any one religion. They should be universal.
and never make rules that are caving to violent threats, as that just shows they work, so expect more and a spoiled toddler.
Religion does not deserve rules about its books though. I should be able to burn whatever I want. Quran, Bible, Harry Potter... all are equally flamable if you do not care for their words.
And yet here we are again. Rules made by the religious to justify their own special niche in society, how long before the Middle East decries it happening and wants the heads/jailtime for those who did it anyway?
Let them have their rules in their nation around THEIR religion, Let us have ours that extoll freedom of expression as a fundamental principle.
It's a book at the end of the day and their claims of "holiness" or "importance" mean nothing to those who are non-religious.
More specifically, they're all just fantasy books in the end.
But whether burning as a form of protest is acceptable in general or not is a different thing of course.
Pretty much.
Protest that isn't harmful or an endangerment to life should never be prohibited. It's a book at the end of the day. Someone might obsess over me burning Harry Potter, it should not stop me doing so. It harms no-one.
If those people then choose to harm others because of it? Then you step in AGAINST them.
IMO burning of books as a form of protest should be illegal in general maybe, but as a German I might be biased.
Then again, once you allow burning books in general, I don't see why the Muhammed fantasy novel gets a special pass. Or the Jesus fanfic, or the SciFi flick Hubbard wrote, or whatever. They're all just novels, so eh.
Because it has a special meaning to an ethnic and religious group. It's like saying, if you allow people to put whatever symbol they want on this billboard, you're allowing writing symbols in general. I don't see why the Swastika gets a special exception. They're all just symbols. Not like the Nazis invented it either, they copied it from Asia, where it's still used today!
And sure, in the US that argument actually does fly. But it's worthwhile to consider that to some people, that symbol is specifically horrible due to cultural and historical reasons. And it's not that strange for other countries, with restricted speech, like in Europe, to clamp down on it.
Another analogy would be to put up a burning cross in the street in front of African American's house. That act has a specific connotation from the KKK's history.
You can actually use the swastika, the Nazi symbol is the one that is specifically banned in many EU countries. So if you are a Buddhist with a decoration that displays it, it is completely fine.
While I am not religious, I really believe one should have an ounce of respect and not call books many people care deeply about “fanfic”, or “fantasy novel”. It is perfectly fine to be an atheist, but let’s not be arrogant just for the sake of it - it just completely alienates that side and shuts off any kind of fruitful discussion in its roots. If we want to draw a parallel it would be deliberately not respecting someone’s pronouns — which is also a shitty thing to do.
Be kind!
Why should there be a law against burning books in general? What business does the government have here in saying what I can do with my possessions?
There shouldn't be but I can understand the sentiment.
There's a difference in interpretation here I surmise. One is about burning your private possessions and the other is about anti intellectualism. He's clearly referencing the Nazi book burning, which is of course an event that specifically tried to burn books to eradicate them rather than burn a book (or a couple of them) in protest.
I'm fine with burning them if they're your property or in protest, I'm not when your goal is to eradicate the book.
The most dangerous thing is to give zealots on both sides fuel for their propaganda.
This will exponentially raises the voices of the extremists on both sides. The extremists on the religious side won't ever be satisfied with anything less than a stoning or beheading of those burning the Quran. The extremists behind the burning will now use the new (proposed) rules as a means to spread their message of their persecution, removal of freedoms, etc.
The religious extremists will never be satisfied so instead of win/lose (freedom vs religion) it will be lose/lose along with the potential to create further domestic turmoil if more people think their government is kowtowing to extremists in other countries..
Coming at this with the assumption that every Muslim who is put off by this must be an extremist, and then to assume the most extremist motivations and drives on their part suggests we're not actually listening for whether there might be any valid concerns here.
Are we of the belief that the only Muslims who are put off by desecration of the Quran are extremists who want to stone and behead the ones doing it? Is there no room for any Muslims who might just think it's mean and racist to desecrate their holy book in public displays that are clearly meant as a way to signal hostility towards them, and they would maybe like to live somewhere where they don't have to routinely feel threatened and othered in the communities they live in?
If you banned all protests that some people might feel are 'mean' then you might as well just get rid of protesting altogether.
I think there is a quite clear contrast between a protest for “higher salary for teachers”, and burning book considered holy by many.
In my personal opinion, wanting to outright murder someone over burning a book would make them an extremist. Someone existing between uncomfortable and up to furious and not resorting to violence or making calls for violence, death or war is not an extremist. I tried to separate this issue from the religion, hence my addition of the word extremist.
Every person should be able to understand that there is nuance in any given situation. There is a huge difference between "THAT guy is an asshole who burns a holy book!" and "The whole country is filled with assholes who burn a holy book!"
If, in a country of around 6 million people, a dozen or even a few hundred people do something offensive to your category of being do you consider the whole country hostile towards you? What about the equally as many or more people that did welcome you or has accepted you and deals with you just like everyone else in their lives?
Is this not parallel of not every Muslim should be judged because of the actions of Muslim terrorists?
I'll fully admit there are a lot I don't fully understand about the Muslim faith but I certainly do think there are differences between the people in your questions and that not every Muslim is an extremist.
If those 6 people are in your face constantly and nobody wants to do anything about it does it make a difference? In terms of you being able to live your life, the trees overhanging your house, threatening to fall and collapse your roof the moment the weather turns bad, end up mattering more than the forest.
I'm honestly not trying to be obtuse but is it any different than 6 people in another country trying to change a whole other country's freedoms?
Your point about the trees is taken (although flawed). Realistically, however, those 6 people aren't going to be stalking you 24/7 shouting slurs, threatening you, trying to get you fired, etc. because in most places there are laws against any and all of that.
People can care about freedom while also caring about how it affects other people--they are just choosing to value freedom more. The problem with giving 1 religion a pass on something is the slippery-slope.
For a random example, Buddhism teaches that insects are sentient beings who should not be harmed nor killed. Should pest control worldwide be made illegal on religious grounds? Should we all be subjugated to various plagues, malaria, yellow fever, dengue, Zika, etc?
Where it always falls apart is that extremists want only their religious rules enforced on others but refuse to reciprocate. They will call you an infidel and want to kill people for not acquiescing to their "requests" to follow their rules but will also call you an infidel and want to kill people for daring to ask them to abide by anyone else's rules. (To reaffirm: That is why they are labelled extremists).
This "our way and our way ONLY" should not be tolerated. This is also known as the Paradox of Tolerance
There are Muslims in Denmark though. And I don't think it's out of line for other countries that are mostly Muslim to see that sort of thing and both worry for the well being of their coreligionists as well as have overt displays of hostility towards their values negatively impacting diplomatic relationships with them.
My original point was that only fixating on the objections from violent extremists risks setting up a bit of a strawman, basically denying or ignoring that there may be objections with merit here.
By who other than religious extremists? I think this is blown out of proportion and reeks of bending over backwards to appease these people. I get it's provocative and honestly think it's stupid people doing stupid stuff but banning doesn't seem like the right move here to me.
Every previous thread about this subject has gone downhill very quickly, and this one's already showing that it's not going to change that.
If I was braver and more political I would create a machine that prints out a Quran, Bible or whatever is needed and feeds it to a flame directly, while live-streaming the whole event from start to finish.
Then I'd connect it to an AI (a bunch of if statements) that analyses twitter/facebook/news and burns the correct religious text every time a member of said religion does something stupid/immoral/whatever.
Might be a cool art project for someone. Maybe name it the "Stop hitting yourself automaton" =)
Just don't hook it up to Memri TV or you'll go broke on paper alone.
Sidenote, perhaps someone should mark my comment as a joke.
I think this might be a good move. You can often disparage, critique, and destroy most religion/religious figures, but Islam seems to have the most active extremists and people in power who will give you trouble for it.
When it comes to book burning it's a very specific type of speech being restricted and could be worth it to improve relations and reduce criticisms of your country. Especially if those book burnings are used as fuel for religious extremists in recruitment.
In short, I see the cost benefit working out in favor of banning this particular type of speech. At least for a limited period of time.
There are already laws against "incitement against a group of people" which I think should be applicable in this situation. Essentially (translated from the swedish prosecution authority):
I think what will happen is that this law will be expanded in a way to include things that intentionally denigrate a group of people. I don't think anyone with a modicum of understanding of the law thinks it would be a good idea to single out specific books or similar.
It will be important to get the language right or a likely "loophole" will be to just burn a lot of books so that you don't single out any one group of people. Feels a bit tricky to get right, but I definitely think we should prevent insulting groups of people and hide behind some freedom of expression. This isn't about preventing the expression of opinions it is about preventing bullying of minorities.