Quran burning in US, fuel on the fire in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan — The tension has been building in the Afghan capital for the past few weeks. On Monday, scattered demonstrations closed down several streets in the city. Educated Afghans with access to the internet have been circulating the news.

The capital is braced for major protests after Terry Jones, head of the so-called Dove World Outreach Center, called on people of good faith to burn a Quran on Sept. 11 in commemoration of the victims of the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

I became aware of the growing drama when a friend told me how his 12-year-old sister, Maryam, had brought home a tattered sheet of paper the other day, showing it to the family in apparent distress.

“Look here, it says they are going to burn the Quran in America,” she said, her dark eyes wide.

The streets of Kabul are littered with photocopies describing the hate-drenched, Islamophobic rhetoric of “Pastor” Jones — the preacher based in Gainesville, Florida.

One can only hope that the lucky coincidence of the Eid holiday with Jones’ planned bonfire will dampen the ire of Afghans as well as Muslims all over the world, who take insults to their religion quite seriously. Eid will most likely begin on Friday — it depends, apparently, on the moon — and continue for four days. Families come together, eat vast quantities of cake and cookies and bask in the goodwill marking the end of the Ramadan fast. The season is not conducive to violence.

But I remember all too well the riots that followed the publication of the Danish cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad. While I am an ardent believer in freedom of the press, I could sympathize with the Scandinavian diplomats who were furious when a Norwegian paper reprinted the offending drawings. They were, after all, the ones sitting in the embassy when demonstrators came with rocks and Molotov cocktails to burn them out.

Jones’ justification for the act is simple. The blog on his website, “Ten Reasons to Burn the Koran,” sums it up nicely.

These include the fact that Muslims do not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. Perhaps he should throw a few Torahs on the blaze.

Read the full story at GlobalPost.