THE KORAN AT FAHRENHEIT 451

THE KORAN AT FAHRENHEIT 451

September 10 - 12, 2010

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

By the end of the week, the air was so thick with pieties about the need for tolerance and respect for all creeds that one yearned for the Rev. Terry Jones, mutton chop whiskers akimbo, to rescind his last minute cave-in, stiffen his spine, then toss those Korans into the burn barrels outside his Gainesville church in Florida and torch them on this year’s anniversary of 9/11.

Jones announced on Thursday that he was canceling his Koran burning plan after getting a pledge that the scheduled Muslim center near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan would be moved. When it turned out there was no such pledge Jones hinted he might just reach for the kerosene can after all.

It’s not surprising Jones blinked. The entire world court of enlightened opinion had borne down on this former hotel manager, now senior pastor at the Dove World Outreach Center and its modest congregation, which does – on the evidence of videos of the church’s proceedings – boast of some young female members of whom many a beleaguered Anglican parish would be only too proud to have raising their arms in ecstasy next to the altar.

Take Hillary Clinton, U.S. secretary of state. “It's regrettable that a pastor in Gainesville, Fla., with a church of no more than fifty people can make this outrageous and distressful, disgraceful plan and get, you know, the world's attention,” Clinton said in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, a favored venue for the elites debating homicidal policies around the world. Clinton concluded, “It doesn't in any way represent America or Americans, or American government, or American religious or political leadership.”

This is the same Hillary Clinton who has spent much of her term as helmswoman of the nation’s foreign affairs demonizing Iran and threatening it with nuclear obliteration, during which uncounted millions of Korans and the people clutching them would turn to cinders.

And here was U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman imploring Jones to reconsider: “I appeal to people who are planning to burn the Koran to reconsider and drop their plans because they are inconsistent with American values and, as General Petraeus has warned, threatening to America's military.”

This is the same Lieberman who is the most sedulous U.S. lobbyist for the interests of Israel in Washington, D.C. Has Lieberman warned Israel that its planned law to force every Palestinian to swear explicit allegiance to the Jewish state, hence the tenets of Zionism, is inconsistent with American values, and thus might prompt him to reconsider his approval of America’s annual disbursement of $3 billion to Israel’s collection plate?

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called Jones’ plan “idiotic and dangerous.” Would Holder call the action of his Democratic predecessor as attorney general, Janet Reno, in ordering the federal onslaught that led to the incineration in 1993 of the Branch Davidian church in Waco “idiotic and dangerous”? The Justice Department has always defended Reno’s action, even though it prompted the blowing up of the Murrah Center in Oklahoma City – until the 9/11/2001 attacks, the most deadly act of terror perpetrated on American soil.

And here was Gen. Petraeus making what is described as an unusual – for a member of the military – intervention: “Images of the burning of a Koran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan – and around the world – to inflame public opinion and incite violence.” Petraeus can only advise Pastor Jones, who has the constitutional freedom to dispose of the Koran as he thinks fit, consonant with local laws pertaining to public bonfires. He can, however, suspend by a simple order the lethal Predator onslaughts that regularly blow to pieces civilian groups in Afghanistan and the Pakistan border region, inflaming public opinion and leading invariably to escalation in violence.

For their part, Afghans demonstrated in Kabul in anticipatory protest at Pastor Jones’ plan. They denounced disrespect for the Koran. But we also learn from earnest proponents of religious tolerance and interconfessonal amity that the Koran promotes respect for the Bible, (though not, of course, the Christian claim of the divinity of Christ – a view also held by followers of Judaism, whose Talmud locates Christ in hell for all eternity, boiling in excrement). What did the indignant Afghans say when, in early August of this year ten members of a Christian medical team – six Americans, two Afghans, one German and a Briton, three women among them – were gunned down by the Taliban who claimed they were trying to convert Muslims to Christianity. The gunmen spared an Afghan driver, who screamed he was a Muslim and babbled some verses from the Koran. The group were members of the International Assistance Mission, one of the longest serving nongovernmental organizations operating in Afghanistan, registered as a nonprofit Christian organization, apparently not proselytizing. So, what if they were?

Pastor Jones, a good old boy with a nose for a headline, aroused the fury of the American establishment, which has, as a matter of regular imperial maintenance, promoted the murder of millions across the world in the name of “American values.” Modern Christians, fusionists of the all-get-along school deplored Jones and started reading the Koran in church to show their broad-mindedness. But many Evangelicals thought Jones was on track, though they mostly won’t say so publicly. As a Southern Baptist said to me last week, “Alex, they say that Christianity is tolerant. But Christ drove the moneychangers from the Temple. He didn’t tolerate them. A line has to be drawn, just like Jones is doing.”

And if the line isn’t drawn by Pastor Jones, Westboro Baptist Church, in Topeka, Kan., the church that pickets funerals of American soldiers to spread its message that God is punishing the country for being tolerant of homosexuals, has promised it will pick up the Zippo if it falls from Jones’ nerveless hand.

What better symbol than Jones of what should have been America’s overall resilience in the aftermath of the Muslim attacks of 9/11/2001: an assertion of one of the greatest of American values, as embodied in constitutional provisions for free speech. These freedoms matter most when they are under duress. Amid the duress after 9/11/2001, the Constitution was trashed by the same leaders who now decry Jones. The same President Obama who denounced Pastor Jones for planning an act “completely contrary to our values as Americans” is defending the “extraordinary renditions” of the Bush era with “state secrets” rationales just endorsed by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Read the tortures inflicted on those men rendered by US government agents to Egypt and Morocco, and judge for yourself whether Obama has any standing to preach to Jones about “our values as Americans.”

My hope had been that on the other side of the road from Pastor Jones’ burn barrels, or on some piece of property volunteered by the mayor of Gainesville, a gay man, there would have been other barrels, into which could be tossed by their opponents the Bible, and kindred sacred texts such as the Talmud, plus Bacon’s Advancement of Learning, Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity, and Das Kapital. Fahrenheit 451 is the temperature of the crucible, in which ideas and principles survive or die.


http://www.counterpunch.org/



SEPTEMBER 11 REMINDER FROM OBAMA: ENEMY IS AL QAEDA, NOT ISLAM

On the eve of the September 11 anniversary, Obama made an impassioned plea to Americans to show religious tolerance toward ordinary Muslims. 'We are not at war with Islam,' he said.

By Peter Grier, Staff writer / September 10, 2010

Washington

President Obama on Friday made an impassioned plea to Americans that they express religious tolerance toward ordinary Muslims and understand that the nation’s true enemies are Al Qaeda and like-minded Islamist extremists.

This year’s anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks occurs in a context of controversy and apprehension driven by a Florida pastor’s plan to burn the Quran and by a planned Islamic center and mosque near ground zero in New York, among other things. Asked about this mood at his Friday midday press conference, Mr. Obama said tough economic times and general anxiety can produce societal divisions.

Then he added that he admired the way President George W. Bush in those harrowing days after 9/11 made it clear that the US was not at war with Islam itself.

“We are not at war with Islam. We are at war against terrorist organizations that have distorted Islam or falsely used the banner of Islam to engage in their destructive acts,” said Obama.

Millions of Muslim Americans are US citizens, the president noted. They are neighbors, coworkers, and fellow students. They serve in the US military.

“You know, we have to make sure that we don’t start turning on each other,” Obama said. “And I will do everything I can, as long as I am president of the United States, to remind the American people that we are one nation, under God. And we may call that God different names, but we remain one nation.”

Asked specifically about the plans of Florida pastor Terry Jones to burn Qurans on Sept. 11, Obama said burning the sacred texts of someone else’s religion is not what America stands for.

In addition, he said that, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, it is his obligation to speak out against acts that would put US troops in harm’s way. Pastor Jones’s plans have already led to riots in Kabul, Afghanistan, and would undoubtedly be used by Al Qaeda as a recruiting tool, said Obama.

The president said his worry was not so much Jones himself as the possibility that the pastor's actions could breed copycats, leading to an unending, media-driven uproar.

“Part of my concern is to make sure that we don’t start having a whole bunch of folks all across the country think this is the way to get attention,” said Obama.
Asked whether it is a policy failure that the Obama administration has not captured or killed Osama bin Laden, the president said finding the Al Qaeda leader remains a priority. The best minds in the intelligence business are working on it, he said. He claimed that increased pressure on Al Qaeda leaders has forced them to go deeper underground and made it more difficult for them to operate.

Pressed as to whether this situation would continue indefinitely, with Americans facing a terror threat stretching across generations, Obama said the US ultimately would be able to stamp out the Islamist terrorist problem, but that it would take a long time.

But the US should not start overreacting, or lose sight of what defines the country, he said.

“We are tougher than them. Our families and our businesses and our churches and mosques and synagogues and our Constitution and our values, that’s what gives us strength,” Obama said.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0910/September-11-reminder-from-Obama-Enemy-is-Al-Qaeda-not-Islam


OBAMA HONORS 9/11 VICTIMS, CONDEMNS TERRORISTS

'It was not a religion that attacked us that September day, it was Al Qaeda — a sorry band of men which perverts religion,' the president says during a memorial at the Pentagon.

By Christi Parsons, Tribune Washington Bureau

September 11, 2010|9:19 a.m.

Reporting from Washington —

Observing the 9/11 anniversary at the Pentagon on Saturday, President Obama asked Americans to honor the tragedy's victims by renewing a "sense of common purpose" and refusing to let terrorists tear down the nation's ideals.

The highest honor that Americans can pay to those killed that day nine years ago is to do what adversaries fear most, Obama said.

"We define the character of our country," Obama said, "and we will not let the acts of some small band of murderers who slaughter the innocent and cower in caves distort who we are."

Obama spoke not far from a prayer room opened by the military weeks after the attack so that service members of all faiths could pray, read their holy books and join clergy — including an imam, once a week — for services.

As the furor continues over the possibility that an Islamic center and mosque will open blocks from ground zero in New York, Obama vowed to champion the rights of every American to worship as they choose, "as service members and civilians from many faiths do just steps from here, at the very spot where the terrorists struck this building."

The country is not at war with Islam, the president said.

"It was not a religion that attacked us that September day, it was Al Qaeda — a sorry band of men which perverts religion," he said. "And just as we condemn intolerance and extremism abroad, so will we stay true to our traditions here at home as a diverse and tolerant nation."

Obama spoke to friends and family members of the victims at the Pentagon, where 184 people died when terrorists crashed a hijacked plane into the building. He also laid a wreath at the site.

"Those who attacked us sought to demoralize us, divide us, to deprive us of the very unity, the very ideals, that make America America — those qualities that have made us a beacon of freedom and hope to billions around the world," Obama said. "Today we declare once more we will never hand them that victory."

Vice President Joe Biden marked the day in New York in a memorial service at ground zero in Lower Manhattan. The assembly observed four moments of silence — marking the time when two of four hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center and when each of the towers fell.

First Lady Michelle Obama and former First Lady Laura Bush were in Shanksville, Pa., where the fourth hijacked plane crashed.

"In the face of terror," the former first lady said, "Americans chose to overcome evil."

The group in Pennsylvania observed a moment of silence, broken when relatives of the victims began to read aloud names of the 40 passengers and crew who died and tolling a bell for each.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/sc-dc-obama-remembrance-20100912,0,2787032.story


AMID FUROR OVER NYC MOSQUE, NATION PAUSES TO REMEMBER VICTIMS OF SEPT. 11

BETH FOUHY, VERENA DOBNIK Associated Press Writers

4:28 p.m. CDT, September 11, 2010

NEW YORK (AP) — Rites of remembrance and loss marked the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, familiar in their sorrow but observed for the first time Saturday in a nation torn over the prospect of a mosque near ground zero and the role of Islam in society.

Under a flawless blue sky that called to mind the day itself, there were tears and song, chants, and the waving of hundreds of American flags. Loved ones recited the names of the victims, as they have each year since the attacks. They looked up to add personal messages to the lost and down to place flowers in a reflecting pool in their honor.

For a few hours Saturday morning, the political and cultural furor over whether a proposed Islamic center and mosque belongs two blocks from the World Trade Center site mostly gave way to the somber anniversary ceremony and pleas from elected officials for religious tolerance.

But this Sept. 11 was unmistakably different from the eight that came before it, and not only because a new World Trade Center is finally ready to rise. As they finished reading names, two relatives of 9/11 victims issued pleas — one to God and one to New York — that the site remain "sacred."

And within hours of the city's memorial service near ground zero, groups of protesters had taken up positions in lower Manhattan, blocks apart and representing both sides of the debate over the mosque, which has suffused the nation's politics for weeks leading up to the anniversary.

Near City Hall, supporters of the mosque toted signs that read, "The attack on Islam is racism" and "Tea Party bigots funded by corporate $." Opponents carried placards that read, "It stops here" and "Never forgive, never forget, no WTC mosque."

At the other Sept. 11 attack sites, as at ground zero, elected leaders sought to remind Americans of the acts of heroism that marked a Tuesday in 2001 and the national show of unity that followed.

President Barack Obama, appealing to an unsettled nation from the Pentagon, declared that the United States could not "sacrifice the liberties we cherish or hunker down behind walls of suspicion and mistrust."

"As Americans we are not — and never will be — at war with Islam," the president said. "It was not a religion that attacked us that September day — it was al-Qaida, a sorry band of men which perverts religion."

In Shanksville, Pa., first lady Michelle Obama and her predecessor, Laura Bush, spoke at a public event together for the first time since last year's presidential inauguration. At the rural field where the 40 passengers and crew of United Flight 93 lost their lives, Obama said "a scar in the earth has healed," and Bush said "Americans have no division" on this day.

In New York, the leader of a small Christian congregation in Florida who had planned to burn copies of the Quran to mark the Sept. 11 anniversary called off his plans.

Pastor Terry Jones gave an interview to NBC's "Today" after flying to New York in hopes of meeting with leaders of the mosque and persuading them to move the Islamic center in exchange for his canceling his own plans. No meeting had taken place, he said.

Nonetheless, "We feel that God is telling us to stop," he said. "Not today, not ever. We're not going to go back and do it. It is totally canceled."

Jones' plan had drawn opposition across the political spectrum and the world. Obama had appealed to him on television, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates in a personal phone call, not to burn the Islamic holy book. Gen. David Petraeus, head of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, said carrying out the plan would have endangered American troops.

Nevertheless, there were isolated reports of Quran desecrations on the anniversary, including two not far from ground zero.

Afghans, meanwhile, set fire to tires in the streets and shouted "Death to America" for a second day despite Jones' decision to call off the burning. The largest drew a crowd estimated at 10,000.

There were no arrests in New York, police said. There were scattered scuffles in the streets, including one in which a man ripped up another's poster advocating freedom of religion and the second man struck back with the stick.

Near the World Trade Center site, a memorial to the 2,752 who died there played out mostly as it had each year since 2001. Bells were tolled to mark the times of impact of the two hijacked jets and the times the twin towers collapsed.

Assigned to read the names of the fallen, relatives of 9/11 victims calmly made their way through their lists, then struggled, some looking skyward, as they addressed their lost loved ones.

"David, please know that we love you. We miss you desperately," said Michael Brady, whose brother worked at Merrill Lynch. "We think about you and we pray for you every day."

Sean Holohan, whose brother was killed, called out to the 343 firefighters who died: "All of you proved that day to the world that we are still one indivisible nation under God."

Family members of Sept. 11 victims also laid flowers in a reflecting pool and wrote individual messages along its edges.

Around the spot where they paid tribute, ground zero is transforming itself. Just this week, officials hoisted a 70-foot piece of trade center steel there and vowed to open the Sept. 11 memorial, with two waterfalls marking where the towers stood, by next year. At the northwest corner of the site, 1 World Trade Center, formerly known as the Freedom Tower, now rises 36 stories above ground. It is set to open in 2013 and be 1,776 feet tall, taller than the original trade center.
The proposed Islamic cultural center, which organizers say will promote interfaith learning, would go in an abandoned Burlington Coat Factory two blocks uptown from ground zero.

Muslim prayer services are normally held at the site, but it was padlocked Friday and closed Saturday, the official end of the holy month of Ramadan. Police planned 24-hour patrols until next week. Worshippers on Friday were redirected to a different prayer room 10 blocks away.

On Saturday, about 1,500 opponents of the mosque chanted "USA" and "No mosque here." Critics have said that even if organizers have a First Amendment right to build the center where they want, putting it near ground zero would be a show of disrespect.

"Stop bending down to them. Stop placating them. No special treatment," said Alice Lemos, 58, speaking of Muslims and holding a small American flag on a stick. "This isn't about religion. This is about rubbing our faces in their victory over us."

Elizabeth Meehan, 51, was among about 2,000 rallying to support the mosque. Meehan, who rode a bus to the rally from her home in Saratoga, N.Y., about 180 miles away, said she is an observant Christian and felt it was important for Christians to speak in favor of religious freedom.

"I'm really fearful of all of the hate that's going on in our country. People in one brand of Christianity are coming out against other faiths, and I find that so sad," she said. "Muslims are fellow Americans, they should have the right to worship in America just like anyone else."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-sept-11-anniversary,0,5543473.story