The Burr in the Burgh

I've been hearing and reading certain dismayed braying over the alleged incident of U.S. interrogators in Guantanemo Bay flushing the Quran in a toilet.

It's wrong to desecrate religious symbols and texts... unless they're Christian, of course. In that case, it's not only acceptable. It's hip. If you want to, for instance, immerse a crucifix in a jar of urine or smear elephant dung on a picture of the Virgin Mary, that's not disrespect. That's art. (What're you, some kind of Cretan?) The taxpayers will give you big dollars too.

When the Baptist church in Danieltown, NC put this message on their church sign "The Koran Needs to Be Flushed," it raised a ruckus. One local college professor criticized the Baptists for their "intolerance" and "aggressive disrespect for other citizens' deeply held views." I hope he complained about the NEA funded projects I mentioned above.

Call me nuts, but sometimes I detect a double-standard. When you bash Christianity, it's free speech. When you bash Islam, it's a hate crime. Personally, I think we should ALL be nicer. But there is that whole Voltaire thing about not agreeing with what you say though defending to the death your right to say it. (I'd previously attributed that saying to Patrick Henry, but now I think I was in error and that it was actually Voltaire.)

The top cleric in Saudi Arabia, one Grand Mufti Adul-Aziz al-Sheik, said, "We condemn and denounce this criminal act against Muslims' most sacred item." Is that the same guy who called fire and brimstone down on those Palestinians who used pages from the Bible as toilet paper while violating the Church of the Holy Nativity in Bethlehem three years ago? I guess not.

And for the record, we should note that the government of Saudi Arabia routinely burns Bibles whenever such contraband is uncovered. In late April, 40 Pakistani Christians living near Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, were arrested for "trying to spread their poisonous religious beliefs to others through the distribution of books and pamphlets." Apparantly, Christians are supposed to respect Islam, but the favor need not be returned.

Trashing someone's sacred book is not torture. It's not illegal (in America, that is). It might even be an effective interrogation technique. I don't know if the Newsweek account is true. Probably, it's not. But if they did do it, the Saudi cleric is wrong. It wasn't criminal. It was just rude.