burning the Koran

Muslims who want to build a structure near Ground Zero...
Americans responding to this...

"Christian" preachers burning the Koran...
Muslims responding to this...

All permissible-- if not constructive-- examples of people exercising basic American freedoms.

Here's a little blurb from the AP on Muslim response to Koran-burning...

The Quran is the most sacred object in the daily lives of Muslims and burning it would be considered an offense against God...

"Muslims believe the Quran is the divine word of God, in letter and meaning," Abdel-Moeti Bayoumi, a religious scholar at Cairo's prominent Islamic Al-Azhar University, said. "If a human burns the revealed word of God, this would be considered the gravest crime for all Muslims."

Perhaps that's a key problem with Islam: for the Christian God, there are far-graver crimes. And yet, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God-- and so all crimes are, also, equal in that sense.

...Concern about Muslim sensitivities has prompted the White House, religious leaders and others to...call off a threat to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11.

Fine. But where were the concerns about American "sensitivities" about Ground Zero?

I also like what Ann Coulter has to say on this...

She opens by having fun poking at liberal pundit/politician hypocrisy by President Obama, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Keith Olbermann. But then she turns to the reverse hypocrisy by many conservatives.

And then this conclusion:

The reason not to burn Qurans is that it's unkind -- not to jihadists, but to Muslims who mean us no harm. The same goes for building a mosque at ground zero -- in both cases, it's not a question of anyone's "rights," it's just a nasty thing to do.