“Burn a Quran Day”- Why Americans Need to Take the High Road

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A minister in Gainesville Florida is calling for a “Burn a Quran Day” on September 11. He feels the gesture will be in honor of those who died on 9/11, he says, “of the fallen victims of 9/11 and to stand against the evil of Islam.” Terry Jones is the founder of Dove World Outreach Center, a church that has openly supported Westboro Baptist, a notoriously inflammatory group that protests military funerals. It seems this wouldn’t be their first attention-grabbing stunt, as they have already protested the election of a gay mayor with signs reading, “No homo mayor”, and sent their kids to school wearing “Islam is the devil” shirts.

This story has quickly caught national attention, with General David Petraeus denouncing the plans for burning the books, urging that such actions could endanger troops fighting the war in Afghanistan. Many evangelical groups have also come out to reject the “Burn the Quran Day”, pointing to the peaceful message of Christ. Despite the backlash, Jones and his group have not backed down with their plans, he told CNN, "We believe that Islam is of the devil, that it's causing billions of people to go to hell, it is a deceptive religion, it is a violent religion and that is proven many, many times.

Needless to say, the conservative reactions to, “Burn the Quran Day” have been mixed. I, like many others, see this as extremely counter-productive to the ongoing struggle we have with Islamic extremism. Never have I been one to shy away from expressing my contempt for the tenets of Islam, in my opinion a religion that fundamentally subjugates women and propagates war, but I know when to draw the line.  No doubt it is this group’s Constitutional right to burn the books, but in doing so they start another unnecessary fire when this country is already burning.

The debate over the Ground Zero Mosque has reached a fevered pitch, with a majority of Americans opposing the place of its construction. I think we are in fact winning the debate, and the desperate and diversionary tactics of the left will not work in the end. So why resort to our own desperate tactics? We have reason and truth on our side, we don’t need to stoop to the level of unabashed hatred with the historically negative act of burning books (after all this is what Hitler resorted to). We are above this as Americans, we are above Islam, and while I normally figuratively strike first, ask questions later, this time I am asking people to keep a steady brow, these are not reasonable people who will react reasonably to this, we are. Don’t endanger the lives of our troops any more than they are. Take the high road, this country will beat the spread of radical Islam on our own terms, and in due time.