Bigotry in Florida

Tahir Shah in his blog (on my blog roll) flags up a story about a Florida “church” which is holding an “International Burn a Quran Day”. The church’s leader, Pastor Terry Jones, thinks that this enlightened event will help convert Muslims to Christianity. The pastor is also the author of a book called “Islam is of the Devil”.

I’m not going proliferate this bigotry by providing a link to the site reporting the story, but if you really want to find it, go to Tahir’s blog.

Tahir is right to be shocked, but not to be surprised. My instant reaction to the story was to think “the world’s gone crazy”. But of course it hasn’t gone crazy. It is, was and ever shall be crazy. It’s just that the web shows us craziness every day and in every country if we go out and look for it.

I guess we should be thankful that individuals, communities, tribes and governments find it harder to do their twisted, nasty, cruel thing without the world finding out about it.

The Florida story is also a reminder that Islamist extremists do not have a monopoly on bigotry. America, great country though it is, has always had a dark side. The Ku Klux Klan Lynch mobs, anti-abortion activists and radical libertarians have never been afraid to kill for their causes. Elsewhere, Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, Muslims and Hindus in India, Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, Sunnis and Shia in Iraq. The cavalcade of hatred and slaughter that seems to define humanity

Sad, sad, sad.