God only knows
A church in Gainesville, Florida, plans to host an “International Burn the Quran Day” on the ninth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Their reasons for the book burning are pretty straightforward:
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,” Pastor Terry Jones told CNN’s Rick Sanchez earlier this week […]“Eternal fire is the only destination the Quran can lead people to, so we want to put the Quran in it’s [sic] place — the fire!
I suspect most Americans would immediately find such sentiments revolting because of the value of freedom of religion promised by the Constitution. Yet, this is not so much a question of freedom of religion as much as a question of respect for other religions – and this respect is of course not guaranteed by law.
Still, I can think of two arguments for why we owe this respect to religions other than our own. The first is a type of epistemic modesty – knowledge of the inherent fallibility of your beliefs. Because you might be wrong and others might be correct, you should respect what others believe.
However, men such as Pastor Jones obviously do not believe in this fallibility, so here a consequentialist argument may do better. Since religions are often held as deep, passionate, metaphysical convictions that are unlikely to be changed through argumentation, the diversity of religions is simply a fact of life for the foreseeable future. So even if Jones is correct and Islam is “of the devil,” Muslims are never going to be convinced. Still, since intolerance and lack of respect for religions often leads to violence, strife, or at least unhappiness, adhering to a general rule of respect for all religions would have the best consequences for all.
I believe either of these two arguments would show that a Quran burning event is unethical.
-Han
Photo by Flickr user SarahWynee used under a Creative Commons Attribution License
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One Response to “God only knows”
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I think this particular part of Gainesville probably needs better public schools.