Koran-burning Stunt

Muslims regard their holy book with more reverence than Christians view the Bible for the reason that the Koran is believed by Muslims as God's final revelations to mankind via Muhammad, the final prophet. I am not spreading nor debating the merits of such beliefs. I finally moved beyond that stage in my thinking. I merely wanted to draw attention to the import of such beliefs and how they can shape human behavior. There is a cliche' which says perception is reality. As a person whose preoccupation is with reality, religious beliefs hold an interest to me because I am interested in the thinking process and how humans having similar intelligence and education can have different views and opinions on certain areas. Certainly, it can't just be intelligence and knowledge, thus personality must come into play. And personality is a product of genetics as well as environment, especially that of early years (read: socialization and early conditioning). In other words, to call oneself truly educated, one must be conscious of all the forces that have a bearing on how one thinks.

While it's true that America is a diversified democracy where freedom of expression is revered, it is a stretch to equate burning the flag of one's own country with burning the holy book of another religion which one condemns as the religion of the devil. Please remember while some Christian extremists, such as the "pastor" Jones whose congregation consists of 50 families (yesterday I said 30, but that source was not correct. Now everybody is talking 50 families, not 50 individuals), regard Muhammad as the devil and unhesitantly call him so, along with many other choice words, as far as I know, not a single Muslim badmouths Jesus. There is a lot of truth in the view held by scholars and those who read history that Christianity attracts some wildly intolerant souls.