Koran desecration and flag burning.

[eallen]

This Guardian article reports how the alleged Koran desecration is affecting Afghanistan and Pakistan:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1485635,00.html

It summarizes thusly:

Imran Khan, the cricket legend who first drew attention to the Qur'an story, said: "This will not die down unless the US isolates itself from these abuses against our religion."

He told the Guardian:"It's not good enough to say Islam is a peaceful religion and they are only after terrorists. They must show respect."

The reaction has highlighted a cultural gap. In Pakistan and Afghanistan destruction of the Qur'an is seen as blasphemous and punishable by death. In the US, destruction of any religious text is a constitutional right.

It occurs to me that this cultural difference is a bit more nuanced than it is made out to be. US fundamentalists understand quite well the notion that desecrating a symbol should be banned by the government: they wish to write an amendment into our Constitution to ban the desecration of our flag. The big cultural gap really is between liberals, who put freedom of speech above the protection of symbols, and fundamentalists, who hypostatize their symbols into objects of worship.