10 UN workers killed by mob in protest of koran burning by US pastor

ríomhaire said:
That's my point. They're looking for any reason to do these things. If it wasn't this guy burning a Koran it would have been a teacher saying that Islam has no place in the classroom or something else.
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But in this case it was a guy burning a Koran. And if this asshole hadn't done it these killings probably wouldn't have taken place.
 
ríomhaire said:
it would have been a teacher saying that Islam has no place in the classroom or something else.
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SHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Allah damn, are you trying to get more people killed or something?
 
Raziaar said:
Well, murder is not equal to ignorance and assholishness in my opinion.
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I meant in terms of blame, really.

Yes, what the mob did was no doubt stupid and unnecessary but then it could've been avoided had Jones not burned a Qur'an and encouraged such stupidity out of extremists.

In my view, this is a classic case of idiots encouraging idiots to do idiotic things.
 
...it was a pure act of responsible Muslims," spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told Reuters.
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Who's to say the UN workers themselves were not Muslims?

Man, **** Afghanistan.
 
Stupidity of the Pastor - <-------------------------->
Stupidity of the Reaction by the extremists - <------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
 
I like how people are treating the Pastor as if he wasn't aware that burning a Qur'an would lead to this kind of reaction from extremists.

I mean, come on.
 
I like how people are treating the extremists as if they would never have made any kind of violent outburst if the Pastor hadn't burnt the Qur'an.

I mean, come on.
 
ríomhaire said:
I like how people are treating the extremists as if they would never have made any kind of violent outburst if the Pastor hadn't burnt the Qur'an.

I mean, come on.
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What're you talking about? In this particular instance, if Jones had not burnt the Koran then they would not have reacted with this level of extremism. It's basic cause and effect. Was it an absurd and barbaric response? Yes, of course it was, and they should be held accountable. But Jones is responsible for instigating it and he knew exactly what would happen if he went ahead with burning that book.

unozero said:
More then Islam I think the bigger problem for Afghanistan is that they're so ****ing bronze age lol
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Yeah? And where do you think this twerp lives:

Warped said:
Religion is depressing

Science is fun

Boobies are even more fun
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Are you telling me that you think people who are willing to murder because some man with next to no influence burnt their holy book would never have made any other sort of outburst for the rest of their lives? I am not saying the burning had nothing to do with the murders. I'm saying when you have a big keg of nitro-glycerine next to a motorway which exact truck going past causes it to blow up is not consequential.

I find the fact that people are putting equal blame on the pastor absolutely gobsmacking.
 
Nobody's saying that the book burning suddenly made them capable of murder.

They're saying that they committed what they're capable of because some idiot decided to burn their holy book.

Honestly, what the hell were people expecting? Go punch a bear in the face and see what it does.

The lives of these UN workers could have been spared by NOT provoking extremists into doing what they do best. Killing people.
 
Samon meant that the pastor's actions had direct causative effect on this particular case. The man isn't to blame for murder, but he partook in a contest of religious zeal with groups whose reactions are unaccountable and violent. He knowingly provoked this outburst and encouraged further tension between the Western presence in the Middle East and its most extreme elements. Not only was it irresponsible, but also implied willingness on his church's part to engage in such forms of ideological conflict: that is to say, had he simply wanted to protest Muslim extremism, he would not have resorted to symbolically offensive actions.
 
ríomhaire said:
Are you telling me that you think people who are willing to murder because some man with next to no influence burnt their holy book would never have made any other sort of outburst for the rest of their lives? I am not saying the burning had nothing to do with the murders. I'm saying when you have a big keg of nitro-glycerine next to a motorway which exact truck going past causes it to blow up is not consequential.

I find the fact that people are putting equal blame on the pastor absolutely gobsmacking.
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These killings are happening as a result of major protests. These protests would otherwise not be happening. Yes, these barbarians existed before this asshole burned their holy book. But they weren't killing anyone. Alone they can't do much harm, but when you spark protests like these with thousands of people this is what happens.
 
Stylo said:
Honestly, what the hell were people expecting? Go punch a bear in the face and see what it does.

The lives of these UN workers could have been spared by NOT provoking extremists into doing what they do best. Killing people.
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You seem to have missed the part where this is not surprising at all. It would have been have been utterly shocking if he burned the book and nothing happened. Instead, all these killers did is give his loony position some credibility.

I'm with rim on this one. Anything would be liable to set such people off. If not today, then tomorrow. If not these people killed, then another group some other time. Considering the attackers would be just as likely to go off at somebody giving their teddy bear a blasphemous name, I don't think it really matters if Jones intentionally provoked them, regardless of how irresponsible that might have been.

We can debate how culpable somebody like Jones is these kinds of cases. At the end of the day, I have to draw the line at holding somebody responsible for murderers and the clearest, most fragrant offense is with the murderers. Their reaction to his antics are the big problem here, with his book-burning being a distant, secondary concern. That ass is not even worth discussing as far as I'm concerned. Muslim extremists flip out over free speech rubbing them the wrong way so often and violently that it doesn't really matter if his stunt had some kind of malicious or offensive intent.
 
Absinthe said:
I'm with rim on this one. Anything would be liable to set such people off. If not today, then tomorrow.
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Yes, because killings today AND tomorrow isn't much worse than just tomorrow.
 
It's all Christianity's fault.

No wait, it's all Judaism's fault, for being the direct antecedents of Christianity.

No wait, it's all Rome's fault, for allowing Christianity to become what it was.

No wait, it's all the Greeks' fault, for being the antecedents to Rome.

No wait, it's the original African nomadic tribes' fault, for leaving the continent and founding Greece.

Now we know who to blame! Alright, now someone else get started on a solution.
 
No Limit said:
Yes, because killings today AND tomorrow isn't much better than just tomorrow.
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This kind of violence has reared its head for more innocuous offenses. If their reaction to anything that's unfavorable of Islam is to stir shit and kill innocents, I don't really care what's provoked them. It's a pointless distinction if Jones was trying to deliberately provoke them or not, or if the subject material in question was vulgar or not. He might as well have sneezed in a wrong fashion and caused this tragedy. I'm not going to hold a man even remotely responsible for killings half the globe away for having an obnoxious church service on his porch.

If the unfortunate reality is that his book-burning added a few more bodies to the death toll in that region, then that's very sad. And yes, part of me would love to see some comeuppance on his end. But he's a man in a free country who can say what he wants, and everybody else should just have to deal with it if they don't like it. I can't hold him accountable for this just because he's a prick.
 
What's really a damn tragedy (other than the lost lives) is how damn effective the Pastor's strategy was, how illustrative the response was. I'm sure he woke up with quite the smug grin to these headlines.

"I told you they were barbarians."
emot-smug.gif
 
Strip it down to the barest essentials of the matter. The pastor, detestable as he is, is essentially exercising free speech; the protesters were exercising deadly violence against an unrelated party in response. So let's fill in the blanks with different values. I hope we can all agree that burning a copy of a religious text is and should be defended as completely acceptable public behaviour - an acceptable kind of protest. If we are committed to that claim, we must allow ourselves to keep it in the same category as something much more apparently benign, even if this appears to result in an argument from absurdity. Let's imagine that in an incredibly homophobic country a prominent local gay rights group plan to make a provocative demonstration in a public square (to avoid muddying the waters with matters of public nudity etc, it will not be provocative in that sense). They have been warned that if they do so not only is the demonstration likely to be attacked by police, but homophobic mobs will attack and probably kill gay youths in the area. That prediction is fulfilled. Can you really say the demonstrators were 'responsible?

I'm not sure. There are so many other factors to consider. But it seems to me that on an elementary level one should not have to feel responsible for something committed by someone else if that someone else acted unreasonably and in an unwarranted way. Maybe this can't just be distilled down to pure and abstract basic principles. But to the extent that it can, the pastor, though an obnoxious shit, surely can't be held responsible for these killings.

Note: sure, there's a chain of causation. But in law, particularly in cases of assault and murder where it's a key issue, causation is not enough to convict. There is also a criterion of moral responsibility, and this is defined as: did the defendant act illegally or unacceptably to bring about the consequence?

You might say that free speech should bow its head to rules against incitement. But again, incitement is about explicitly advocating for violence rather than performing an action that you know someone else through their fault will react violently to.
 
^^ I agree. Was the pastor an idiot? Sure he was. However what he did falls well within the realm of free speech, and peaceful protest. I mean, it's not like he gathered a mob and torched a local mosque or anything.
It's quite frankly infuriating how quick you guys are to give up free speech out of fear of how some extremists might react.
 
Did they claim that this was because of the burning or because it was just some random shit muslims did that they're reporting it like this? (Correlation vs causation)
 
Absinthe said:
This kind of violence has reared its head for more innocuous offenses. If their reaction to anything that's unfavorable of Islam is to stir shit and kill innocents, I don't really care what's provoked them. It's a pointless distinction if Jones was trying to deliberately provoke them or not, or if the subject material in question was vulgar or not. He might as well have sneezed in a wrong fashion and caused this tragedy. I'm not going to hold a man even remotely responsible for killings half the globe away for having an obnoxious church service on his porch.

If the unfortunate reality is that his book-burning added a few more bodies to the death toll in that region, then that's very sad. And yes, part of me would love to see some comeuppance on his end. But he's a man in a free country who can say what he wants, and everybody else should just have to deal with it if they don't like it. I can't hold him accountable for this just because he's a prick.
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But I don't think this is as minor as you are trying to make it out to be. This isn't sneezing, or saying offensive things about Islam. This was a deliberate publicity stunt. He knew that what he was about to do would bring him a lot of attention and didn't care about the consequences of his actions. Consequences he was fully aware of.

The matter of fact is that if he hadn't done what he had done these people would not have died. No doubt in the future we would have events like these, but at least these people wouldn't be on that death toll.

I completely agree with you and Sulk about this being free speech and that there is nothing legally we can do about it. And I would never want that to change. But we as individuals have a right to consider him accountable morally and to hopefully make sure this asshole lives with the guilt of what he did for the rest of his life.
 
My stance.

The pastor was trying to prove how primitive, violent and barbaric some muslims are.

The pastor was right.

He burnt a book.

I hope it is a wake up call to the extremists out there. They need to make the evolutionary step towards enlightenment, they're still stuck in that middle ages mentality and it is limiting their advancement as a people.
 
^ And as a result only 17 people have died (so far). But yeah, point proven. GG.
 
This is basically siding with the lesser of two evils.

The pastor is an idiot, and so are the extremists.

It's like putting your hand against the fire, knowing exactly what will be happen. But you do it anyways for the **** of it.
 
Absinthe said:
You seem to have missed the part where this is not surprising at all. It would have been have been utterly shocking if he burned the book and nothing happened.
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Wait, what? My whole point is based on the fact that this is not surprising. Did you even read my post properly?
 
I don't know...? Did I?

You asked this:
Honestly, what the hell were people expecting? Go punch a bear in the face and see what it does.
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Stylo said:
I meant in terms of blame, really.

Yes, what the mob did was no doubt stupid and unnecessary but then it could've been avoided had Jones not burned a Qur'an and encouraged such stupidity out of extremists.

In my view, this is a classic case of idiots encouraging idiots to do idiotic things.
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Could it, could it really have been avoided? Those people are going to react to the next perceived or real slight against them.

Also, I think stupid and unnecessary are terms not very well suited to mob murder. Too light. They're murderers.
 
Absinthe said:
I don't know...? Did I?

You asked this:
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Yeah, precisely. My point was that BECAUSE it was obvious what the consequences would be, it should have been more of a deterrent for the Pastor to make such a crude ideological statement.

The fact that we all knew that this is the way extremists react to things like this, he should have probably thought twice about doing it. But not only is he an idiot for inciting religious violence, he also burnt the holy book of every Muslim. That includes the ones that haven't done anything wrong apart from have a different religious belief to him.

That makes him a Grade A ThunderC*nt.

and Raziaar well, put it however you want to, really. I'm not intentionally playing down murder or anything. I agree fully that it's a disgusting act to kill innocent people in cold blood because someone burnt your holy book but what I think is that Pastor Jones should have known this would happen. He is, by default, responsible for the deaths of these people.

I get the point that people are saying "Oh well if not these guys, they would have killed someone else" but I don't think that's the point. If we'd avoided this, it would have been less people dead. That's a fact.

Perhaps it is inevitable that the bear will maul, but that doesn't mean we should hit it with a stick to piss it off.
 
Yeah, precisely. My point was that BECAUSE it was obvious what the consequences would be, it should have been more of a deterrent for the Pastor to make such a crude ideological statement.
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He may very well have done it because he knew it would prompt violent outrage. Most probably, in fact. And while I won't say I agree with the man, the mob did a bangup job of playing into his act and making his point. Still a stretch to call him responsible. Look back and read Sulk's post (not to piggyback on his eloquence) and see what I'm trying to say here.

But again, incitement is about explicitly advocating for violence rather than performing an action that you know someone else through their fault will react violently to.
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Yes, Jones is a ****. But the blame has to stop at the ones who committed the crime. Jones has no control over the actions of such mobs except what they give him.

What an awesome day it would have been if Jones had his bonfire and the Middle East chose not to explode.
 
Absinthe said:
He may very well have done it because he knew it would prompt violent outrage. Most probably, in fact. And while I won't say I agree with the man, the mob did a bangup job of playing into his act and making his point.
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Oh, I agree that this has pretty much proven his point, insane as his methods may have been.

The freedom of speech thing is kinda debatable in my opinion though. Yes people have the right to exorcise free speech but there's got to be a limit on how far you can go with your shit before it becomes unacceptable. I wouldn't mind had he quietly been burning Qur'ans in his back garden (would still be a dick though) but he chose to make this public and to cause offense and this resulted in death as the extremists sects had their excuse to kill innocent people.

I genuinely believe that the blood of those people is not just squarely on the hands of the murderers. Giving extremists the excuse they need is still wrong.

Were I to let a tank of hungry piranhas into a swimming pool full of fat children, they would feast. But I have no control over the piranhas. It's not my fault they're killing people. I merely gave them the tools they needed - access to a pool full of fresh meat.

Same as if I burnt the holy book of a religion that unfortunately does have extremist sects in the public eye, knowing what the reaction would be. I have no control over the extremists. It's not my fault they're killing people in rage. I merely gave them the tools they needed - an excuse to behead people.

Where does the fault overcome the action?
 
Mr-Fusion said:
They need to make the evolutionary step towards enlightenment, they're still stuck in that middle ages mentality and it is limiting their advancement as a people.
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Oh you, trying to incite my rage.

Try taking an evolutionary step toward a history textbook ^.^
 
I think it's really funny how some Muslims refer to Jews as monkeys but they win like the majority of all Nobel prizes and I can't think of a single one that went to someone living in a Islamic theocracy recently or ever lol.
 
Stylo said:
The freedom of speech thing is kinda debatable in my opinion though. Yes people have the right to exorcise free speech but there's got to be a limit on how far you can go with your shit before it becomes unacceptable.
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Sure, go ahead and limit free speech to avoid offending certain groups. That's bound to lead us to a good place.

I think the very fact that you're comparing them to animals reacting on instinct, and rather aptly so, is the most troubling part of this. These acts of retaliation have become not only predictable but inevitable. I think in light of that, the pastor is responsible for a portion of the blame, but I don't think it's a very big one. The pivotal element here that I think has been overlooked a bit is the role of the religious authority in Afghanistan. To quote the first line of the article - "Stirred up by three angry mullahs who urged them to avenge the burning of a Koran at a Florida church..." If you want to talk about incitement, I don't think you have to look any further than this. The pastor may have provided the ammunition, but the mullahs loaded it happily and sent their congregation out locked and loaded and with wilful intent to harm. This is immeasurably worse to me, to the point where the pastor's role needn't even be worth discussing.
 
Stylo said:
The freedom of speech thing is kinda debatable in my opinion though. Yes people have the right to exorcise free speech but there's got to be a limit on how far you can go with your shit before it becomes unacceptable. I wouldn't mind had he quietly been burning Qur'ans in his back garden (would still be a dick though) but he chose to make this public and to cause offense and this resulted in death as the extremists sects had their excuse to kill innocent people.
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Again:

Man burning a book on his porch in heartland America.
|
|
|
v
Murder of UN faculty and civilians in Afghanistan.

I understand where you're coming from entirely. I think the ramifications of free speech are an appropriate area of concern when, say, arguing over the ethical conduct of a widely-watched news organization such as Fox. But despite the causal link in this particular case, we're talking about events taking place on two separate ends of the world with nothing to link them other than our worldwide flow of information. Muslims were not forced to watch his burning or be subjected to it in any way. A group of people made it into their problem, which is why we have these deaths. Even if he was forewarned, that ball is still squarely out of his court IMO. We may be able to hold him morally culpable (which I think can still be debated), but not legally. Doing so can set a very damaging precedent for any kind of free speech. :\

Really, following your argument, we should not allow any kind of public criticism of Islam. Not on our property, not on the internet, not in the papers. Because somebody is going to take offense and kill people. Where do you draw the line between Terry Jones' vulgar show and an essay critiquing militant Islamists? "Good taste" is not a measurable variable (yet), and the kind of people who kill in the name of Allah are just as likely to freak out at either one. Your piranha analogy would work if Terry Jones was dumping innocents into Afghanistan to be slaughtered after his ceremony. But all he did was voice an opinion. He didn't provide extremists any tools they didn't have already. And it's not like they retaliated against him. They lashed out at an entirely unrelated group of people.

EDIT: Concurring with Badhat wholeheartedly. If anybody should be blamed for provoking bloodshed, it should be the religious leaders that fanned the flames. Technically, Jones and his cohorts did not incite any violence. The Mullahs? Take a guess. Hell, they're at least a local force.
 
Bad^Hat said:
The pastor may have provided the ammunition, but the mullahs loaded it happily and sent their congregation out locked and loaded and with wilful intent to harm. This is immeasurably worse to me, to the point where the pastor's role needn't even be worth discussing.
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Wait, so you think that instigating terrorism in order to promote one's own agenda isn't worth discussing? Thats akin to saying a mafia Don shouldn't even be a part of discussing mafia violence, because all he did was instigate criminal activity for his own profit.


EDIT: @ Absinthe: Um, the pastor and his cohorts absolute did incite violence. He knew before hand that his action would cause people to commit acts of violence, and then performed said action. How isn't that inciting violence?
 
In what capacity is it worth discussing? He's morally culpable, I agree, but beyond that there's nothing inherently wrong about his actions, in fact I'll happily defend them in the name of free speech/freedom of expression. Strip them of motivation, agenda, personal gain and all you've got is a dude setting fire to some paper which happens to contain a certain religion's holy text. Of course, the problem is not really that he did it, but that he publicized it, that much can be criticized. Ultimately though, the real issue lies with the retaliation, and to accept it as inevitable while condemning the one who sparked it is a little... err, I don't really know what it is. But I don't agree with it. :v

Anyway, I'm not saying you can't or shouldn't discuss it, just that I don't find it particularly worthy of attention.
 
Did he explicitly compel or instruct anybody to act violently? Not so far as I can see, unless I've overlooked something. He made a statement about Islam, put on a show, and ruffled some feathers. He incited no more violence than than Danish cartoons from years ago, or if I were to loudly criticize Scientology outside one of their centers. Would it be predictable for me to get roughed up? Arguably so. But that's why we have laws that protect people like you and me from having our faces beaten in dare we ever voice our irreconcilable disagreements and some hothead can't live with it. Provoking them may have been a stupid decision, but it must be said again: These kind of people can be provoked by just about anything. And on a related note, can we be so sure he was deliberately prodding the horde for his personal gain? Maybe he felt the honest-to-God, principled need to express a voice against Islam (despite how thoroughly unnecessary it was). I really don't want to sound like I'm defending the man himself or what he did. But while we can call Terry Jones a number of things, I don't have a gauge on his sincerity and it's not something I'm going to waste my time guessing about. I don't think the nobility of his actions, agenda'd or not, is worth factoring into anything other than the quality of his character.

The origin of violence in this case starts in Afghanistan. People banded together and made the conscious decision to kill unrelated people in response to Jones. If anybody needs to be told to tone it down, there you go. At the very least they could have just as easily made all the ruckus they did without killing anybody. The yelling, the fatwas issued, whole nine yards. Err, eight rather.
 
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