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WASHINGTON (Sept. 7) -- The Florida pastor who's caused an international firestorm with his plan to burn the Muslim Quran on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is being widely condemned for inciting religious hatred. Yet he is hardly an original thinker.
History is filled with book burnings, censorship and persecution of those who espouse different religious, political or artistic beliefs. In some cases, as in the destruction of the ancient library at Alexandria in Egypt or the more recent firebombing of the Bosnian national library in Sarajevo in 1992, vast stores of knowledge were lost forever. In many others, the despised texts perished alongside the peoples who revered them, yet their ideas -- in the end -- survived the flames of intolerance.
Rev. Terry Jones poses for a photo on August 30 at the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida.
John Raoux, AP
The Rev. Terry Jones has said he plans to burn copies of the Quran to protest the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but the White House and the top U.S. general in Afghanistan say that doing so would endanger American troops overseas.
"Where they have burned books," the German Jewish writer Heinrich Heine wrote in 1821, "they will end in burning human beings."
The threatened stunt at Terry Jones' Dove World Outreach Center has already sparked protests in Kabul and elsewhere in the Muslim world and prompted warnings by Gen. David Petraeus and the head of NATO that it could endanger the lives of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
This isn't the first time zealots have tried to fight ideas with fire. Among the more notable, though far from exhaustive, examples from the (sometimes burned) history books:
• Qin Shi Huangdi, who declared himself the first emperor of China in 221 B.C., burned all history and philosophy books from other regimes. More recent Chinese leaders have publicly burned millions of Falun Gong books and tapes.
• Friar Diego de Landa, the Spanish bishop of the Yucatan in Mexico, ordered the burning of 27 sacred hieroglyphic books of Maya writing in 1562 in an attempt to wipe out "idol worship." His action erased many records of ancient Mayan language and culture.
• Back in Europe, the Catholic Church, through the clergy and its royal minions, regularly rounded up Torahs, Talmuds and other Jewish holy books for burning. In 1239, Pope Gregory IX ordered the kings of France, England, Spain and Portugal to confiscate Hebrew books. Cartloads of Judaica were torched in the streets of Paris, Rome and other European cities.
During the Counter-Reformation, the Vatican added the works of Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers to the fire as well as to the church's Index of Prohibited Books, which existed until Pope Paul VI abolished it in 1966.
• Nazi Germany burned books before it built the crematoria of the Holocaust. In 1933, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels ordered all textbooks, literature and other forms of art deemed "un-German" or "degenerate" to be tossed into huge bonfires. Five years later, the Nazis sponsored the nationwide rampage of Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, in which thousands of Jewish homes, businesses and especially synagogues that housed Torahs and other sacred texts, were destroyed.
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• Muslims in Britain burned copies of author Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" in 1989 after Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or death order, against him. The incident was later hailed as a turning point that led to an open debate about Britain's -- and Europe's -- growing immigrant population and the resulting ethnic and cultural tensions.
• Orthodox Jews in Israel have burned New Testaments distributed by Christian missionaries proselytizing in religious neighborhoods in the Jewish state.
Today, an interfaith group of Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders sought to turn down the temperature on Jones' demonstration, which it called an example of "outright bigotry." In a statement, the group said, "To attack any religion in the United States is to do violence to the religious freedom of all America."
History is filled with book burnings, censorship and persecution of those who espouse different religious, political or artistic beliefs. In some cases, as in the destruction of the ancient library at Alexandria in Egypt or the more recent firebombing of the Bosnian national library in Sarajevo in 1992, vast stores of knowledge were lost forever. In many others, the despised texts perished alongside the peoples who revered them, yet their ideas -- in the end -- survived the flames of intolerance.
Rev. Terry Jones poses for a photo on August 30 at the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida.
John Raoux, AP
The Rev. Terry Jones has said he plans to burn copies of the Quran to protest the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, but the White House and the top U.S. general in Afghanistan say that doing so would endanger American troops overseas.
"Where they have burned books," the German Jewish writer Heinrich Heine wrote in 1821, "they will end in burning human beings."
The threatened stunt at Terry Jones' Dove World Outreach Center has already sparked protests in Kabul and elsewhere in the Muslim world and prompted warnings by Gen. David Petraeus and the head of NATO that it could endanger the lives of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
This isn't the first time zealots have tried to fight ideas with fire. Among the more notable, though far from exhaustive, examples from the (sometimes burned) history books:
• Qin Shi Huangdi, who declared himself the first emperor of China in 221 B.C., burned all history and philosophy books from other regimes. More recent Chinese leaders have publicly burned millions of Falun Gong books and tapes.
• Friar Diego de Landa, the Spanish bishop of the Yucatan in Mexico, ordered the burning of 27 sacred hieroglyphic books of Maya writing in 1562 in an attempt to wipe out "idol worship." His action erased many records of ancient Mayan language and culture.
• Back in Europe, the Catholic Church, through the clergy and its royal minions, regularly rounded up Torahs, Talmuds and other Jewish holy books for burning. In 1239, Pope Gregory IX ordered the kings of France, England, Spain and Portugal to confiscate Hebrew books. Cartloads of Judaica were torched in the streets of Paris, Rome and other European cities.
During the Counter-Reformation, the Vatican added the works of Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers to the fire as well as to the church's Index of Prohibited Books, which existed until Pope Paul VI abolished it in 1966.
• Nazi Germany burned books before it built the crematoria of the Holocaust. In 1933, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels ordered all textbooks, literature and other forms of art deemed "un-German" or "degenerate" to be tossed into huge bonfires. Five years later, the Nazis sponsored the nationwide rampage of Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, in which thousands of Jewish homes, businesses and especially synagogues that housed Torahs and other sacred texts, were destroyed.
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• Muslims in Britain burned copies of author Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" in 1989 after Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa, or death order, against him. The incident was later hailed as a turning point that led to an open debate about Britain's -- and Europe's -- growing immigrant population and the resulting ethnic and cultural tensions.
• Orthodox Jews in Israel have burned New Testaments distributed by Christian missionaries proselytizing in religious neighborhoods in the Jewish state.
Today, an interfaith group of Christian, Jewish and Muslim religious leaders sought to turn down the temperature on Jones' demonstration, which it called an example of "outright bigotry." In a statement, the group said, "To attack any religion in the United States is to do violence to the religious freedom of all America."
