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TSI: From what I understand, the books were burned because detainees were using them to write messages to one another. They were writing in them to communicate, that's why they were burned.
SW: And that it is a form of desecration to write in them.
You may be right. I could not validate the assertion that writing in the Qu'an is ipso facto desecration. You can write in the Bible or the Torah. Notes, amendments, emendations, etc., are fine. American families often kept geneaologies in their Bibles, the one book the family owned. So, I am not sure.
The protests began after NATO troops recently burned Qurans at Bagram Airfield. The burnings sent throngs of protesters to the streets and military bases, some chanting, "Death to America."
A military official said the materials burned were removed from a detainee center's library because they had "extremist inscriptions" on them and there was "an appearance that these documents were being used to facilitate extremist communications."
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/25/world/asia/afghanistan-burned-qurans/index.html
However, I my internet searches took me among other places to the Times of India. I started relying on them during the first Gulf War. It is English language news from an independent source. (If you think that Fox is independent of the White House, turn in your aluminum foil beanie.) Anyway, nothing in that source referred to the claim that the Qu'rans were used to transfer messages between detainees. This seems to be the new current claim.
The US commander in Afghanistan, General John Allen, apologised and ordered an investigation into the incident, admitting that religious materials, including Korans "were inadvertently taken to an incineration facility". Allen and US deputy defence secretary Ashton Carter called on Afghan President Hamid Karzai today to apologise again for the incident at Bagram airbase north of Kabul, the president's office said.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/Quran-protests-8-killed-as-Afghan-burns/articleshow/11999076.cms
Even if the claim that the Qu'rans contained messages between prisoners, would they not be secured into an evidence lock-up? Besides, after the previous round of protests and deaths over the burning of a Qu'ran in Florida, would the people in charge not be more attentive?? We all make mistakes, and this seems to be yet another...
That said, Newton really went after Leibnitz with a vengeance. But no one started a war over it, even though English physics suffered for a century. And Einstein denied quantum theory all his life. No one burned any books or threw hand grenades into pubs where Heisenberg's students hung out. (Though there was a plot hatched at the University of Michigan to assassinate Heisenberg to prevent a German atomic bomb ..;. improbable as that might seem... ) The problem is not Islam. The problem - if it is "a" problem - is religion, of course. Beyond that it matters which religion we are talking about and the Abrahamics have a poor record. Back in 2008, I attended a teaching by Tenzin Gyatso, the "Dalai Lama." He was a nice guy, very open-minded. I know that Shinto Buddhism was the state religion of Japan during its fascist period. Can't win 'em all...
Anyway, in terms of realpolitik, the best course was run ten years ago: use air power to bomb the daylights out of Taliban training camps; use special forces to erase them in Malaysia and the Philippines and then get back to business as usual.
(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 2/25, 4:27pm)
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Has anyone noticed that Pres Obama apologized for the Koran burning done by some American soldiers. Would he have done this had they burned an American flag as some citizens did back a few decades ago, here at home? All liberals talked about then was the right to do such terrible things, in the spirit of the First Amendment. Why not now, when it involves the Koran?
