So many people take exception to burning religious texts, and I can understand this if it was the only remaining copy of the text and the knowledge would be forever lost if the book was burned.
But at the end of the day, these are books that were printed, often for money, by publishing companies and are simply copies. Unless you're an environmentalist protesting the waste of wood pulp and the cutting down of trees, is it really worth all the hullabaloo?
All of my scripture is on Kindle, so if you were to burn my iPad, I could just get on another device to read it.
It’s the context that matters. Nothing else.
And ironically: if I was burning religious scripture somewhere, where there’d really be grounds for doing so, I’d likely risk being killed by the state because of it.
Yet, if I am burning religious scripture where that scripture has no authority (and where I therefore am allowed to burn it in the first place); then, ought I not ask myself why I am burning it there at all?
As I see it, the current burning of religious scripture in the Nordics is carried out by two types of people: a) those who’ve had to flee their own countries because of regimes that have used those scriptures to rule nations they’ve taken on (as far as I’ve come across, there have literally been
two such burnings) and b) those who despise people of the faith in question and who want them out of the region because of nationalism and racism, rooted in fears caused by active, local political propaganda.
When the latter category burn religious scripture in Scandinavia, it has nothing to do with freedom of speech because it is hate-speech - directed at an already suppressed minority in that region. It is assault on the weak and vulnerable, in broad daylight, without any whatsoever resistance.
And Europe has stood by and watched this sort of thing before. It did not go away by our silence; it escalated. It will do the same unless we react differently this time.
Humbly,
Hermit
