Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Dear Reverend Jones...

Assholes like you infuriate me.  You are human, so I have to love you.  However, that doesn't mean that I have to like you very much or endorse your rotten, hateful, spiteful actions.

Burning the Koran is no more a Christian act than bulldozing a church would be.  It's a senseless act of hate that's designed to offend.  Being a fanatic member of another religion, even one that has Christianity's history with Islam, does not give you carte blanche to be a self-righteous, conflict-seeking and bigoted little twerp.  This is not right, nor is it something that Jesus would do.  The commandment is "love one another", not "love only the people who agree with you and to Hell with everyone else", dumbass.

Now, I'm not saying that I think that there's no such thing as Islamic fundamentalism (where fundamentalism="anger that there are people who don't live by the One True Right and Only Way, which happens to be whatever the fundamentalist believes in").  That would be willfully ignorant of me to do—not to mention totally wrong.  I disapprove of them every bit as much as I disapprove of you.  But what I am saying is that for doing what you're doing, you're simply following in the same footsteps as the people you claim to condemn—you may not be directly causing death and destruction as the ones who flew those planes into the World Trade Centre all those years ago, but you are spreading ill-will that has resulted, and will continue to result, in further violence.

As for Islam itself—it isn't the devil's religion, as you once claimed it was when you first came to the world's attention for threatening to burn the Koran on the ninth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.  The core belief of Islam, as I understand it, anyway, is that all life exists to glorify God; that God, incidentally, is the same God who is worshipped by Christians and Jews—and Christo-Pagans like me.  But you know what the real religion of the devil is?  It's hatred, and you've embraced it with fervour.  If you claim to follow the Prince of Peace, don't do petty, hateful things like this.  It's beneath what you're supposed to stand for.  Or has all the importance of being a pastor gone to your head and made you forget the teachings of that humble carpenter you claim to love?  Do you value publicity and the chance to feel morally superior because you've done something destructive, claiming that you're doing God's work and yet being castigated for adding nothing but yet more negativity to an already overwhelmingly negative situation?  After all, people wouldn't disagree with you or disapprove of what you do unless they're persecuting you...would they?

Don't answer that.  I already know the answer.  I've heard it all before.

I believe that anyone, even hate-filled publicity hounds like you, can change for the better.  But I suspect that you will not, because your view of the world—and of a God who you think is conveniently full of hate for the people you hate—will not allow you to.  I would weep for the tragedy of your hatred, Reverend Jones, if I didn't suspect that it would be a huge waste of time.

Sincerely,
Zillah Threadgoode

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