I don't have a lot of time, but I wanted my fellow DKos readers to know that the Radio Host, Jack Armstrong, who told his listeners to post negative depictions of Muhammed and post them on Al-Jazeera must be in trouble with Clear Channel so his devotees have started a Facebook Page to "support" the radio host.
ThinkProgress reported on this yesterday. The Radio show is called: Armstrong & Getty, I got on their Twitter feed and that's where I learned about the Facebook page.
As ThinkProgress pointed out, many people were killed in Afghanistan 2011 when a similar situation happened. In 2011, Terry Jones asked people to join him in a "Burn a Quran Day" as a way to show hate toward a religion different from his.
At that time, in 2011, riots broke out in Afghanistan over the plan to burn Qurans. The New York Times reported:
The dead included at least 7 United Nations workers ... the death toll at 10 foreigners in the United Nations compound, 8 killed by gunshots and 2 beheaded.
At the time, General David Petraeus, decried Jones’ plan as potentially endangering American lives:
Burning the Quran is wrong on every level. It puts troops in danger, and it violates a founding principle of our republic.
Personally, I think people organize hate mailers or hate Ads
with the sole purpose to generate extreme violence and possible death are despicable. (Which is why I support Boy-cotting and getting haters off the air).
To me, those people who started the Support A&G Facebook page are acknowledging their devotion to Armstrong's plan for extreme violence to ensue in the Middle East, and to me, they are equally as despicable as Jack Armstrong.
I could not embed the video so you will have to go to ThinkProgess to view it.
Don't get me wrong, it would be nice if people could paint Gay Jesus, bi-sexual Jesus and not get condemned. Also, it would be nice if people could say whatever they want about someone's prophet without risk of violent riots ... but ... the reality is ... the Middle East is not there yet.
The Middle-East, sadly (and I think intentionally) is a few centuries behind the West when it comes to tolerating certain types of speech. But, before people start belittling those in the Mid-East, simply because they are a few centuries behind the West -- remember a few centuries ago in America, people where being murdered if someone simply thought they did not believe in "god." (See Salem Witch Hunts)
Remember, 1860 (not really all that long ago) the Inquisition Period was still going on? Voltaire lived through and wrote about the Inquisition Period (See Candide). In 1860 The Christian's Inquisition Period made it so that people in the West were killing other people who merely suspected ... suspected ... of not believe in the Christian God.
David Kertzer wrote in his book "The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara" that in 1858, the Roman Inquisition agents, also known as Grand Master appointed by the Pope, legally removed a 6-year-old Jewish boy, Edgardo Mortara, from his family.
The local Inquisitor had learned the 6-year old had been secretly baptized by his nursemaid. Pope Pius IX raised the boy as a Catholic in Rome. The boy's father, Momolo Mortara, spent years trying to reclaim his son. The case received international attention and fueled Anti-Papal sentiments that helped end the Inquisition Period.
Don't get me wrong again, I do think the Christian Inquisition Period was barbaric. I think it was very barbaric to see someone and simply 'think' they don't believe God and therefore be legally allowed to kill that person and hang their dead body in public ... which is exactly what happened up through 1860.
My point is, people in the Middle-East are a few centuries behind the West and there is no rational reason for anyone to go out of their way to incite the type of violence that will get other people killed.
To me, the type of person who does go out of their way to incite the type of violence that they know, in advance, will most like get people killed are just as barbaric as those whom they are trying to incite.