Is this guy crazy or what?

For those who are following the anti-Muslim "Koran-Burning" headlines, here is another one that's puts things in perspective. Why do we have people in the world who are making it harder for world peace.

In the corner of Sunday's Oliphant cartoon titled "Pastor Jones goes to New York", a small character quips, "Your 15 minutes are up, Reverend" (Bangkok Post, Sept 12).

Pakistanis thrash an effigy of pastor Terry Jones during a protest in Multan on Sept 10, against the pastor of the Dove World Outreach Centre’s plan to burn copies of Islam’s holy book. Rev Terry Jones (below, right) cancelled the burning in exchange for the New York City mosque’s plans to be relocated to Gainesville, Florida.

That may be true about Terry Jones' personal fame, since a month ago no one on this side of the globe had heard about him or his tiny Protestant church in Gainesville, Florida, nor of his 2010 book, Islam is of the Devil.

But when he announced the "International Burn a Koran Day" from 6pm to 9pm supposedly to be held on Sept 11, the world's attention descended upon him.

The outcry against his proposed act from religious leaders around the world notwithstanding, world leaders from President Barack Obama to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to David Howell Petraeus _ a former professor of international relations who received his PhD from Princeton and is now the commander of US forces in Afghanistan _ all were in unison in appealing to the pastor to call off this act, fearing it would provide some Muslims with justification for "holy anger" that could fuel further violence around the world, and American lives, among others, would be endangered.

After the intervention of Imam Muhammad Musri, who arranged a meeting with another New York imam concerning the construction of an Islamic centre and a mosque near the site of the 9/11 atrocity, Pastor Jones told the press that his Koran burning act would be put on hold for the time being.

If one agrees with Dominique Moisi in his recent book, The Geopolitics of Emotion (2010), that one cannot fully understand the world today without trying to construe the ways in which emotions such as fear, humiliation and hope shape world politics, and that a clash of emotions between fear in "the West" and humiliation in the Muslim world is going on, then I would argue that what Pastor Jones did was to show us how vulnerable to global violence the world has become. More importantly, to live with such vulnerability, a genuine appreciation of such a danger is to understand both the meaning of the Koran in the lives of Muslims, and the dangerous implications of book burning, sacred and otherwise, for freedom and violence.

Koran and the Muslim Mind

I've just read a short Thai novel about a Buddhist teacher who falls in love with the daughter of an imam in a southern province. The man is first captured by the beauty of her voice reciting the sacred Koran.

It is believed that the sound of the holy book being read can soften the human heart. I myself try to read the Koran every day, and in the silence of the night I can feel its power consoling my sometimes restless soul.

To be a Muslim, there are 6 articles of faith one has to believe: in God, in His angels, in His books _ and Koran is not the only one _ in his prophets, in the end of days, and that all good and ill come from God.

The Koran is a book arranged into 114 chapters with more than 6,000 verses. The Koran has many names. Apart from being called "al-huda" or guidance post, it is called "Kalam-ul-lah" or "Words of God". As a revealed religion, similar to Christianity and Judaism and different from Buddhism as an enlightened religion, Muslims believe that the Prophet Muhammad, who was illiterate, received God's first revelation in a cave in the Mountain of Light in 610 AD. And the first time it came to him, it came in 5 verses:

"Recite in the name of your Lord who created

Man from blood coagulated.

Recite for your Lord is Most Generous,

Who taught by the pen,

Taught what they did not know unto men."

(Chapter 96: verse 1-5)

If he or she is unclean, a Muslim cannot touch the Koran (which literally means "to read" or "to recite"). Only after making ablutions can he or she touch the book. Even when the books are worn out, they must be treated with respect. A Durban magazine, al-Ummah (2008) reports the case of Baker Wahid, a South African farmer who used to collect worn copies of the Koran and respectfully bury them in his own farmland. In the town of Quetta in western Pakistan next to the Afghan border, in 1992 Haji Allan Noor Daavi began digging a cave in his friend's quarry, to create a depot for old, worn copies of the Koran which he packed in linen sacks. Presently his endeavour became a foundation called Jabal-e-Noor al -Qur'an (Koran, Mountain of Light) which continues to collect old and damaged copies of the book to either be restored or buried.

Such reverence for the Koran in the minds of Muslims needs to be understood. So when Pastor Jones, in one of his interviews, points out that he will burn the Koran, and that though he may not like it the Muslims could do the same to the Bible, he misunderstands two important points.

First, as earlier indicated, Muslims have to believe in God's other holy books, which include the Bible and the Torah as well, and therefore to even think about such a possibility should be abominable to the Muslim mind in general. Second, Muslims believe that words in the Koran are "Words from God" written right into the pure heart of an illiterate man untouched by other books. In this sense, from a comparative, theological perspective, the Koran as the word of God cannot be compared to the Bible, but to Jesus as Logos and for Christians in general as the Son.

A proposal, now or in the future, to burn the Koran would therefore be a dangerously easy way to ride the escalation of existing conflict involving Muslims anywhere in the world, into the sphere of deadly violence when the sacred text is violated, and Muslims' humiliation resulting from global politics becomes highly charged with a collective anger.

The Danger of Book Burning

From a secular perspective, the threat to burn the Koran is another episode in the last 45 centuries of book burning. From 259 to 210 BC, the Chinese Emperor Shih Huang Ti burned so many books and at least 460 Confucian scholars with them. In 640, Caliph Omar burned all the volumes in the library of Alexandria. The Mongols under Hulagu sacked Baghdad in 1258 and devastated its centuries-old libraries. The Christian missionaries who accompanied the conquistadors made bonfires of the Aztec and Mayan codices. In 1650, a religious pamphlet by William Pynchon was confiscated by Puritan authorities in Massachusetts, condemned by the General Court and burned by the public executioner in the Boston marketplace _ perhaps the first incident of book-burning in America.

Closer to our time, on May 10, 1933 in most university towns, German university students burned more than 25,000 "un-German" books in ceremonies complete with band-playing and "fire oaths". Among the books burned were those by Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Mann, and the book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. In 1992, a Serbian commander spent three days destroying the National Library of Bosnia-Herzegovina in Sarajevo.

What is it about books that they get burned and destroyed and desecrated throughout history?

Baez in A Universal History of the Destruction of Books (2010) raises the question why the destruction of books provokes a distinct sense of horror among us. People would rather give away a book than destroy it. Books, unlike any other inanimate object, are extensions of human memory and imagination. They are burned precisely because of this connection to personal or communal identity. Books are made of words, and if it is through words that define who we are, burning them turn part of our identity into fire, and then into ashes.

Perhaps it is also important at this time to be reminded of the wise words of the beloved 19th century German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, whose books were also burned by the Nazis. Heine wrote in his 1820-1821 play Almansor the famous admonition: "Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people."

Bangkok Post: Published: 14/09/2010 at 12:00 AM

Bush coming to Calgary?

What?

You got to be kidding... Our beloved most screwed up ex-president from United States of American will be arriving in Calgary next to give a speech about his ups and downs through out his presidency. I really don't expect to see a warm welcome and native Calgarians fork out the money to listen to his ramblings...

Here is a funny article from the CBC website:

Protesters prepare for Bush's Calgary speech

Peace activists in Calgary are preparing a less than warm welcome for George W. Bush, who will be at a private function next week delivering one of his first speeches since leaving the White House.

A coalition calling itself People vs. Bush has planned a week of protest activities, starting Wednesday at noon with a banner display near the downtown Telus Convention Centre, where Bush is set to speak next week "on eight momentous years in the Oval Office" and "the challenges facing the world in the 21st century."

Group spokeswoman Collette Lemieux said the activists will come from as far away as Vancouver and Toronto to participate.

"I think a lot of people are really motivated by the idea that we have to make it really clear to him that he's not off the hook," she said. "I think it's important to people who think that he has committed war crimes to not just let this go by the wayside."

The group plans to hold a mock war crimes trial for Bush this weekend and stage a peaceful rally outside his speech next Tuesday. Lemieux is asking those who can't participate to send their shoes for a symbolic protest echoing the Iraqi journalist who threw his footwear at Bush.

An estimated 1,500 people are expected at the invitation-only, paid event to hear Bush. Organizers Andy McCreath and Christian Darbyshire reportedly paid former U.S. president Bill Clinton $150,000 for a March 2006 speech in Edmonton, and have hired Lance Armstrong and Colin Powell for other high-profile speaking engagements in the past.

Source: CBC.ca

Lindsay Leigh Kimmett - 2 year medical student at University of Calgary

I have always wanted to blog a note about Lindsay as she was a 2nd year medical student at University of Calgary and a close personal friend of my family. I have met her and her family once or twice in my lifetime and learning about her tragic accident certainly has hit home.

Here is her obituary from last year:

December 31, 1981 - February 17, 2008

With overwhelming sorrow and shattered hearts, we announce the sudden passing of our precious daughter, Lindsay on February 17, 2008. Lindsay was born on December 31, 1981 in Calgary and was completely adored by her parents, Kelly and Dianne, and her brothers, Taylor and Reid. Lindsay was everything we could have asked for in a daughter - beautiful, intelligent, athletic and most of all caring. She was a devoted sister to her brothers and loved to "mother" them from an early age. This ability turned to teaching as they grew older and they both knew who to ask if they needed help with homework. As they all grew older, we tried to make Sunday family dinners a priority - what special times to sit and discuss the events in everyone's life. Lindsay's voracious thirst for knowledge started at a very young age. Each night she wanted to read her books and then would lie on her bed with Mom or Dad and ask "What are we doing tomorrow and what should I dream about?" As she learned to read so young, she also quickly became an accomplished piano player and subsequently learned to play the flute and piccolo. Linds never stopped dreaming and learning, becoming a model student and excellent athlete. She graduated as Cochrane High School's Valedictorian in 1999 and received the Governor General's medal for the highest marks in her graduating class. Lindsay then earned a kinesiology degree with distinction from the University of Calgary in 2004. After taking time off to travel and work Lindsay decided that medicine was her future calling, achieving marks in the 99.7 percentile on her MCAT exams. She entered the Faculty of Medicine at U of C in August 2006 and was currently in her second year of studies. Lindsay had decided that Emergency Medicine was her passion and was preparing to do clerkships in Toronto, Halifax and Kingston in the coming months.

Lindsay was driven in her pursuit of knowledge through her extensive travels. We have learned that one of her favorite quotes was by St. Augustine, "The world is a book and those who don't travel read only a page." We always chose to make our vacations family times and have so many wonderful memories of time shared on beaches at tropical destinations, camping in Yellowstone, summer spent driving across Canada, two European vacations and exploring Disney facilities. As Lindsay grew, so did her sense of adventure. She had traveled extensively in Europe - the latest being a month spent alone in Italy. Between her first and second year of Med school, she chose to do an elective in Tanzania. At the end of her trip, she climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and to the credit of her character, she reached the summit while suffering from severe bronchitis. She was an avid photographer on her travels and her final gift to Dianne was a framed photograph of zebras in their head to tail stance which she had taken while on African safari. Her final trip was a relaxing week in the Dominican Republic with friends from Med school.

All of her life experiences, studying, reading, working and attending school for twenty-two years made Lindsay what her Dad called "the smartest person I have ever known". You could Google things but it was much better to just ask Linds! Lindsay was the ultimate employee and her Dad was the lucky recipient of her skills. She started as a cashier at Cochrane IDA Drugs at the age of fourteen and became a pharmacy technician working side by side with Kelly. Lindsay also teched and did accounting at Rexall, moved on to Super Drug Mart, United Prescription Service and Calgary Prescription Services where she ran the total operation. Her short time as a personal trainer led her to decide on her path to Medicine. Anyone who worked with Lindsay always knew the job first would be learned accurately and quickly and then fine-tuned and perfected. With her desire to learn, caring attitude, personal confidence and attention to detail Lindsay would have become a wonderful doctor.

Lindsay also loved sports, especially winter pursuits. She started figure skating at age five but quickly told her parents that it was boys skates and ringette that she really wanted. She played ringette until the age of twenty and then switched to her passion - girls hockey. Her main activity was hockey but as she said: "Ice, ball or mini - you name it - I love it - especially the Flames." Lindsay played for several ladies teams over the last seven years and was the leader of the Med school second year Macaques ladies team. Kelly and Dianne attended her final game with the Macaques last Tuesday and she played the finest game we had ever witnessed her play leading her team to a 3 to 2 overtime win over the first year class. It would be the last time her loving parents would see her alive - beaming from ear to ear, rosy cheeked, sweaty and exhausted in her beloved "Monumental" (med school nickname) jersey. Lindsay was also instrumental in organizing the "Ice Cup" inter varsity hockey tournament held last fall. Lindsay died on Sunday morning returning from a hockey game with her regular club team, the Jets. She was a passenger in a car that rolled only seconds from her parents' home.

We were never sure how Lindsay fit volunteer commitments into her hectic schedule - assisting with the PARTY program at Foothills Hospital, organizing multiple fundraisers for teams she was involved with, as treasurer of her Med school class, and a member of the Med School class of 2009 graduation committee.

Besides her parents, Kelly and Dianne and brothers Taylor and Reid, Lindsay is survived by grandparents, Lorraine Kimmett and Merlin and Betty Stauffer; uncles and aunts Drew and Rhonda Wilson, Russ and Angela Kimmett, Dennis and Margaret Nice, George and Brenda Jablonsky, Doug Stauffer, Oscar and Maureen Biasini, and Darren and Pam Stauffer. She is also survived by cousins Kelsey Wilson, Hunter, McConnell and Carly Kimmett, Angie, Christie, Debbie, Josh and Daniel Nice, Brianne and Miles Jablonsky, Aaron and Garrett Biasini and Julie, Peter and Samuel Stauffer. She is also survived by numerous great-aunts and uncles and many, many friends. She was predeceased by her grandpa Bill Kimmett in 1991.

Our family and the world has lost someone who made a difference every day of her life and someone who was going to do great things in the future. We cannot let Lindsay's dreams go unfulfilled and so as a family, we will carry on her legacy with the establishment of the Lindsay Leigh Kimmett Memorial Fund. We will continue to make the world a better place as she most surely would have done. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made at any Royal Bank (Cochrane or Calgary branches). Tax receipts will be issued at a later date. This fund will be used for youth scholarships, facilities and projects in the Cochrane area.

We have been told that Lindsay had never been happier than in the last three months of her life. Her schooling, her hockey, her new friend Ben MacLelland, her anticipation of clerkship and her love of family and friends had Lindsay at her peak. Linds was a chip off the old blocks in so many ways. We discovered a written menu and a shopping list meant for the turkey dinner she was preparing (just like Dianne always does) for many of her med school friends that fateful day. We are sure her party for that day had been carefully arranged just as Kelly would have done. In her birth announcement of December 31, 1981 the following words ended the formalities - "She is you, she is me, and we are one." Nothing has changed with her untimely passing - Lindsay will always be with us - forever in our hearts.

A Celebration of Lindsay's Momentous Life will be held at Cochrane High School Gymnasium (529 - 4 Avenue North) on Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 1:00 p.m. Family Graveside to follow in Cochrane.