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Rackspace Shuts Down Quran-Burning Church's Sites
theodp writes "In response to a complaint, Rackspace has shut down the websites of the Dove World Outreach Center, a small 50-member church which has received national and international criticism for a planned book burning of the Quran on the anniversary of the 9-11 attacks. The center 'violated the hate-speech provision of our acceptable-use policy,' explained Rackspace spokesman Dan Goodgame. 'This is not a constitutional issue. This is a contract issue,' said Goodgame, who added he did not know how long it had hosted the church's sites. Not quite the same thing, but would Kurt Westergaard's cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad also violate Rackspace's AUP? How about Christopher Hitchens' Slate articles? Could articles from one-time Rackspace poster child The Onion pass muster?"
...how does a tolerant society deal with intolerance?
There are many inconsistent and hypocritical ways of answering this question. I'm not sure there are any good answers.
This "church" is doing to tolerance what Gödel did to mathematics -- showing its internal contradictions.
Need to quote my own sig for those that have them turned off: (quote is sig was made intentionally shorter to fit the size limit. Here is the full one) "Freedom in the United States of America is no longer the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want." - A. Anderson
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Actually the interesting way to push back against the burning of the Rainbow flag (representing homosexuals), would be for a group of atheist homosexuals to congregate in public, just across the street from the church, and burning a bunch of Bibles. If they really wanted to be provocative, they'd even burn an effigy of Jesus on the cross.
I mean - surely such free spirited church goers would have absolutely no problem with homosexual atheists doing such a thing, right? They'd probably defend their right to do so with blood if they had to.
Frankly, while I find the idea of burning any book abhorrent I think that spitting in the face of these radicals of Islam is more important than not. Either bring your religion to 21st century and join the rest of us or shut the hell up.
There are over 1 billion Muslims in the world, and several million living in the Western world. What percentage of them will resort to violence as a form of protest when these books are burned? Even a few thousand people is several orders of magnitude less than 1%. So it's hardly representative of the Muslim world. In a similar vein, Christians burnt down the Saint Michel theater in Paris, putting 13 people in hospital, just to protest against the film "The Last Temptation of Christ", so it's hardly like Islam has a monopoly on its followers wanting to restrict freedom of speech. (The Bible actually insists that blasphemers" should be killed by Christian congregations: "And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying ... he that blasphemeth the name of the LORD, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him.")
"Burning qurans to upset islamists is like burning bibles to upset the WBC."
But it is a brilliant troll.
Peaceful destruction of inanimate objects is reasonable protest, and there is no reason that superstition shouldn't be freely debated and attacked in the marketplace of ideas. We have shied away from attacking superstition
because much of the world wasn't grown up enough to handle the debate. Now, when Muslims freak out and act as their book dictates, we'll have their demonstration of how the way Muslim superstition is practiced. I'd like to see Muslims FORCE the world to see Islam for what it is, they appear willing, so have at it.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Uhm.
To the people who say 'Why doesn't the government condemn radical Islam?" , the fact is, we do.
The US Government, like all good government, speaks mostly through action rather than words in condemning radical Islam. Think about it.
-Supporting dictatorships in lieu of radical Islamic Groups (The US's support for Pakistan, and propping up the Shah of Iran)
-Supporting a dictatorship's war against a theocracy run by radical Muslims (Iran/Iraq War)
-Targetted killings of radical Islamicists in Iraq and Afghanistan
-Huge bounties on the heads of radical Islamicists (The hunt for Osama Bin Laden)
-Wholesale invasions of countries and the dissolution of governments that support radical Islam (Invasion of Afghanistan and the fight against the Taliban)
-Supporting moderate Muslim governments over radical ones (Visits to Egypt, funding for Pakistan and Iraq)
In fact, the American military's main goal over the past 9 years has been the suppression, destruction and dissolution of radical Islam over the years. Pretty much every armed force from the Army proper, to the CIA has been devoted to taking radical Islam to task.
***
Paster Terry Jones is acting like an asshat and ruining our work against radical Islam. THAT'S why we're condemning him.
When Muslims burn bibles, the Western world DOES get upset. Infact, we get so upset we make lists of the incidents and eventually take armed actions against groups that go too far. Obviously we hope that the local governments take care of things, but do you think that the US is so naive? We have diplomats and ambassadors all over the world busy 'nudging' governments whenever such actions occur.
Radical Islam taking action against blasphemers isn't a threat, it's a fact. We have armed men and women protecting us so we CAN do blasphemous acts safely. But doing them makes their job harder. It's just like you don't randomly provoke local gang-members or mafia-men: it's well within your rights to do, but is it SMART? No. Can the government protect you from retaliation? They'll TRY, but whether they'll succeed is a different matter.
Radical Muslims, like any radical members of a religion, are generally brainwashed ignorant thugs. Pastor Terry Jones is a radical Christian. Why should we treat him any differently? We should condemn his sentiments and desires, and make sure to take action in case things turn violent.