Koran burning: How much of Terry Jones is in us all?

“What a dick,” I muttered, shaking my head as I watched Terry Jones, yet another apostle of the Christian fundamentalist lunatic fringe*, declare on television that he was going to publicly burn the Koran as part of his church’s ceremony to observe the anniversary of 9/11. “What on earth makes him and his ilk think they are hearing from God?” I thought to myself, sadly reflecting on how much this kind of stupidity has messed up our world.

I found myself chewing on one of my most worrying subjects: why there has to be such vastly different breeds of human beings in the world? My kind is: live and let live, do no harm, respect people and their beliefs, uphold the dignity and worth of others, help where you can … so it is beyond me how people can even think of indulging in this kind of destructive behaviour, or in acts of gratuitous cruelty. But immediately a childhood memory I’d forgotten flashed through my mind: slowly tearing apart a pigeon with a friend. We were about ten. We caught the bird, crushed its head with a stone, and then proceeded to take it apart to look at the heart, stomach and other organs and try and figure out which part was which. Our other friends walked away disgusted. My buddy and I were rapt in the dissection, rejoicing in our ability to not feel repelled by what we were doing to the dead bird. Today I am uncomfortable with sharing that experience. It feels, most aptly for this blog, like something out of The Lord of the Flies. I have evolved, moved on to be the “softy” I know I am now, a natural at teaching children and making them excited about themselves and their potential.

But there you are: I have what some may call a recessive gene in me, a suppressed appetite for wanton destruction. Some would say it’s a DNA strand encoded with a propensity for psychopathic acts: which, to my mind, is all Terry Jones and his flock’s decision to make a public barbeque of Korans would have amounted to. I was thrilled to read online this morning and witness on the news that Jones had backed off from his decision. Well, when you suddenly have the president of your country personally furious with you and the defence secretary giving you a warning phone call, never mind having it brought to whatever passes for your conscience that you are threatening the lives of innocents all over the world, as well as US soldiers, then it’s time to seriously reflect on your two-digit IQ intentions.

What really gladdened my heart was to see the Florida imam, Muhammad al-Masri, openly going into Jones’s church to discuss the matter with him, to even befriend him, from all indications. To see two leaders from two different persuasions come to a happy resolution was an example to the world of how we can, indeed, get along. From truly bovine manure, potential blossoms of harmony can emerge. To love your enemy lies at the heart of world faiths and this, from all accounts, was this very self-denying belief being practised for the universal good by imam Masri. (As I write this it appears the imam in New York, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is a spokesperson for the plan to have a mosque near the Ground Zero site, is now saying he won’t discuss with Jones and others the building of the mosque elsewhere. But that is a separate matter still developing.)

But I was still sobered by my own little childhood flashback about the pigeon. It knocked on the door of my mind like a wise teacher as I muttered insults about Terry Jones. My own thought behaviour about Jones was destructive. It was that recessive gene whispering — nevertheless a part of me — repugnant with a conduct of mind that was the opposite of this wonderful imam Muhammad al-Masri’s actions. The imam put aside any personal prejudice and, it seems, almost single-handedly helped prevent worldwide grief and deeper divisions if the burring of sacred scriptures had continued. (Some commentators have said Jones should just be shot. Would that have helped as much as imam Masri’s mindful actions?)

Carl Jung and others have said if we are irritated by others’ behaviour we need to look into that mirror and see what that says us about ourselves, what we denying about ourselves. Let’s face it: there is any number of people enraged by those Christians who are idiotic and those Muslims who are militant and fanatical, including me. But our enraged response only feeds the fury, and comes from the same dark source. We can learn a lot from this imam who befriended an enemy who was prepared to desecrate one of that imam’s greatest treasures, the very Holy Writ that is used in his prayers every day, and which is his source and sustenance.

Newsflash: as I finished this blog reports are emerging to say the erratic Jones is still considering burning copies of the Koran. He does appear to be an attention-seeker on a grand scale. Oh well, I suppose one of my dominant genes leans towards starry-eyed idealism.

* I wish to make it clear that I am only referring to what I term the lunatic fringe of Christianity; there are many denominations within the broader church that I know distance themselves from Jones’s insane ideas, and base their sensibility on a scripture that teaches tolerance and love.