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BREAKING NEWS | |
GEN’L PETRAEUS WARNS CHURCH AGAINST KORAN BURNING
Says move may
endanger U.S. troops
September 07, 2010
(NATIONAL) -- The commander of U.S. and NATO forces n Afghanistan says a plan by a church in Florida to burn Korans on September 11 could endanger U.S. troops and damage the overall war effort there.
The Koran is the Muslim high holy book, similar to the stature the bible commands in reverence and importance in the Christian faith.
General David Petraeus said Monday that the planned burning of the Muslim holy book "is precisely the kind of action the Taliban would exploit for propaganda purposes," adding that it could cause "significant problems," not only in Afghanistan, but everywhere the U.S. is "engaged with the Islamic community."
Hundreds of Afghans took to the streets in the capital Kabul Monday to protest the plan by the “Dove World Outreach Center” in Gainesville, Florida, to burn copies of the Koran.
The protesters chanted "Death to America" as they rallied outside a mosque.
Similar protests were held outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia on Saturday.
The controversy comes as some 120,000 U.S and allied troops are waging a counter-insurgency campaign against the Taliban in Afghanistan, a campaign whose goals include winning support for the US-backed government from the largely Muslim population.
The once-obscure fundamentalist preacher of the Florida church, Terry Jones, has called his church’s action "International Burn the Koran Day."
Jones also authored a book titled "Islam is of the Devil."
Jones has not explained how he knows that Islam is the devil – as opposed to any other world religion being the devil – since there is no verifiable account of a modern human ever seeing the devil, or at least the devil as depicted in biblical accounts.
PROBLEMS IN COLLECTIVE DEFINITION OF DEVIL
Other world religions do not necessarily adhere to the precise concepts of “the devil” as presented in biblical accounts and due to lack of any agreed upon collective human definition of what the devil is – or what forms the devil may take - there is no accepted communal definition of precisely where the devil resides either in a geographical context or in the context of association with a human body or the collective body of a world religion.
In short, the devil's precise whereabouts at any given moment in time - or visual form - are an unknown.
To date no leaders of major world Christian religions - such as the Pope in Roman Catholicism or the head of the Eastern Orthodox church which claims to trace its development back through the Byzantine or Roman empire to the earliest church established by St. Paul and the Apostles – has announced they believe that Islam is the devil.
MOHAMMED HIMSELF ORDERS CHRISTIANS PROTECTED
Curiously the Eastern Orthodox Church - the second largest communal body of Christians in the world - has a direct connection to Islam in the form of a letter the Prophet Mohammed wrote some 1,400 years ago concerning members of the church..
The letter offers protection and religious freedom to the Christian monks at an ancient Eastern Orthodox monastery. That letter has been preserved at that monastery to this day.
The CBS news magazine program “Sixty Minutes” produced a segment about the church and that letter that can be viewed HERE
Thus if the letter from Mohammed is to be taken at face value, the devil – according to Florida pastor Jerry Jones – ordered his disciples some 1,400 years ago to protect early Christians and to insure they had religious freedom in the early days of Islam.
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