After appeals from General Petraeus, Commander of US forces in Afghanistan, the US President and I don't know who else, Florida pastor Terry Jones announced that his church would not after all burn copies of the Koran, "not now, not ever."So a crisis passed, for the present time - but not before rioting in Afghanistan and threatening noises from various other Islamist quarters.
In New York, thousands demonstrated both for and against the building of a mosque near the site of the 9/11 terrorist attack at Ground Zero. Allegations of a "media frenzy" about Islam seemed scarcely substantiated - but Americans are certainly more concerned now about the threat from Islam than they were shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks nine years ago.
Most Christians deplored Terry Jones' proposed book burning but stood up for his right to stage such a protest in a free society. Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch wrote that by coming down on Terry Jones rather than pointing out that freedom of expression in a free society involves putting up with things we don't like without responding with violence, Messrs Obama and Petraeus were effectively reinforcing the principle that violent intimidation works.
Burning copies of the Koran, nevertheless, is not such a good idea. We are Christians. We are in a spiritual battle. We have spiritual weapons. (The weapons of our warfare, wrote Paul in 2 Corinthians, are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.) We should be using spiritual weapons, like prayer, intercession and the preaching of the word.
Burning books is the non-Christians' way of doing things.
