Oh, for crying out loud.

[apocalypsos]

U.S. soldier uses Quran for target practice; military apologizes

Hammond also read from the shooter's letter: "I sincerely hope that my actions have not diminished the partnership that our two nations have developed together. ... My actions were shortsighted, very reckless and irresponsible, but in my heart [the actions] were not malicious."

A tribal leader said "the criminal act by U.S. forces" took place at a shooting range at the Radhwaniya police station. After the shooters left, an Iraqi policeman found a target marked in the middle of the bullet-riddled Quran.

Copies of the pictures of the Quran obtained by CNN show multiple bullet holes and an expletive scrawled on one of its pages.

Boy, I'd hate to see how he would have treated it if it HAD been mailicious. *eyeroll*

EDIT: Also, this is a crime against humanity.

Comments

[teenygozer.livejournal.com]

While I agree that it was a very stupid, very insulting thing for those idiots to do, for me the larger picture is that it is a pity people cannot just accept the fact that whether it's the Bible or the Koran or whatever, in the end these are just books. It's like burning the flag: yeah, it's meant to be an insult, but in the end, it's really just a piece of cloth. (Image of Kids in the Hall's Buddy Cole blowing his nose in the Canadian flag whilst mocking certain American's frenetic defense of the ol' red-white-and-blue comes to my mind at this point.)

It is the words and concepts that are holy and can never be harmed by bullets, the books are just books. Anyway, just my take on it, no insult meant to you or your opinion! Because yeah; in that time & place, shooting the Koran = NOT a smooth move, dick-heads!

[tavella.livejournal.com]

Well, it's a little bit more complicated than that -- like the Torah, copies of the Quran are considered to have some degree of sacredness in themselves, to be alive in a sense. You are supposed to dispose of them with the same respect you would a body, usually by burying.

[teenygozer.livejournal.com]

No, no; I totally took into account what you were saying: my point was that the entire basis of what you're saying, above, is wrong. Pieces of paper are imbued with "sacredness" strictly as a human concept (by which I mean god doesn't make the paper sacred, people do.) This is is just my opinion, and I truly hope I'm not pissing you off here, but my point was that people should not consider mere *things* -- a book, a chalice, a scroll, a flag -- as sacred as they do. Because a week ago a 17 year old university student was killed by her father and brothers in the street for talking to a British soldier. I just wish the amount of fuss being exhibited over the (replaceable) bullet-ridden paper was equivalent to the amount of fuss being exhibited over the young woman who was murdered, but few people seem to care about the young woman at all. I think there is far more sacredness to the young girl's life than a book. A book can be re-printed, and that book will be exactly like the one that was destroyed and have as much wisdom in it as the destroyed book. A girl cannot be replaced -- but she was and is being treated as quite disposable. It seems to me that people's priorities are just... wrong.

I suspect that in the beginning, the very important words on the paper made the paper important by association, but then time passed, and the paper itself became important and celebrated, which was never what the words were about in the first place.