Dear Norm,
It is perfectly normal,
when some peckerwood preacher
with a home-made congregation of fifty heartland xtian souls
calls a press conference to announce his intention
to burn The Holy Qur’an on ‘Eid ul-Fitr or
the day after, the eleventh,
and the media jump and the op-eds echo and salute,
and all the water-coolers ripple with idle voices,
that some guy might, casually, publicly, elicit my idle opinion, too.
It is normal. Nay—it is predictable
that debate should be so
framed and fabricated.
What continues to be suspicious, Norm, is
our collective implicit prejudicial conviction,
conservative and liberal alike and however we feel
in the abstract about freedom-of-religion or al-‘Islam (or those
good Muslim folk among some of our best friends), that
the entire congregation of the faithful—the Ummah, Norm,
all 1.5 billion plus Muslim people (or a representative sample) —
are fanatical savages likely to revert to slavering terroristic fury
at such base incitement, and, understandably, act on it.
And, due to that predilection, they should be patronized.
I suspect we presume to understand so
because we imagine we would want to blow
some shit up if something we held sacred
were deliberately publicly desecrated,
if we held something sacred, and
if we were not. so. damned. civilized.
Or maybe because we are bullies and hope
to provoke a showdown while we still feel strong.
I am ashamed of that tacit premise, and you, Norm,
you should be ashamed too.
It is possibly sacrilege to burn a holy book in incite-ful hate;
it is certainly rude.
~ Topas