Sordel was surprised to hear that Terry Jones, infamous Python and driving force behind blasphemous satire The Life of Brian, is at it again with his plans to burn the Qur'an.
Except it's a different Terry Jones: a Terry Jones hitherto occluded by the heavy shadow of his irreverent namesake, and now crawling from beneath it with a packet of matches and the desire to be martyred.
This Terry Jones believes in keeping up with The (other) Joneses. In this case Jim Jones, whose inventive marketing campaign for Kool Aid came at the expense of his followers in the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project. That all occurred in some hellhole in Guyana. Terry, however, has established his church in a city in humid subtropical Florida. The city is called Gainesville, and has presumably been popping up with unusual frequency on Google Maps for users throughout the Middle East and Asia.
Oh yes, the Dove World Outreach Center (or the Dove World Trade Center Outrage, as it will surely be rechristened) is indeed reaching out to the world with its message of peace, reconciliation and lighter fuel accelerant.
The real question that is prompted by this folly is not, however, to wonder why this is being done (given the number of nutcases in the world I'm surprised that it isn't done every day) but to wonder how. Sordel is a cultured fellow, but never owned a Qur'an until well along in years.
Back in what we will term for the sake of argument were the Good Old Days, when women decided to burn their bras, there were bras enough to burn. When the American flag is burnt, or draft cards, or Beatles albums, there is a presumption that someone in possession of the combustible material already had it to hand before settling on this means of disposal.
Do we really believe that Christians of this rabid hue have been hoarding multiple copies of the Qur'an prior to determining upon this process? Or that sympathetic devotees of The Prophet, alternatively, have been supplying their third and fourth best copies for charitable disposal?
No, surely Qur'an sales have rocketed in Florida in recent weeks, as Terry takes delivery of large cartons of books paid for by his extremist donors.
Because when you're out to save souls, saving the forests comes a distant second.
"Where they burn books they will soon burn people", wrote Heine. It may surprise you to discover that the occasion for that famous quotation was the burning of the Qur'an.
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