The mosque flap morphed from ugly to silly two days before the ninth anniversary of the travesty which left 3,000 Americans dead.
By late Thursday afternoon, Sept. 9, The Rev. Terry Jones announced that he canceled his Koran-burning bonfire near Gainesville, Fla., after Secretary of Defense Robert Gates phoned him - on condition that the planned mosque and Islamic cultural center will be moved further away from Ground Zero.
Whew! We were saved from a spectacle that will surely incite more Muslims in the Middle East who will kill American soldiers and other infidels.
In the next nanosecond or two, a Mosque backer retorted that no such condition was established.
The mosque plan is still a go. In fact, Team Mosque stressed that relocating the center would look as if they were backing down, which would also infuriate the Muslim world.
So, we are talking about two situations in which the sponsors have the right to do whatever they want because they own the properties and, with one relatively minor exception, they are both abiding by the law.
This mosque business raises questions about our freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment and our inherent right to do whatever we want so long as we harm nobody else.
Most of the questions afford such easy responses that they expose how absurd this controversy has become.
For the record, I wish the mosque is moved, but I also recognize their right to build it on their property. The same for Jones, though I find the idea of Koran-burning dumb and disgusting.
The single intriguing question: You plan to take action that is your full right, yet you have strong reason to believe that it will provoke other individuals to harm innocent people. How do we address this situation?
Certainly, we will insist upon self-control. Mr. Jones, your action is reckless and depraved. You are placing our sons and daughters in uniform at risk of their lives. Be sensible, man.
Failing this, what about a law to bar such actions? True, this is free speech, or rather freedom of expression. However, this minister clearly planned to commit an act that he knew would endanger lives. Couldn’t a case be made that this would be a form of reckless endangerment? After all, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes stated in an opinion he wrote that “falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater and causing a panic” could not be considered free speech.
The crowded-theater scenario is not just a free-speech issue. Upon hearing the alert of a fire, the theater patrons will believe they are in immediate danger and might very well trample each other to escape death. The offender should know this.
The Koran-burning hardly sets off immediate danger. Jones was made fully aware that Muslims around the world would be so offended that they will kill people associated with the West.
I don’t buy it as a form of reckless endangerment. The Islamists have free will. It is they who are creating the dangers, not Jones.
At best, you could argue this as a form of indirect reckless endangerment. Jones burns the Koran and many Muslims attack innocent people. No, too much of a stretch. Way too much of a stretch.
My only caveat is that setting fire to any kind of printed material could potentially endanger lives and property. Even a controlled fire might somehow get out of control.
However, any form of desecration of the Koran is a person’s right so long as it is his Koran.
An interesting tidbit: Holmes applied the theater-fire rule when he wrote a unanimous opinion upholding the conviction of an American socialist for urging draft-age men to defy orders to join the army during World War I.
Holmes contended that this call to resist would jeopardize the war effort. I have heard far worse during the Vietnam war and subsequent wars. Holmes backed away from this attitude in at least two subsequent opinions.
The Gainesville controversy led directly to a comparable flap when Derek Fenton, a New Jersey Transit employee, was fired two days after he tore up pages from the Koran outside the mosque site and burned them with a lighter. NJT released a statement claiming that Fenton, who worked at NJT for 11 years, “violated New Jersey Transit’s code of ethics” and “violated his trust as a state employee,” according to the Associated Press.
Not only was Fenton, 39, acting as a private citizen but he also took this action in another state. Maybe he Not only was Fenton, 39, acting as a private citizen but he also took this action in another state. Maybe he could be seen from across the Hudson River in Jersey City.
The civil liberties take on this, as quoted in The New York Daily News, was expressed by Democratic New Jersey state Sen. Raymond Lesniak: “So long as his actions, however misguided, took place on his own time, and he was not acting in his capacity as a representative of NJ Transit but as an American exercising his constitutional rights, then the agency is clearly in the wrong.”
Finally, The Boston Globe carried this letter by Annette Thomas of Clarkston, Mich.:
“I was at a bookstore, and the manager told me a man had just attempted to purchase the Koran to burn tomorrow on the anniversary of Sept. 11. The customer’s credit card, thank goodness, was declined.”
As with gun control, maybe we should require background checks for any book patron who seeks to purchase a copy of the Koran.
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