Gainesville Mayor Craig Lowe hasn’t wasted any time coming out in protest of Dove World Outreach Center’s plans for a Quran burning on Sept. 11.
The event, “International Burn a Quran Day,” has gotten a lot of national press for its hate-mongering, anti-Islamic message. We just would have used words a little stronger than “fringe” to categorize the group.
This group is an evil twist on the kind of high-cost, high-commitment Christianity that televangelists like Peter Popoff have been flooding the airwaves with for years, except instead of a $20 bottle of holy spring water and a prayer mat, adherents get brainwashed into having intense, unjustifiable hatred for their neighbors.
Sure, they have their right to freedom of speech, but we really can’t figure out how an event like this could possibly further their movement. Burning a Quran is something that anyone outside the fold of their cult would view as an act to incite a confrontation.
Unfortunately, people like this interpret any sort of attention – be it positive or negative – as affirmation that they are doing the right thing. That said, we are against protesting the group’s book burning since it would only push Dove World to turn up their zeal to 11 and plan more events like this in the future.
We don’t have any misconceptions that ignoring them will force them to stop, but we do have high hopes that a lack of attention will make them move to a place that feeds the fire – hopefully somewhere far away from Gainesville.
