The practical problem with attempting to suppress a particular form of speech is that it tends to be counterproductive; stamp out one freethinker or rebellious individual and more tend to take their place. Combine that with the ease of reaching a mass audience in the internet age and the foolishness of frantic overreaction to a non-violent protest, like, say, burning a Koran, becomes readily apparent.

That is, if you’re reasonable. It looks like the administration at Queensland University of Technology is anything but.

A quick recap of events: QUT lawyer (apparently he works on contracts) Alex Stewart is an Atheist, somewhat active in a Brisbane organization of likeminded people. After hearing of the mass hysteria resulting from the small, non-violent planned (and eventually cancelled) protest of one Florida man at his tiny church, Stewart decided to do some burning of his own.

However, unlike Terry Jones, he seems to have a sense of humor, and wanted to do it for a ‘good purpose’, and so he engaged in a bit of Mythbusters-esque testing to determine which made for better rolling papers, pages from a Koran, or a Bible.

(Not that this is the first time I’ve heard of using a Bible for that purpose; far from it.)

Taking things a step further, he filmed the whole ‘experiment’, along with a genial discussion of the merits of religious literature, and put it up on Youtube.

Nobody was hurt. Nobody was killed. The Earth didn’t fly off its axis, the Sun didn’t explode, and despite this prodding, God did not make himself physically manifest or smite Mr. Stewart for his cheek. The entire event occurred in the privacy of Stewart’s home, in his off hours, with books that he himself owned.

No crime was committed. (Don’t believe me? Fair enough. Click this link and watch the embedded video/news report; at about 55 seconds in, a spokesman for the Queensland police makes clear that it is not an offense to burn ANY book in Australia)

Yet Stewart found himself at the center of a firestorm. Depending on which press account you believe, he was either ‘hauled’ before the QUT administration or met with them voluntarily, and has in any case been placed on administrative leave while they decide whether he gets to keep his job and ‘investigate all aspects of Mr. Stewart’s behavior.” Meanwhile the local press is staging hit pieces and hatchet jobs on the man, stalking him with cameras and talking up the ‘collateral damage’ he caused with a goofy Youtube video.

Keep in mind, again, that the police have already stated for the record that burning the pages was completely legal under Australian law.

So if Stewart didn’t break Aussie law, why is his job in jeopardy? Why is QUT, a public university, harassing an employee for a legal form of protest in which no one was injured, let alone killed, and the books burned were the property of Mr. Stewart?

As far as I can tell from their public statements, it’s because he hurt the feelings of religious people, and that’s something That Simply Is Not Done.

Check out the statement their Vice-Chancellor (and humorless blowhard) gave to the press:

QUT vice-chancellor Peter Coaldrake moved to distance the university from its employee.

“QUT does not condone the destruction of any religious artefacts. This was a personal view and action expressed in the person’s own time,” Professor Coaldrake said.

“[Mr Stewart] does not associate himself with QUT in the clip.

“QUT is tolerant of all religions and welcomes staff and students from many countries to our university and regularly celebrates their cultures and religions.”

A personal view, expressed on personal time, with no endorsement claimed by Stewart from the University for his actions.. and yet he’s put on leave, pending an investigation.

But they’re tolerant of all ‘religions’ at QUT, so bashing, even suspending Atheists for legal speech is apparently within their mandate.

Globally, the mass uprising against Koran burning has yet to occur, though as Professor Cole notes over at his blog, the Taliban, lovely people that they are, have seen fit to demagogue on these peaceful and legal activities to their own benefit:

Saturday witnessed a second wave of demonstrations against the threats by small American fundamentalist churches (especially the Dove Outreach group of some 50 in Gainesville, Fl.), to burn copies of the Muslim holy book, the Quran, on September 11. News that the planned bonfire of the scripture had been called off did not reach the provinces in time to avert the rallies, which were sparked in part by Taliban pamphleteering against the US.

But it seems clear to me in any case that the threat of Quran-burning by a few dozen kooks in the US is only a pretext for these demonstrations, which inevitably are actually about the grievances of Afghans under foreign military occupation.

Wait, you mean.. this tempest in a teapot is being used by unscrupulous religious zealots to make names for themselves? I never would have guessed!

As usual, PZ Myers, himself an experienced destroyer of so-called ‘Holy’ items, has been out in front of this whole series of overreactions to peaceful protest:

Informing me that the Muslims are genuinely and sincerely and deeply offended is not informative — contrary to the suggestion that I must have an empathy deficit to be unaware of that, I know that and appreciate the fact that their feelings are hurt and they are angry and outraged. My point is that I don’t care, and neither should anyone else. The Abrahamic religions are all about fostering that feeling of oppression, even when it isn’t there, and hearing yet another one of the more deranged members of the People of the Book whine that we show insufficient respect for their mythology gives me the same feeling of exasperation I felt when my small children would wail about not getting a candy bar in the grocery store. Fine, you can be mad about your deprivation, but that does not obligate me to serve your whims.

…

I’ve seen enough videos of Middle Eastern protesters setting American flags on fire that I do have to wonder…how would they feel if we informed those countries that people who disrespect the United States ought to be arrested and their demonstrations shut down by force? The people Jones has offended feel no compunction about offending other Americans right back — and that’s OK. It is not a crime to offend others, and in fact, it’s pretty much a natural consequence of having diverse cultures.

I highly recommend you read the whole thing; it’s that good.

So where does this leave us? Hard to say. Western nations with free speech guarantees are buckling in the face of hurt feelings and vague, poorly defined threats of violence, compromising their most fundamental principles because, well, there aren’t that many Atheists/malcontents and they’re easier to kick around, I guess. One thing’s for certain, though; the Stewart case shows us, with crystal clarity, that protests of this sort are going to continue, one way or another, so as a society we’d be better-served coming to grips with that reality instead of shutting our eyes and hoping against hope that the irreligious (or in Jones’ case, hyper-religious) will swallow their pride and give up their rights and their ideas without a fight.

Or, you know, funny Youtube videos.

The lefty blogosphere, as well as elements of the mainstream and international press, has been abuzz with investigations into the seedy details of Terry Jones and his tiny church in Florida. Has he been buying property on the church’s dime? Did he file his tax returns properly? Was he run out of Germany on the proverbial rail after trying to run a larger organization there like his own personal cult? (warning, the Spiegel Online piece linked there is a hell of a nasty hatchet job).

Even more startling than the press and blogging fixation on the backers of a tiny, non-violent form of political protest has been the level of governmental pressure, arguably even harassment, of the people looking to conduct it. The FBI showed up to interview the pastor. Immaculately dressed Florida Governor Charlie Christ called on Jones not to start a smaller fire than many people use to roast weenies over Haloween. Defense Secretary Robert Gates phoned Jones to try and stop the protest. Even President Obama felt the need to publicly condemn the harmless burning of a small pile of paper, putting a good boot into American Atheists while he did so.

And of course, foreign governments feel the need to meddle with an entirely internal American matter.

But wait; it gets better. The Vatican has a position!

Burning the Quran would be an “outrageous and grave gesture,” the Vatican said Wednesday, joining a chorus of voices pleading with a small Florida church not to burn Islam’s holy book on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

Hmm, yes, those paragons of moral virtue at the Vatican condemned burning the Koran. Being good-natured I’ll leave the issue of their credibility vis a vis relations with the Islamic world aside (*cough*Crusades*cough*) for the moment.

Still, all this concern over a tiny protest at an even tinier church? All this poring over documents in search of financial irregularities because someone wanted to make a name for himself with a bonfire? Really?

Isn’t there any more important scandal in the world of religion we could be discussing?

How about, say, this one,with a hat tip to PZ Myers:

‘No Belgian church escaped sex abuse’, finds investigation
Child sex abuse by clergy or church workers has taken place in every Roman Catholic congregation in Belgium, according to an independent commission investigating paedophilia allegations.

Yes, that’s right, the global pedophilia network sometimes referred to as the Catholic Church has been exposed in yet another nation, this time Belgium, home of waffles, in which an investigation discovered that, and I swear I’m not exaggerating, every single solitary Catholic church in the country had at some point been home to the sexual abuse of minors by clergy or staff.

Every. Single. One.

This is of course only part of a far, far larger conspiracy to cover up, even facilitate the sexual abuse of children, going back many decades and reaching to the highest corridors of power within the Vatican.

Well, maybe it was just the Belgian branch of the church that was this deranged, right? Well, no… and in Ireland the sheer depth of the depravity found in the Catholic organization is rocking their society to the core.

Even the police aided and abetted the sexual abuse of children, deferring to the Church’s authority and refusing to pursue cases against molestors in robes. The moral exemplars in the hierachy, meanwhile, coerced children into taking vows of silence against their abusers.

Perhaps these cases are too distant for a direct comparison, though; I mean, the koran burning was to happen here, on American soil. That makes it our problem, right?

Fair enough. How about this example, then:

On the morning of January 14 in Seattle, Ken Roosa and a small group Alaska Natives stood on the sidewalk outside Seattle University to announce a new lawsuit against the Jesuits, claiming a widespread conspiracy to dump pedophile priests in isolated Native villages where they could abuse children off the radar.

“They did it because there was no money there, no power, no police,” Roosa said to the assembled cameras and microphones. “It was a pedophile’s paradise.” He described a chain of poor Native villages where priests—many of them serial sex offenders—reigned supreme. “We are going to shine some light on a dark and dirty corner of the Jesuit order.”

Don’t worry about it, though! The Church is on top of the matter (no jokes please). How seriously do they take it? Well, look how they deal with it under their own, precious, extremely harsh church law: raping a small child is every bit as serious as ordaining a female priest.

Yes, their priorities are clearly straight, and so are ours, when an international, decades long global conspiracy to aid, abet and cover-up the sexual abuse of children makes so much less news than one sad, attention-seeking man starting a tiny fire.

But hey – I hear that Terry Jones might have lied on his tax returns! News at 11! Let’s get that (not-quite) koran burner!

There’s really no other way to interpret this:

Obama said he was proud the country had rallied around the idea that we can’t be divided because of religion or ethnicity – and hopes that is something that can continue.

“We are all Americans, we stand together,” Obama said. “I think it is absolutely important now for majority of Americans to hang onto that thing that is best in us: a belief in religious tolerance. We have to make sure we don’t start turning on each other.”

“We are one nation under God. We may call that God different names, but we are one nation.”

He really, really doesn’t want to know the names I’ve called his God. I’ll make a point of coming up with a few more later this morning, right before I blaspheme and break some commandments.

(Maybe coveting, that one’s easy. I could make an idol to worship for a day before I toss it in the trash, which is the natural home for religious materials in my home anyway. I did find some modeling clay in the storage room this afternoon… maybe make a calf statue, slap some gold paint on it, go all Old Testament for a lark.)

Reading this tripe was a fine way to cap off a lousy week of listening to people bleat about what a terrible tragedy it would be if someone burned a book, ostensibly because it might make someone else mad at our troops somewhere. Glenn Greenwald’s done yeoman’s work on that particular load of nonsense; suffice it to say, I think he’s right that the the Islamic world maybe, just *maybe* is angrier at us for slaughtering their family members by the tens of thousands than they’ll get for an impromptu paperback BBQ in Florida.

Still, I guess it was time for the periodic pro-religious unity propaganda, to put us silly non-believers back in our place.

As PZ Myers said:

Tolerance is a good idea. But Obama has just divided the nation, forgetting all of his previous brief, superficial mentions of non-believers, into those who are part of his one nation under God, and the rest of us, who are…what? Not part of the nation?

Thanks for reminding me where I stand in the glorious American experiment, Obama. I’m so glad we elected a Constitutional ‘scholar’… albeit one who apparently never read the First Amendment.

I’m so glad I keep tequila in the house.

And just to be absolutely clear; I am an American and part of this nation, but I am under no one’s god. Not now, not ever.