Change Of Mind

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The so-called pastor of a small church in Florida has bowed to world-wide condemnation and announced that he will not be burning copies of the Koran today.

What surprises me most about this whole affair is why he was not immediately arrested on charges of inciting racial hatred and jailed pending trial.

That would have kept him safely out of the way today!
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Unacceptable

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I can’t think of anything more likely to cause offence to millions of people around the world and to stir up radical extremists than the proposed burning of the Koran by the members of a small evangelical church in Florida.

Referring to the events of 11 September 2001, the pastor said, ‘We want to ... make a statement to honour those murdered on that day’.

Burning the Koran honours no-one, and it needs to be remembered that people of all faiths died in those attacks.

It is to be hoped that the authorities will step in and deal firmly with an unacceptable situation that is likely to result in retaliatory action if it were allowed to go ahead.
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9/11 Remembered

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On this day, a Tuesday, in 2001, the full horror of what became known as the 9/11 attacks slowly unfolded before a shocked world.

I watched much of the television coverage myself and wrote at the time of that terrible day: ‘Nothing anyone can say can sum up the horror of these incidents and the thousands upon thousands of lives that must have been lost. And there is nothing anyone can say, in the name of religion, politics or anything else, to justify such a barbarous and wanton act of cruelty and callousness.’

Since then, video footage of the Twin Tower attacks, of the burning Pentagon and of the crashed fourth plane in rural Pennsylvania, of people jumping to their certain deaths rather than risk being burned alive, of buildings collapsing and spreading a deadly and suffocating cloud of ashes and other particles, has now been shown so many times that the initial shock has worn off somewhat. Among the very many distressing sounds of that day, we have since heard some of the recorded conversations of rescue workers trying to do their best for other people, and of the last, heart-breaking agonising conversations some passengers had with their families.

At the time, we questioned whether we were watching an impossible reality or some sort of warped fantasy. Were these real planes, explosions, smoke and flames, jumpers, people running from danger, corpses laid out on stretchers on the grass, over-stretched rescue teams risking their lives in impossibly dangerous conditions and people quietly helping or queuing to donate blood - or were they all scenes and props from a movie?

But it wasn’t fantasy. It was all horribly true, and it was impossible not to weep and pray for all of those who had been touched and affected by that monstrous act and to extend a hand of compassion and the warmth of love to them.

As, in remembrance, we do today.
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