T.S. Eliot Is Spinning In His Grave

I actually find this genuinely surprising:

Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times, said in an e-mail message that the newspaper had “no policy against publishing things that might offend someone — lots of people are offended by lots of things — but we try to refrain from giving widespread offense unless there is some offsetting journalistic purpose.”

“A picture of a burning book contributes nothing substantial to a story about book-burning, so the offense seems entirely gratuitous,” Mr. Keller continued. “The freedom to publish includes the freedom not to publish.”

The offense to whom?  Why, to Muslims, of course.  A significant subset of which are Islamic Fundamentalists, who really don't need any more reason to go mass-infidel-murderingly berserk than the teachings of the book multiple copies of which The Dove threatened to combust today.

Hence the surprise: The Dhimmedia - or at least the New York Times, which is its (sinking) flagship - fears Islam more than it hates Christianity.  I never dreamed that there would ever be any possible set of circumstances in which a lib press organ [ahem], much less the "paper of record," would pass up a chance to depict a church burning books, but there you are.

Unless they're going to run the story with a substitute pic of the U.S. military burning Bibles instead.  Because nobody cares what those holy rollers think, and besides, they're all sheep anyway.  Heck, they worship a Lamb, for God's sake.

As if to prove it - but not in a good way - here's how International Burn A Koran Day turned out.  Hint: with a whimper:

I’m not kidding when I tell you that, in four-plus years of blogging here, this is one of the most comically pathetic stories I’ve posted. To set the stage, the church said earlier today that they wanted a promise from Feisal Rauf within two hours that the Ground Zero mosque would be moved. The two hours came and went with no promise, and then the church spokesmen came out and announced … nothing. They didn’t know their next move yet....

All we know for sure at the moment: Nothing’s going to happen [today]

Preach the Gospel to Muslims with boldness in humble dependence upon God, and nothing will be able to stop you, T.J.  Threaten a religious provocation from which you subsequently chicken out, and you show yourself to be so weak in Muslim eyes that you don't even qualify as a horse, period.  Suffice it to say, you'd have been far better off holding an extra week of vacation Bible school instead.

Don't think so?  Even the dhimmis have been emboldened by The Dove's fiasco:

Much of the controversy over Cordoba House has focussed on its location. Critics rage that it’s a mere two blocks from the 9/11 site—way too close. Defenders counter that it’s two whole blocks from the 9/11 site—by lower Manhattan standards, real far. Critics say it should be put somewhere else, though they tend to be vague about where. Even some defenders have timidly wondered whether some other spot might be more “appropriate” in terms of the symbolism of it all.

Fortuitously, there exists one location that would be ideal for the so-called “Ground Zero mosque.” That location would be . . . Ground Zero.

Something tells me Imam Rauf will be a lot more intrigued by this nutbag idea.