City of Brass comment:
With respect to the Newsweek/toilet/Qur'an debacle, I have no dog in this fight - as a muslim, I don't see how flushing the Qur'an down a toilet in any way disrespects the faith; rather it speaks of a almost deperate desire to deny it. Such an action reveals as much about the hollowness of the actors' faith as the audience of a Jack Chick tract.
Likewise, rioting because one thinks that the Qur'an needs to be "saved" from America only reveals profound ignorance about the timelessness of the book itself - and its transcendent status in our material world.
However, with respect to Newsweek, a magazine that I stopped reading in 1998, I think that arguing that the single disputed factoid about flushing the Qur'an is somehow responsible for American deaths requires proof of cause and effect.
Since there have been numerous reports of abuse of the Qur'an well before Newsweek's report, with no such riots, I think that evidence for the causal relationship is weak. Here are previously published media reports of Qur'an desecration that did not to my knowledge result in widespread rioting.
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