These are the words of Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican priest who was in control of Florence in Italy from 1494 to 1498. His great contribution to the city of Florence was to make homosexuality a capital offence (how very Christian of him) and the burning of items associated with what he called 'moral laxity', such as; mirrors, cosmetics, lewd pictures, pagan books, immoral sculptures, gaming tables, chess pieces, lutes and other musical instruments, fine dresses, women's hats and the works of immoral and ancient poets. Through him we lost several pieces of Renaissance art, some painted by Sandro Botticelli, who threw them in himself.
You may be wondering why I'm bothering to tell you this, he was not the first person to organise a book burning, nor was he the last, but he is one of the most infamous, and his organised libricide (look it up) has a decidedly religious tone that sets it apart from most of the other book burnings in history.
A Christian group in Florida, called the "Dove World Outreach Centre" plans to hold an "International Burn a Koran Day" to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the World Trade Centre attacks. Now to a godless heathen like me that doesn't seem very "love thy neighbour"-ish, nor does it seem very "turn the other cheek"-ish either. Now of course I'm not a follower of any religion, I think that followers of many different religions are capable of and have carried out some of the worst atrocities in the history of mankind in the name of their god or gods, but what benefit would there be, to absolutely anyone, in burning copies of the Qur'an?
You might be sat there agreeing with me that this group is generalising in the worst possible way and is actively courting controversy and hate; you may be sat there thinking that they have the right idea. If it's the latter, then please, fuck off from this page and never bring your hateful eyes or fingers here again. But if, however, it's the former then please, read on.
Also in their capacity as fascist theocratic crusaders, the Dove World Outreach Centre protests against homosexuality wherever it can find it, their actions have drawn the support and endorsement of everyone's favourite hate-mongers the Westboro Baptist Church, you know them, they're the ones that picket the funerals of American servicemen with signs sporting such bright and cheery slogans as "God hates fags".
Now clichéd as this may be, I'm going to have to prove Godwin's law right here. The actions that the Dove World Outreach Centre plan to carry out on September the eleventh this year are highly reminiscent of the Nazi book burnings in the 1930s; where books written by Jewish authors or by intellectuals, or indeed any book that did not conform to Nazi ideology were burned.
So let me close this entry with a quote from the nineteenth-century German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, whose works the Nazis burned, "Where they burn books, they will also burn people."
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