Afghanistan explodes after burning of Quran
>>> anti-american raids continue in parts of afghanistan for the fourth straight day after the burning of a koran by the pastor of a small and some say fringe church in florida . today an afghanistan policeman shot and killed two nato soldiers on a training mission as hundreds of people were there and turned on the streets and blocked a main highway to kabul. more than 20 people have been killed since the protests began on friday with thousands of angry demonstrators attacking a u.n. building and murdering four armed guards and three staffers. the man at the center of this is the pastor terry jones who sparked a global outrage last year with threats of burning a koran . jones and his group recently held a mock trial and they found the koran guilty which led to the burning on march 20th . the u.s. commander in afghanistan , general david petraeus , condemned the burning in the strongest of terms saying it presents a security threat and endangers u.s. troops in afghanistan . daisy kahn is executive director of the american society for muslim advance am and joins me in studio. " rolling stone " did a piece just last week publishing horrific photos of what took place with soldiers in afghanistan . they used dead bodies of afghans to be perched in pictures, things we haven't seen as horrific since abu ghraib yet there really wasn't any type of outcry or backlash. meanwhile we have this fringe pastor in florida that goes ahead with this threat of burning a koran and yet we see the problems that we've seen so far happening in afghanistan now. so why the disparity in the fact that we have these u.s. soldiers that were posing in pictures with these dead bodies and yet we have this guy that some would say is someone not in a power position burning a koran in florida ?
>> well, we believe when ignorance is on top, there's no end to oppression. there are a lot of ignorant people who don't even know their own faith and we believe this is a travesty. these revenge killings is a travesty of the koran because the koran says no soul shall bear the burden of another. and what is happening is there's a lot of rage out there, and muslims do revere their holy text and when the holy text is, you know, desecrated, they act out, but there is no basis for revenge killing in islam.
>> why such a long time span between the actual burning of the muslim holy book and the protests?
>> thankfully the major media did not report it and i guess by the time it got on youtube and somebody found out about it, it took them a little while but i believe there's some politics behind this and the real problem that we're seeing in the world is that, you know, you have the fringe -- you have a fringe extremist pastor here in the united states who is then, you know, taking this action and is being met by another fringe group of muslim extremists who are then acting out. the war is between the extremists of all religions against the moderates of all religions.
>> when we report on what took place with pastor terry jones , obviously we can't filter the news. you got to be part of a free press and you want to put what's going on in the world out there. in doing this and reporting on this, is it just stirring up more of a controversy? i mean, what is the responsibility to try and go foort a forth and reports the facts of a story like that but knowing on the other side of the world in afghanistan how it's going to be met, what it does to the troops, what the consequences are for potential innocent lives there. what's there to be done?
>> well, what needs to be done is voices of the moderate muslims and voices of the moderate evangelicals have to come out. i have been speaking with reverend tony cliff who represents 600 million evangelicals around the world. his voice needs to get out and he wants to come on your show and he wants to speak about how outraged he is that, you know, that post pastor terry is burning someone else 's scripture.
>> the demonstrations in afghanistan as we see them, what can we expect in the days and weeks to come if this story continues to be talked about and debated?
>> well, when pastor terry was going to take this action 9/11 of last year, the evangelicals did step in and prevented him from taking this action, and because at that time we were all concerned that this would turn into a very big sort of a cartoon crisis type of a crisis around the country and we prevented him from doing this, and we just hope that calmer heads will prevail, that more moderate religious leaders will come out and call this action what it is. it's an extremist action and that this kind of -- that this does not pick up a momentum around the nations. we are afraid of that. we're concerned.
>> it would be nice to think calmer heads could prevail.
>> yes.
>> unfortunately, i don't think we've seen demonstrations of that happening just yet. daisy, great to
