[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5273]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          THE FIRST AMENDMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Madam Speaker, earlier this year, an 
irresponsible bigot burned a Koran in Florida. That was a despicable 
act. But unfortunately, a number of far worse acts eventuated; that is, 
the murder, calculated and deliberate murder, of a number of innocent 
people in Afghanistan by people purporting to be defending their 
religion against the burning of a book in Florida by massacring 
innocent civilians in Afghanistan.
  And I am pleased that people, including General Petraeus and others, 
condemned the irresponsibility of the Koran burning, but there needs to 
be even greater condemnation of the notion that that in any way 
justifies murder. That includes a kind of condemnation, in my judgment, 
of the President of Afghanistan, our increasingly unimpressive ally Mr. 
Karzai, who, I believe, added to the furor there by insisting that the 
man who burned the Koran should have been prosecuted. Well, under 
American law, he was not prosecuted. He should not have been. The right 
to do obnoxious things is a very important part of the First Amendment.
  But what is most appalling is that people purported, in the name of 
religion, then not even to do anything against that individual, and 
that would have been unjustified. I am not suggesting that there is any 
justification for any violence against him. But violence against people 
in Afghanistan, employees of the United Nations there for humanitarian 
reasons, other citizens of Western countries, for them to have been 
assaulted and murdered by people purporting to be acting in the name of 
religion, that is the true outrage.
  And I hope people will resist any temptation even to equate the two. 
An act of stupid and offensive bigotry against a book should be 
criticized. Murder of innocent people in the name of a religion--and 
it's particularly ironic that people who committed these murders claim 
to be vindicating their religion. Indeed, no denigration of a religion 
could be greater than to murder innocent people in its name. If I were 
to be asked what did I think more detracted from the image of Islam, 
this irresponsible publicity seeker in Florida burning a Koran or 
people in the name of the religion murdering innocent people including 
those who went to Afghanistan only to help, it is clearly the latter.
  So, Madam Speaker, let's be very clear that nothing in what happened 
with the burning of a Koran comes close to justifying the outrageous, 
murderous behavior of people in Afghanistan. And I am pleased that 
there is attention given to this, but the condemnation should be of 
this kind of attack on innocent citizens, and we ought to keep this in 
some perspective.

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