Biblioclasm or libricide is an ancient tradition. Fires have burned the famed libraries of Alexandria, Bagdhad, and the Mayan codices. More famously the Nazis piled degenerate books by Albert Einstein, Bertolt Brecht, Heinrich Heine, Helen Keller, Thomas Mann, Karl Marx, Erich Maria Remarque, Frank Wedekind, Ernest Hemingway and H.G. Wells. German youth and Brown shirts held bonfires to purify the 3rd Reich.

“Where books are burned in the end people will burn.” Heinrich Heine.

This weekend the previously obscure pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center sought a place in history with the destroyers of early Braille books, the Nazis, Franco’s fascist, and the Death of Disco conflagrationists by burning a Koran on September 12.

His congregation number about 50, however the national media seized on the issue with the ferocity of a pig with a corn cob stuck in its throat by Siamese twinning the story with the planned mosque near the old WTC site. The Gainesville religionist was thrust into the public eye.

TV and newspapers spoke his name.

His congregation swelled with anti-Islamists and the commander of the US Afghanistan forces asked that the minister desist from his sacrilege of the Muslim holy book. The outrage and hoopla convinced the pastor to call off his event BURN A KORAN DAY, although hat didn’t stoop him from saying, “Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, and we felt we need to demonstrate. Christians need to be heard outside the church. So many don’t speak outside the church, only inside, about things like abortion, other religions, homosexuality.”

Gainesville ignored the media circus.

This weekend was dedicated to another religion.

College football.

Florida Gators 38 – South Florida Bulls 14

One more thing.

When did the Koran become the Quran?