On Responding to the 'Threat' of Burning of a Holy Book

It never occurs to people that ANYTHING that could cause all kinds of people from all walks of life to imagine violence as a justifiable, natural or inevitable response to a non-physical provocation, is not something that ought to be dignified with excessive or extreme respect.
Nothing in human life should be allowed to exist that makes people think they should adjust to the overzealous, they should fear the violence of the patriot, martyr or saint. People should recognize, with this most recent threat of Koran-burning and the various claims that it would be sure to endanger others and therefore ought not to be done, that the root of the problem is the over-reverence for religion.
NOTHING is EVER worth taking LIFE, except the immediate defense of it. But people's idea of 'don't touch religion' makes it possible for them to excuse and even expect violent reactions from non-violent provocation!

Desecration is a word that I sometimes think shouldn’t exist. If you choose to see a thing as sacred, then what gives it its sacredness is you. You imbue it with that quality. Nothing is by nature sacred or profane. We, as people, in groups, some larger than others, agree that some things are, and treat them accordingly. So why do you think that if someone doesn’t agree with your assessment of something as sacred, you have a right to kill, maim, torture, execute, judge them? Or worse, destroy or throw away the thing you feel has been desecrated?
If you see something as worthy of your reverence, there are solid reasons for that—or there should be. The potential of a child. The luxury of pashmina. The smell of clean air. But you have to understand from the beginning of your decision to revere it that only persons who share your values will agree with your assessment of reverence-worthiness. But it is you, all of you, who possess that quality of sacredness to imbue it to these things. It is you who are the source, and to me, therefore the ultimate appropriate object of reverence.
A temple can be burned, a woman can be raped, a child can be spoiled, air can be polluted. But it is you, who have the capacity to value and revere who can never be desecrated, because in you is the meaning of sacredness and reverence. In you is the concept of worship. They can kill you, but they cannot change that quality about you. They cannot change it about any of us. And the whole of their lives is dedicated to keeping the wool over everyone’s eyes, especially theirs (self-denial), about that fact.
If you don’t know that, you can be afraid of what they’ll do to you or those you love. You can be afraid of what they’ll do to the point that you forget to revere yourself, to hide your treasures WITHIN yourself, so that there’s very little they can take from you, outside of your mind, very little they can threaten you with, and to teach those you love the same skill. Because truth to tell, nothing can be desecrated, only transformed into what it was not before.
So a human being becomes ashes. A virgin becomes a non-virgin. A beautiful child becomes a killer. Destruction is a negative transformation. But what was revered, is gone before it could be in any way ‘insulted’. What is venerable, remains venerable as long as it exists. When it ceases to exist, its memory should have no less value to the venerator. What it was, it WAS. It may be gone but what it was, did deserve that reverence. And sometimes, it isn’t gone, because WE aren’t gone, although some part or aspect of us may be. We are still capable of reverence, of conceiving it, attaching something to it, and practicing it. And since it adds to our life quality, why shouldn’t we?
So your sister is raped. But is the only thing worth venerating about her, her hymen? Or was it her virtue, her wit, her intelligence, her discipline, her style, her courage? Do these deserve less reverence than a hymen? Are these really worth less, just because the value the rapist placed on them was less? Your hurt feelings, your anger, your grief, are because you DON’T agree with that assessment. So don’t act as if you actually do, shunning that rape victim, cutting her out of our life, even literally, as in honour killings. What you revere is still there. The hymen so long as she was wilfully chaste, was only a symbol of her virtue; when she had no physical power to remain chaste, she still would have chosen to be, so her virtue is undiminished according to your value system; unless you think it was wrong of her to not make sure she knew and practiced self-defense sufficiently to fight him off. And if so, then you ought to have made sure she had that training; she wouldn't be able to learn it, just as she didn't learn how to speak or walk, all by herself.

We must learn to think through our values, and realize that our greatest treasures, within us, are always absolutely incorruptible.