Posted on 07/29/2007 7:59:06 PM PDT by zendari
NEW YORK (AP) _ A 23-year-old man was arrested Friday on hate-crime charges after he threw a Quran in a toilet at Pace University on two separate occasions, police said.
Stanislav Shmulevich of Brooklyn was arrested on charges of criminal mischief and aggravated harassment, both hate crimes, police said. It was unclear if he was a student at the school. A message left at the Shmulevich home was not immediately returned.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
Orwell warned us.
If he owns the book, what crime was committed.
Should have have just taken photos of it and called it “art”...
You can't throw a Koran in the toilet. Bibles can be thrown in toilets without penalty.
If it was my Quran, i’d throw it in the toilet several pages at a time after they served their purpose.
If the book belonged to him, it’s a matter of free speech.
I hope he fights the charges.
Perhaps the ACLU will take his case.
I wonder what the response would have been if The Bible had been thrown in a toilet?
“If he owns the book, what crime was committed.”
Disposing of an item so foul, it could even pollute a toilet. So I guess he polluted the toilet. ;)
I haven’t read the book, did he mention anything about the Second Amendment being put to its intended use?
Freep the comments for this story... I led off with comment number 1... i’m vince from orland park, il
http://www.topix.net/forum/source/newsday/T76LM4S3PB4MKOUDK
“Cross in a jar of urine: Art!
Virgin Mary covered in dung: Free Expression!
US Flag burned: 1st Amendment Right!
Koran placed where it belongs: HATE CRIME.
Thank you , Leftists.. you vermin. “
All kidding aside, this is really scary stuff. You can do G-d knows what to the Bible, but you get arrested for a felony if you flush the Koran? Is this still America?
I’m thinking it might be coming on time for a Boston K(oran) Party. It’s part of our tradition, after all. Just imagine — a harbor full of floating Korans.
With the libs in charge, everyone will be in jail for hate crimes, except the libs themselves, of course.
I emailed Newsday and told them that if it isn’t a hate crime if done to the Bible or a modern novel, it cannot be for the Quran.
At least you can’t throw a Q’ran in a toilet. I wonder how the story would be received if the hate crime charge resulted from a Bible being found in a toilet instead.
Lets find out. EDITED VERSION:
Hate-crime arrests in Bible desecrations at Pace University
July 27, 2007, 8:33 PM EDT
NEW YORK (AP) _ A 23-year-old man was arrested Friday on hate-crime charges after he threw a Bible in a toilet at Pace University on two separate occasions, police said.
Mohamad Zakauta of Brooklyn was arrested on charges of criminal mischief and aggravated harassment, both hate crimes, police said. It was unclear if he was a student at the school. A message left at the Zakauta home was not immediately returned.
The Christian holy book was found in a toilet at Pace’s lower Manhattan campus by a teacher on Oct. 13. A student discovered another book in a toilet on Nov. 21, police said.
Christian activists had called on Pace University to crack down on hate crimes after the incidents. As a result, the university said it would offer sensitivity training to its students.
The school was accused by some Christian students of not taking the incident seriously enough at first. Pace classified the first desecration of the holy book as an act of vandalism, but university officials later reversed themselves and referred the incident to the New York Police Department’s hate crimes unit.
The incidents came amid a spate of vandalism cases with religious or racial overtones at the school. In an earlier incident on Sept. 21, the school reported another copy of the Bible was found in a library toilet, and in October someone scrawled racial slurs on a student’s car at the Westchester County satellite campus and on a bathroom wall at the campus in lower Manhattan. Police did not connect Zakauta to those incidents.
Treatment of the Bible is a sensitive issue for Christians, who view the book as a sacred object and mistreating it as an offense against God. The religion teaches that the Bible is the direct word of God.
In 2005, Newsweek magazine published and later retracted a story claiming Arab interrogators at a prison at Cairo, Egypt flushed a copy of the Christian holy book down a toilet. The report sparked deadly demonstrations in Missouri and Kentucky and protests throughout the United States.
Pace University has 14,000 students on its campuses in New York City and Westchester County.
Messages left for school administrators and for officials with the New York and national chapters of the National Christian Council were not immediately returned Friday evening.
Benjamin Hooper, a spokesman for the national NCC office in Washington, D.C., has said the organization receives frequent reports of Bible desecrations in the United States, especially postings on Internet sites, but seldom makes them public.
He said NCC decided to speak out about the Pace incidents because Christian students are impacted by the creation of what could be viewed as a hostile campus environment.
Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc.
END EDITED VERSION
Just as an experiment, I printed out this edited version and also the original story and I’m going to see what the reaction is to each version when I show them to people in the next few days.
That's that "Holy" and "Sacred" stuff you hear from the Moslems.
It's simply not a concept our Constitution permits the government to adopt.
Wetting down a Koran is, in this country, no different than wetting down a copy of the New York Times.
Moslems who don't like the idea (wetting the NYT or the Koran) should simply go to another country as soon as possible.
“If it was my Quran, i’d throw it in the toilet several pages at a time after they served their purpose.”
One page at a time please. Gotta conserve, doncha know.
The Supreme Court, even as it is now constituted, would toss out any conviction on this case—probably 9-0. It is AMAZING that the local rank amateurs in NY think you can convict somebody of a crime for mistreating a BOOK in America!! I wonder when this abomination will be reversed??
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