Read @ NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist

The 5 Percent Doctrine

By GAIL COLLINS

Published: September 8, 2010

A minister in Gainesville, Fla., has created an international uproar by vowing to burn the Koran on Sept. 11. This is under the theory that the best way to honor Americans who died at the hands of religious extremists is to do something that is both religious and extreme.

I am not going to mention his name, since he’s already been rewarded with way too many TV interviews for a person whose seminal career achievement has been building a thriving congregation of about 50 people.

The Koran-burning has been equated, in some circles, with the fabled ground zero mosque. This is under the theory that both are constitutionally protected bad ideas. In fact, they’re very different. Muslims building a community center in their neighborhood on one hand. Deliberate attempt to insult a religion that is dear to about 1.5 billion souls around the globe on the other.

[SNIP]

When this sort of thing happens, it is important to remember that about 5 percent of our population is and always will be totally crazy. I don’t mean mentally ill. According to the National Institute for Mental Health, 26 percent of American adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year. So, basically, that’s just normal life. I mean crazy in the sense of “Thinks it is a good plan to joke with the flight attendant about seeing a bomb in the restroom.”

There is nothing you can do about the crazy 5 percent except ask the police to keep an eye on them during large public events, where they sometimes appear carrying machine guns just to make a political point about the Second Amendment. And, in situations like a Koran-burning, make it clear that the rest of us disagree.

So far, the people lining up to denounce the burning of the Koran include the pope, Gen. David Petraeus and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

[SNIP]

And the fight for public sanity has fallen to average citizens, like Professor Sbenaty, who is still trying to explain to the rest of the world what happened in his community. “Let me say first,” he told an interviewer on NPR, “there are crazy people in every society.”

Full article @ NYTimes.com [with some digressions from the main topic in the middle]

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There are far too many good people on all sides of the religion for us to not confuse the crazy 5% as representative.  But if it is more representative of how religion makes people feel, well, I've had it with the negative influence of religion.

I plan on sending this article out to friends, especially to my Muslim-American friends... and plan on calling them personally between today and Saturday.