My turn: Compassion is real issue at hand

My basketball/golf/war-history buddy John Kirby recently asked whether I’d considered writing about the Florida preacher threatening to burn Korans.

I told the Connecticut Yankee on the Court — who insists that I shoot three-pointers even when I’m not feeling it and thinks it unusual that I carry four fairway putters — that simple condemnation of the preacher would be like shooting fish in a barrel. And, I’m not licensed for hunting or fishing.

The Portales resident also asked if I’d read Michelle Malkin’s column about Muslims being constantly outraged over perceived slights to Allah. Groundbreakingly, we both agreed with Malkin, who also called the preacher a “two-bit attention-seeker.”

The preacher admitted that he’d read little of The Koran, although he is right about there being violent passages, including, “Strike off their heads and strike off from them every finger-tip because they have opposed God and His Apostle.”

Hopefully, he also knows that Muslims could cherry-pick such verses from his book, as, “...you shall show no pity; slay old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women.”

Before anyone gets their didactically-modest boxers in a wedgie, everyone knows that religious passages have to be taken in context.

The more fundamental question is what life passages caused this reverend to lose his reverence for benevolence.