Editor's note: Sarah Shourd, a teacher, was freed from prison in Iran last year. Shourd, her fiance, Shane Bauer, and Josh Fattal were hiking in the mountains in northern Iraq in July 2009 and were arrested by Iranian border guards, accused of spying and imprisoned. Her companions remain in prison. To learn more, visit freethehikers.org.
By Sarah Shourd, Special to CNN
(CNN) - During my more than one year in solitary confinement in Iran, I read the Quran from cover to cover several times. While I am not a Muslim, in my most desperate hours I was comforted and uplifted by the wisdom it speaks.
When I came across the words "Truth hath come and falsehood hath vanished away. Verily, falsehood is ever certain to vanish" I was reminded of a line from the Bible, "Then you shall know the truth and truth shall set you free." That certainty helped keep my hopes alive that my suffering, and the suffering of my fiance, Shane Bauer, and our good friend Josh Fattal, would end.
Shortly before my release last September, I was horrified to learn from the English-language Iranian news I was allowed to watch every night that a Florida pastor, Terry Jones, planned to burn 200 copies of the Quran. I had never heard of Terry Jones but it was all too clear from where I was sitting how destructive this misguided act would be. Mr. Jones backed off but he went ahead with a Quran burning last month.
Read the full story here.
Terry Jones may be a jerk but it is the koran and its followers that are danger to us all.
To wit:
koranic/mosque driven acts of terror and horror continue:
The Muslim Conquest of India – 11th to 18th century
â– "The likely death toll is somewhere between 2 million and 80 million. The geometric mean of those two limits is 12.7 million. "
and the 19 million killed in the Mideast Slave Trade 7C-19C by Muslims.
and more recently
1a) 179 killed in Mumbai/Bombay, 290 injured
1b) Assassination of Benazir Bhutto and Theo Van Gogh
2) 9/11, 3000 mostly US citizens, 1000's injured
3) The 24/7 Sunni-Shiite centuries-old blood feud currently being carried out in Iraq, US troops killed in action, 3,483 and 925 in non combat roles. 99,901 "“ 109,143 Iraqi civilians killed as of 3/3/2011/, mostly due to suicide bombers, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ and http://www.defenselink.mil/news/casualty.pdf
4) Kenya- In Nairobi, about 212 people were killed and an estimated 4000 injured; in Dar es Salaam, the attack killed at least 11 and wounded 85.[2]
5) Bali-in 2002-killing 202 people, 164 of whom were foreign nationals, and 38 Indonesian citizens. A further 209 people were injured.
6) Bali in 2005- Twenty people were killed, and 129 people were injured by three bombers who killed themselves in the attacks.
7) Spain in 2004- killing 191 people and wounding 2,050.
8. UK in 2005- The bombings killed 52 commuters and the four radical Islamic suicide bombers, injured 700.
9) The execution of an eloping couple in Afghanistan on 04/15/2009 by the Taliban.
10) – Afghanistan: US troops 1,141 killed in action, 242 killed in non-combat situations as of 03/03/2011. Over 40,000 Afghan civilians killed due to the dark-age, koranic-driven Taliban acts of horror
11) The killing of 13 citizen soldiers at Ft. Hood by a follower of the koran.
12) 38 Russian citizens killed on March 29, 2010 by Muslim women suicide bombers.
13) The May 28, 2010 attack on a Islamic religious minority in Pakistan, which have left 98 dead,
14) Lockerbie is known internationally as the site where, on 21 December 1988, the wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103 crashed as a result of a terrorist bomb. In the United Kingdom the event is referred to as the Lockerbie disaster, the Lockerbie bombing, or simply Lockerbie. Eleven townspeople were killed in Sherwood Crescent, where the plane's wings and fuel tanks plummeted in a fiery explosion, destroying several houses and leaving a huge crater, with debris causing damage to a number of buildings nearby. The 270 fatalities (259 on the plane, 11 in Lockerbie) were citizens of 21 nations.
15 The daily suicide and/or roadside and/or mosque bombings in the terror world of Islam.
16) Bombs sent from Yemen by followers of the koran which fortunately were discovered before the bombs were detonated.
17) The killing of 58 Christians in a Catholic church in one of the latest acts of horror and terror in Iraq.
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