Florida pastor says he won't burn the Quran - Hindustan Times

Florida pastor says he won't burn the Quran - Hindustan Times

Florida pastor says he won't burn the Quran

Press Trust Of India

Gainesville, September 10, 2010First Published: 08:08 IST(10/9/2010)

Last Updated: 08:20 IST(10/9/2010)

The pastor of a small Florida church who had planned to burn copies of the Quran on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks canceled the event on Thursday, hours after President Barack Obama condemned it as a "recruitment bonanza for al-Qaida" and Defense Secretary Robert Gates phoned the pastor

Pastor Terry Jones said he gave up his plans after striking a deal to halt the construction of an Islamic center near Ground Zero but Jones appeared to either have misunderstood or mischaracterized discussions about the center Muhammad Musri, a Florida imam who had been working with Jones to try to get him to call off his event, said at the same news conference that he had brokered a meeting with the project developers in New York, not an agreement to terminate their plans.

A short time later New York Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his partner in the project, Manhattan real estate developer Sharif El-Gamal said in a statement that they had made no deal to halt their plans and had not, in fact, spoken to Jones or Musri "I am surprised by their announcement," Rauf's statement said.

"We are not going to toy with our religion or any other. Nor are we going to barter. We are here to extend our hands to build peace and harmony.

Somehow, however, all the parties had agreed to a meeting Saturday in New York, which is apparently going forward The disjointed exchanges brought to a crescendo an odd saga that vaulted an unknown pastor from an obscure church into an international phenomenon Few outside of Gainesville had heard of Jones or his Dove World Outreach Center in late July when he announced "International Burn the Koran Day," and it largely remained that way until this week.

As anger grew among Muslims around the world and as U.S. leaders began to fear that images of an American-made Koran bonfire would be a recruitment tool for Islamic extremists, General David Petraeus warned in a statement that the stunt could endanger American troops. Condemnations from across the political and religious spectrums - the Vatican, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others - poured in.

By the time Jones held his press conference, Obama had weighed in, the State Department had warned traveling Americans that they could be in danger and Gates felt sufficiently compelled to personally ask him to cancel the event Obama asked Jones to reconsider during an interview on ABC "If he's listening, I just hope he understands that what he's proposing to do is completely contrary to our values as Americans; that this country has been built on the notions of religious freedom and religious tolerance," Obama said of Jones in an interview broadcast Thursday on "Good Morning America."

"We're already seeing protests against Americans just by the mere threat that he's making. Demonstrations erupted in Afghanistan on Thursday as hundreds of enraged youths burned effigies, threw rocks and chanted, "Death to America.

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari said in a statement on Thursday that the Koran burning would "inflame sentiments among Muslims throughout the world and cause irreparable damage to interfaith harmony and also to world peace. After the event was called off, Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S. Husain Haqqani said, "Pastor Jones' decision to cancel the event he had scheduled to burn copies of the Koran helps avoid an unnecessary inflammation of passions. . . This is definitely a positive moment in showing America's tolerance and pluralism and should not go unappreciated in the Muslim world.

Senior Obama administration officials had hedged on just how much attention they should give the Gainesville preacher but felt they had to respond, said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.

"The potential ripple effect here is very real," he said According to Jones, it was not the call from the Pentagon chief that convinced him, but his perception of a deal with Rauf, the New York imam Jones had rebuffed appeals to cancel his event for days.

But on Thursday he said he prayed and asked God for a sign and would consider the movement of the New York Islamic center as a message from on high Jones looked bewildered when he was told later that no agreement had been made and repeated what he believed he had been told "The American people do not as a whole want this mosque, and if they were willing to either cancel the mosque at the Ground Zero location or if they were willing to move it away from that location.

We would consider that a sign from God," Jones said The confusion seemed to stem from a meeting Jones had with Musri, head of the Islamic Society for Central Florida. Musri, who stood beside Jones as he emotionally agreed to call off the Koran burn, said he had only promised Jones a meeting with Rauf to discuss moving the planned community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan "There are no written agreements," Musri said.

"I feel that the Imam [Rauf] is a very wise Imam, and I think that now knowing that over 70 percent of the American people do not want it there, I think he is reconsidering it. In Gainesville, there was a sigh of relief that the Koran burning event has been called off. Safety officials had been planning and bracing for the event for several weeks.

Volunteers at the church had said they were expecting "several hundred people" there on Saturday, including national and international media Regardless, Ismail ibn Ali, president of the University of Florida-Gainesville, student group Islam On Campus, said he hoped Rauf would not strike a deal with Jones "If the deal is that they move the mosque in order to stop the Koran burning, I'll be very disappointed," he said. "It ultimately ends up being a win for the Islamophobes in America.