The imam behind the plan to build an Islamic center near ground zero, Feisal Abdul Rauf, finally spoke out about the controversy, saying in an opinion piece in The New York Times published Tuesday night that he would proceed with plans to build the center. He wrote that by backing down, "we cede the discourse and, essentially, our future to radicals on both sides."
The meeting in Washington occurred amid growing concern by the White House, the State Department and the top American military commander in Afghanistan over plans by Terry Jones, the pastor of a small church in Florida, to burn copies of the Koran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Gen. David H. Petraeus warned on Tuesday that any video of Americans burning the Koran “would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence,” endangering the lives of American soldiers.
A State Department spokesman called Mr. Jones's plan “un-American.” Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, said any activity “that puts our troops in harm's way would be a concern to this administration.”
Several clergy members in Washington and Florida said that there were efforts to dissuade Mr. Jones from proceeding with the event, but that he appeared unlikely to relent.
The religious leaders in Washington said in their statement, “We are appalled by such disrespect for a sacred text that for centuries has shaped many of the great cultures of our world.”
Interfaith events are not unusual, but this one was extraordinary for the urgency and passion expressed by the participants. Some of the same religious leaders later met with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to urge him to prosecute religious hate crimes aggressively.
Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said: “We know what it is like when people have attacked us physically, have attacked us verbally, and others have remained silent. It cannot happen here in America in 2010.”
The clergy members said that those responsible for a poisoned climate included politicians manipulating a wedge issue in an election year, self-styled “experts” on Islam who denigrate the faith for religious or political reasons and some conservative evangelical Christian pastors.
The Rev. Richard Cizik, president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, said: “To those who would exercise derision, bigotry, open rejection of our fellow Americans of a different faith, I say, shame on you. As an evangelical, I say to those who do this, you bring dishonor to those who love Jesus Christ.”
The summit meeting was initiated by leaders of the Islamic Society of North America, an umbrella group of mosques and Muslim groups, who contacted Jewish and Christian leaders they know from years of joint interfaith projects.
A Catholic priest, the Rev. Mark Massa, executive director of ecumenical and interreligious affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote the draft of the statement. About three dozen clergy members representing Jewish, Muslim, Protestant, Catholic, evangelical and Orthodox Christian groups refined it at the meeting.
They did not take a stand on whether to support the proposed mosque and community center near ground zero in Manhattan, saying, “Persons of conscience have taken different positions on the wisdom of the location of this project, even if the legal right to build on the site appears to be unassailable.”
But some groups at the meeting, like the National Council of Churches, an umbrella group representing 100,000 churches, have come out in support of a mosque near the World Trade Center site, said the Rev. Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of the council.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/us/08muslim.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print
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The Rev. Terry Jones is pastor of the 50-member Dove World Outreach Center
in Gainesville, Fla. He says supporters have mailed Korans to burn. |
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Reaction to proposed Koran burning doesn't faze Florida church
A plea from Gen. David H. Petraeus, who fears that burning the Muslim holy book could provoke violence, is rebuffed. But Pastor Terry Jones hints that he may reconsider the Saturday event.
by David Zucchino
Los Angeles Times
September 8, 2010
The pastor of a tiny, fringe evangelical church in Florida on Tuesday rebuffed a plea for restraint from Gen. David H. Petraeus, who warned that a plan to burn the Muslim holy book could provoke violence against American troops and citizens overseas.
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"Instead of possibly blaming us for what could happen, we put the blame where it belongs — on the people who would do it," Pastor Terry Jones of the 50-member Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., told the Associated Press. "We should address radical Islam and send a very clear warning that they are not to retaliate in any form."
Jones also said he was still praying over his decision and hinted that he might change his mind. "We understand the general's concerns and we are taking those into consideration," he told WOFL-TV in Orlando.
A coalition of Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders held a news conference in Washington on Tuesday to condemn Jones' statements and other slurs aimed at Muslims nationwide.
"The threatened burning of copies of the Holy Koran this Saturday is a particularly egregious offense that demands the strongest possible condemnation by all who value civility in public life and seek to honor the sacred memory of those who lost their lives on Sept. 11," said a statement by religious leaders organized by the Islamic Society of North America.
Religious leaders warned that Muslims overseas would interpret extremists like Jones as reflecting mainstream American attitudes toward Muslims. In Afghanistan on Monday, protesters made a point of wrapping an effigy of Jones in an American flag before burning both the effigy and the flag.
Reaction in the Arab news media was more muted, with most commentators and government officials calling on U.S. citizens to honor religious freedom and condemn Jones.
Petraeus, who directs U.S. forces in Afghanistan, seemed concerned that Jones' insults would enrage ordinary Afghans whom his soldiers are trying to win over as they battle Taliban religious extremists.
The general said Monday that images of burning Korans "would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence."
Weeks of anti-Muslim diatribes by Jones have brought unwelcome publicity to Gainesville, a progressive college town of 125,000 that normally would be focused on the University of Florida's football game Saturday. Jones' antics have also fed into a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment nationwide as the Sept. 11 anniversary approaches and U.S. troops continue to die in two wars waged in Muslim nations.
The reverend's threat follows angry protests against a proposed Islamic center two blocks from the World Trade Center site in New York. In recent weeks, other protesters have objected to planned mosques or Islamic centers in several states, calling them threats to local security.
In Gainesville, news crews have descended on the small stone-and-frame church, located on the city's northern outskirts. Jones' leathery, mustachioed face has appeared on TV networks beamed worldwide, delivering fiery condemnations of Islam.
City officials in Gainesville, where Mayor Craig Lowe has called the Dove World Outreach Center "an embarrassment to our community," have vowed to try to prevent Jones from burning anything on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of the attacks.
Jones has been denied a burning permit, but says his lawyers have advised him that his 1st Amendment right to express his beliefs supersedes any local ordinance.
Police and other public safety officials will be on hand Saturday to enforce the city's open-burning law, said Bob Woods, Gainesville's communications manager. The ordinance's list of eight classes of items that may not be burned does not specifically include books, but does include paper.
Asked what the city would do if Jones carried out his threat, Woods replied, "We would respond appropriately. It depends on his actions.''
Lowe asked Gainesville residents to join him "in continuing to assert our community's true character" in response to what he called Jones' "offensive behavior."
Jones said he had received more than 100 death threats and now wears a .40-caliber pistol strapped to his hip. FBI agents have visited the preacher to voice concerns for his safety, according to the Associated Press.
The world's leading Sunni Muslim institution, Al Azhar University in Egypt, has accused Jones of fomenting hate and bigotry and has asked American churches to condemn him. Indonesian Muslims have demonstrated outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, threatening violence if any Korans are burned.
In 2005, after a report in Newsweek — later retracted — that U.S. guards at the Guantanamo Bay prison had flushed a Koran down a toilet, deadly riots broke out in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world. Hundreds of protesters in Afghanistan's capital burned an effigy of President Obama in October 2009, acting on rumors that American troops had desecrated the Koran. U.S. military officials emphatically denied that any copies of the Muslim holy book had been mishandled.
For Muslims, the Koran is the word of Allah. The holy book is treated with deep reverence, and any defiling of it is considered a grave offense.
"The Holy Koran is sacred, just like the Bible is to Christians," Dr. Mohamed Elsanousi, director of community outreach for the Islamic Society of North America, said in an interview. "Desecration of this book is something people will not tolerate."
Elsanousi said his organization has asked Muslims worldwide not to react violently if Korans are indeed burned.
The White House said Tuesday it agreed with Petraeus that burning Korans could endanger U.S. troops overseas, and the State Department called Jones' threat "un-American."
Last week, Jones said burning Korans "is a message that we have been called to bring forth. And because of that, we do not feel we can back down.''
Asked Tuesday about Petraeus' concerns, Jones told the Orlando TV station: "We should be issuing statements to radical Islam telling them this is enough. They better not do anything. If they do, we will answer."
On Labor Day, Jones posed in a dark suit outside his church, next to a portable billboard that read: "International Burn A Koran Day — 9/11/2010 — 6 p.m. to 9 p.m."
Jones has written a book titled "Islam Is of the Devil," and his church has distributed T-shirts bearing the same message. On the church's website, a "Ten Reasons to Burn the Koran" list discusses the plan:
"We are using this act to warn about the teaching and ideology of Islam, which we do hate as it is hateful. The world is in bondage to the massive grip of the lies of Islam."
According to the church, supporters have mailed in Korans to be burned.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-koran-burning-20100908,0,1812151,print.story |
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In Florida, Many Lay Plans to Counter a Pastor's Message
by Damien Cave
New York Times
September 8, 2010
MIAMI — Even before national religious leaders and Gen. David H. Petraeus condemned Terry Jones's plan to burn the Koran on Sept. 11 at his Gainesville church, grass-roots opposition had begun to swell.
Clergy members, academics and elected officials in Gainesville have planned nearly a dozen events to counter the plan, starting on Wednesday with an interfaith prayer service. On Saturday, hundreds of local residents and visitors are expected to rally against Mr. Jones, an evangelical pastor, with signs containing messages like “Peace among religions leads to peace among nations.”
“He represents only 30 people in this town,” said Larry Reimer, a local pastor, noting the size of Mr. Jones's church, the Dove World Outreach Center. “It needs to get out somehow to the rest of the world that this isn't the face of Christianity.”
Like many others, Mr. Reimer has personally tried to dissuade Mr. Jones. He recently left him a telephone message with the story of a Christian family from Indonesia that fears for their lives because of Mr. Jones's plan.
Americans living abroad have issued similar pleas. One teacher in Afghanistan wrote the pastor an impassioned e-mail describing the boisterous protesters he saw condemning Mr. Jones outside his classroom Sunday. “Your actions endanger my life,” he wrote.
How much Mr. Jones is listening remains unclear. The phone at his church was busy on Tuesday, and he did not respond to e-mail seeking comment.
In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, Mr. Jones said he was “definitely praying” about the demonstration, but he seems to have left himself little room to maneuver. In a recorded sermon last month, he said: “What we're doing has no middle of the road. You have to believe it is totally, totally God or absolutely of the devil.”
Officials in Gainesville are making plans as if the burning will occur. A police checkpoint will be added. And though Fire Department officials have denied Mr. Jones a bonfire permit, Deputy Fire Chief Tim Hayes said Tuesday that contained residential fires that did not extend beyond three feet by three feet were allowed.
“We have no idea what this guy's planning,” Chief Hayes said. “We will do everything we can within the law.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/us/08koran.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print
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