If building an Islamic center near Ground Zero amounts to the epitome of Muslim insensitivity, as critics of the project have claimed, what should the world make of Terry Jones, the evangelical pastor here who plans to memorialize the Sept. 11 terror attacks with a bonfire of Korans?
Jones, 58, a former hotel manager with a red face and a white handlebar mustache, argues that as a US Christian he has a right to burn Islam’s sacred book because “it’s full of lies.”
In another era, he might have been easily ignored, as he was last year when he posted a sign at his church declaring: “Islam is of the devil.”
However, now the global spotlight has shifted. With the debate in New York City putting religious tensions front and center, Jones has suddenly attracted thousands of fans and critics on Facebook, while around the world he is being presented as a symbol of anti-Islamic sentiment in the US.
Muslim leaders in several countries, including Egypt and Indonesia, have formally condemned him and his church, the Dove World Outreach Center.
An Islamic group in England has also incorporated his efforts into a YouTube video that encourages Muslims to “rise up and act,” widening a concern that Jones — though clearly a fringe figure with only 50 members in his church — could spark riots or terrorism.
“Can you imagine what this will do to our image around the world?” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington. “And the additional danger it will add whenever there is an American presence in Iraq or Afghanistan?”
Jones, in a lengthy interview at his church, said he sincerely hoped that his planned Koran-burning would not lead to violence. He dismissed the idea that it could put US troops at greater risk, and — echoing his sermons — he said that his church was being persecuted.
He said his bank recently demanded immediate repayment of the US$140,000 balance on the church mortgage; that his property insurance had been canceled since he announced late last month that he intended to burn copies of the Koran; and that death threats now come in regularly.
“We have to be careful,” he said.
He tapped a holster on the right hip of his jean shorts; it held a .40-caliber pistol, which he said he was licensed to carry.
“The overall response,” he added, “has been much greater than we expected.”
Jones who seems to spend much of his time inside a dank, dark office with a poster from the movie Braveheart and a picture of former US president George W. Bush, appears to be largely oblivious to the potential consequences of his plans. Speaking in short sentences with a matter-of-fact drawl, he said that he could not understand why other Christians, including the nation’s largest evangelical association, had called for him to cancel “International Burn a Koran Day.”
He acknowledged that it had brought in at least US$1,000 in donations.
However, he said that the interviews he had done with about 150 news outlets all over the world were useful mainly because they had helped him “send a message to Islam and the pushers of Shariah law: That it is not what we want.”
Jones said that nothing in particular had set him off.
Asked about his knowledge of the Koran, he said plainly: “I have no experience with it whatsoever. I only know what the Bible says.”
Nonetheless, his position and variations on his tactics have become more common, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said.
Florida in particular has seen a rise in anti-Islamic activity. In May, an arsonist set off a pipe bomb at a mosque in Jacksonville, Flordia in what authorities called an act of domestic terrorism. A mosque and Islamic school south of Miami was vandalized twice last year, the first time with a spray of 51 bullets.
Just as disturbing to Florida’s Muslims and to many Christians and Jews, is that anti-Islamic rhetoric has begun to enter the mainstream through Republican political candidates.
Some of the opposition predated the controversy about the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero.
In March, for example, Allen West, a retired Army officer running for the US Congress in Broward County, Flordia, told a group of supporters that “Islam is not a religion,” but rather “a vicious enemy” that was “infiltrating” the US. (A campaign spokesman said last week that West meant to refer to radical Islam, not Islam generally.)
Ron McNeil, a candidate for the US Congress in the Florida Panhandle, last week told a group of high school and middle school students that Islam’s plan “is to destroy our way of life.”
“It’s our place as Christians to stand up for the word of God and what the Bible says,” he said.
Similar sentiments now flow daily into the e-mail inbox of the Dove World Outreach Center. Jones said that the negative e-mails outnumbered the positive by about a ratio of 3-1, but that strangers had sent 20 copies of the Koran and a church worker produced hundreds of supportive e-mails that had come in over the past three weeks.
A dozen of those messages revealed a wide range of motivations. For a few people — a Christian in Afghanistan, an Iraqi in Massachusetts, a Jew who called his co-religionists in the US “soft in the head” — direct experience with Islamic extremists seemed to have darkened their views. Others seemed motivated by little more than hate, arguing that Korans should be barbecued with pork, which is banned by Islam.
Jones’ plan faced a new hurdle last week when the Gainesville Fire Department rejected his request for a burning permit. Jones said he would go ahead anyway (“it’s just politics”) and he predicted a quite a scene.
Some of his neighbors, like Shirley Turner, a retiree who shivered with disgust when Jones’ name came up in conversation, are already planning to protest with signs calling for unity.
More than a dozen houses of worship, of various faiths, also intend to respond collectively on the weekend of Sept. 11 by “affirming the validity of all sacred books,” pastor of the United Church of Christ Larry Reimer said.
Some pastors even plan to read from the Koran in their services.
For local Muslims like Saeed Khan, who came to Florida in the 1970s to study for a doctorate in biology at the University of Florida, the collective rejection of Jones represents the US they want to believe in.
In an interview at an Islamic center that used to be a Brown Derby restaurant, Khan said that: “Mr. Jones is hijacking Christianity” just as “al-Qaeda hijacked Islam.”
What saddens him most, he said, is the lasting effect on Muslim youth.
He now has three grandchildren under the age of three growing up in Gainesville and he shook his head at the story of a friend’s daughter who woke up in the middle of the night and asked her mother: “Why don’t they like us?”
Still, like many others, he rejected the moment’s swirl of anger. Even if Muslims outside the US respond to the planned Koran burning with protests, or worse, Khan said he would spend his Sept. 11 doing the same thing he did last year. He will be downtown, a few kilometers from Jones, feeding the homeless.
As it has striven toward superiority in most measures of the Asian military balance, China is now ready to challenge the undersea balance of power, long dominated by the United States, a decisive advantage crucial to its ability to deter blockade and invasion of Taiwan by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). America expended enormous treasure to develop the technology, logistics, training, and personnel to emerge victorious in the Cold War undersea struggle against the former Soviet Union, and to remain superior today; the US is not used to considering the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN)
The annual summit of East Asia and other events around the ASEAN summit in October and November every year have become the most important gathering of leaders in the Indo-Pacific region. This year, as Laos is the chair of ASEAN, it was privileged to host all of the ministerial and summit meetings associated with ASEAN. Besides the main summit, this included the high-profile East Asia Summit, ASEAN summits with its dialogue partners and the ASEAN Plus Three Summit with China, Japan and South Korea. The events and what happens around them have changed over the past 15 years from a US-supported, ASEAN-led
Lately, China has been inviting Taiwanese influencers to travel to China’s Xinjiang region to make films, weaving a “beautiful Xinjiang” narrative as an antidote to the international community’s criticisms by creating a Potemkin village where nothing is awry. Such manipulations appear harmless — even compelling enough for people to go there — but peeling back the shiny veneer reveals something more insidious, something that is hard to ignore. These films are not only meant to promote tourism, but also harbor a deeper level of political intentions. Xinjiang — a region of China continuously listed in global human rights reports —
President William Lai’s (賴清德) first Double Ten National Day address had two strategic goals. For domestic affairs, the speech aimed to foster consensus on national identity, strengthen the country and unite the Taiwanese against a Chinese invasion. In terms of cross-strait relations, the speech aimed to mitigate tensions in the Taiwan Strait and promote the coexistence and prosperity of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in China and the Republic of China (ROC). Lai is taking a different stance from previous Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administrations on domestic political issues. During his speech, he said: “The PRC could not be the
RSS