Muslim world seethes; US 'cult' calls off plan to burn Holy Book
By AGENCIES
• 1 dies, 11 injured in Afghanistan • Effigies of Jones, US flags burned • Obama: We aren't at war with Islam • Church ally says burning canceled • Jones has gone mad: Daughter
GAINESVILLE, Florida: A tide of Muslim outrage seems unstoppable even after Pastor Terry Jones of Florida insisted Friday he would not proceed with a planned Qur'an burning ceremony if he's able to meet Saturday with the organizers behind an Islamic cultural center planned near Ground Zero in New York.
"Right now, we have plans not to do it," Jones told ABC news, despite saying late Thursday he could go back on a pledge to call off the incendiary gesture.
However, Feisal Abdul Rauf, leading the New York project, denied any quid-pro-quo deal with Jones, prompting the Florida pastor to threaten afresh to go ahead with the burning.
Later, an ally of the small church said he was "100 percent" sure that plans for the Qur'an burning would not go ahead on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
In Afghanistan, at least 11 people were injured Friday in protests. Police in the northern province of Badakhshan said several hundred demonstrators ran toward a NATO compound where four attackers and five police were injured in clashes. One protester was shot dead outside a German-run NATO base, a government spokesman said. Protesters also burned an American flag and an effigy of Jones after Friday prayers. In western Farah province, police said two people were injured in another protest.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in a message to mark the start of Eid, said Jones "should not even think" of burning the Holy Book.
City officials in Gainesville said Friday that no matter what Jones says he'll do, they planned to stick with their plan to increase security in response to the event.
President Barack Obama said the pastor's plan must be taken seriously because it could cause "profound damage" to US troops and interests around the world.
Said Obama: "You don't play games with that." He said that as commander in chief he had an obligation to respond.
The president pointedly did not mention Jones by name as he rejected any suggestion that top US officials had "elevated" the controversy from local flap to global uproar.
"I hardly think we're the ones who elevated this story. But it is, in the age of the Internet, something that can cause us profound damage around the world and so we've got to take it seriously," he said.
Obama said burning the Qur'an would be contrary to what America stands for and could pose a threat to Americans in uniform. "We have to make sure that we don't start turning on each other," Obama said at a White House news conference on the eve of the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the US. "And I will do everything that I can as long as I'm president of the United States to remind the American people that we are one nation under God and we may call that God different names, but we remain one nation." Obama said the public must remember that the country's enemy is not Islam, but Al-Qaeda and extremist groups.
Hundreds of protesters rallied in two Pakistani cities Friday, burning American flags and calling for the hanging of Jones, witnesses said.
A reporter in Multan said about 600 demonstrators — including clerics, political party workers and activists — held four protests in various parts of the central city of nearly four million people.
Protesters carried placards reading "Death to America" and "We will lay down our lives and will not allow desecration of the Holy Qur'an."
At Multan's Gulshan market, political activists from the Pakistan Muslim League (N) party of former Prime Minster Nawaz Sharif joined local traders in setting an American flag on fire.
In southern Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, about 300 people from Islamist political parties Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan held three rallies with placards that said the pastor responsible for the plan should be hanged. "Hang the pastor" and "Death to America" read the banners at the rally that later dispersed, a reporter said.
Protests meanwhile also flared Friday in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country.
Najib Razak, prime minister of Muslim-majority Malaysia, warned that a "single act of abhorrence" could "ignite the feelings of Muslims throughout the world, the consequences of which I fear would be very, very costly", he told reporters.
Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade issued a statement calling it "an unacceptable offense to Muslims" and urged the international community to do more to combat Islamophobia.
In the Gaza Strip, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called Jones an "insane lunatic", while Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his part said the plan to burn the Qur'an was a "Zionist plot" that would end up in the speedy "annihilation" of Israel.
Jones, a previously obscure 58-year-old fundamentalist pastor with slicked-back gray hair and a shaggy mustache, demands strict obedience and unpaid labor from his tiny flock and sells used furniture out of his sanctuary, those who know him say.
He was ejected from a church he headed in Germany by his own followers. Even his daughter says she believes he has lost his mind in his fanatical crusade against Islam.
His estranged daughter, Emma Jones, called the church a cult that forced obedience through "mental violence" and threats of God's punishment. She said he ignored her e-mails urging him not to burn copies of the Holy Qur'an.
"I think he has gone mad," she told Germany's Spiegel Online.
By AGENCIES
• 1 dies, 11 injured in Afghanistan • Effigies of Jones, US flags burned • Obama: We aren't at war with Islam • Church ally says burning canceled • Jones has gone mad: Daughter
GAINESVILLE, Florida: A tide of Muslim outrage seems unstoppable even after Pastor Terry Jones of Florida insisted Friday he would not proceed with a planned Qur'an burning ceremony if he's able to meet Saturday with the organizers behind an Islamic cultural center planned near Ground Zero in New York.
"Right now, we have plans not to do it," Jones told ABC news, despite saying late Thursday he could go back on a pledge to call off the incendiary gesture.
However, Feisal Abdul Rauf, leading the New York project, denied any quid-pro-quo deal with Jones, prompting the Florida pastor to threaten afresh to go ahead with the burning.
Later, an ally of the small church said he was "100 percent" sure that plans for the Qur'an burning would not go ahead on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.
In Afghanistan, at least 11 people were injured Friday in protests. Police in the northern province of Badakhshan said several hundred demonstrators ran toward a NATO compound where four attackers and five police were injured in clashes. One protester was shot dead outside a German-run NATO base, a government spokesman said. Protesters also burned an American flag and an effigy of Jones after Friday prayers. In western Farah province, police said two people were injured in another protest.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in a message to mark the start of Eid, said Jones "should not even think" of burning the Holy Book.
City officials in Gainesville said Friday that no matter what Jones says he'll do, they planned to stick with their plan to increase security in response to the event.
President Barack Obama said the pastor's plan must be taken seriously because it could cause "profound damage" to US troops and interests around the world.
Said Obama: "You don't play games with that." He said that as commander in chief he had an obligation to respond.
The president pointedly did not mention Jones by name as he rejected any suggestion that top US officials had "elevated" the controversy from local flap to global uproar.
"I hardly think we're the ones who elevated this story. But it is, in the age of the Internet, something that can cause us profound damage around the world and so we've got to take it seriously," he said.
Obama said burning the Qur'an would be contrary to what America stands for and could pose a threat to Americans in uniform. "We have to make sure that we don't start turning on each other," Obama said at a White House news conference on the eve of the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the US. "And I will do everything that I can as long as I'm president of the United States to remind the American people that we are one nation under God and we may call that God different names, but we remain one nation." Obama said the public must remember that the country's enemy is not Islam, but Al-Qaeda and extremist groups.
Hundreds of protesters rallied in two Pakistani cities Friday, burning American flags and calling for the hanging of Jones, witnesses said.
A reporter in Multan said about 600 demonstrators — including clerics, political party workers and activists — held four protests in various parts of the central city of nearly four million people.
Protesters carried placards reading "Death to America" and "We will lay down our lives and will not allow desecration of the Holy Qur'an."
At Multan's Gulshan market, political activists from the Pakistan Muslim League (N) party of former Prime Minster Nawaz Sharif joined local traders in setting an American flag on fire.
In southern Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, about 300 people from Islamist political parties Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan held three rallies with placards that said the pastor responsible for the plan should be hanged. "Hang the pastor" and "Death to America" read the banners at the rally that later dispersed, a reporter said.
Protests meanwhile also flared Friday in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim-majority country.
Najib Razak, prime minister of Muslim-majority Malaysia, warned that a "single act of abhorrence" could "ignite the feelings of Muslims throughout the world, the consequences of which I fear would be very, very costly", he told reporters.
Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade issued a statement calling it "an unacceptable offense to Muslims" and urged the international community to do more to combat Islamophobia.
In the Gaza Strip, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called Jones an "insane lunatic", while Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his part said the plan to burn the Qur'an was a "Zionist plot" that would end up in the speedy "annihilation" of Israel.
Jones, a previously obscure 58-year-old fundamentalist pastor with slicked-back gray hair and a shaggy mustache, demands strict obedience and unpaid labor from his tiny flock and sells used furniture out of his sanctuary, those who know him say.
He was ejected from a church he headed in Germany by his own followers. Even his daughter says she believes he has lost his mind in his fanatical crusade against Islam.
His estranged daughter, Emma Jones, called the church a cult that forced obedience through "mental violence" and threats of God's punishment. She said he ignored her e-mails urging him not to burn copies of the Holy Qur'an.
"I think he has gone mad," she told Germany's Spiegel Online.
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