Florida pastor says he's reconsidering plan to burn Korans 9SEP10

By Krissah Thompson and Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 9, 2010; 9:36 PM


The pastor of a small Florida church who had planned to burn copies of the Koran on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 said Thursday he would cancel the event - at least for now - hours after President Obama condemned it as a "recruitment bonanza for al-Qaeda" and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates phoned the minister as a worldwide fury grew.
At a chaotic news conference in Gainesville, the Rev. Terry Jones said he gave up his plans after reaching a deal to stop the construction of an Islamic center near Ground Zero.
But Jones appeared to have misunderstood or mischaracterized discussions, if there were any, about the center. Later, he said he was misled by an imam in Florida who "clearly, clearly lied to us" and he would "rethink our decision."
Muhammad Musri, a Florida imam who has been trying to get Jones to call off the event, said at the 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 stop 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."
The parties did, however, agree to meet Saturday in New York.
The disjointed exchanges are part of an odd saga that has vaulted an unknown pastor to an international stage.
Few outside 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 worldwide and as U.S. leaders began to fear that images of Koran-burning in the United States would be a recruitment tool for Islamic extremists, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, warned in a statement that the move could endanger American troops abroad. Condemnations from across the political and religious spectrums poured in, including from the Vatican, conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. By the time Jones held his news conference, Obama had weighed in, the State Department had warned traveling Americans that they could be in danger and Gates had felt compelled to ask the pastor to cancel the event.
The president made his plea 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 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."


Pakistani 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, Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States said, "Pastor Jones's 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 how much attention to give Jones but thought they had to respond, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said. "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 that he asked God for a sign and that he considered the movement of the New York Islamic center as a message from on high.
Jones and his small church have drawn controversy before. He attracted a little attention earlier this year when he posted a sign reading "No homo mayor" in front of the church protesting the openly gay man running for mayor, and last year Jones he put up a sign declaring "Islam is the Devil" and sent children from his church to their public schools wearing T-shirts with the same message. The children were sent home, the Gainesville Sun reported.
Jones looked bewildered when he was told that no agreement had been made about the mosque and he repeated what he thought 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," the pastor said.
The confusion seemed to stem from a meeting Jones had with Musri, head of the Islamic Society of Central Florida. Musri, who stood beside Jones as he emotionally agreed to call off the Koran burning, said he had promised Jones only 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."
Musri said in interviews that he had not spoken to Rauf but that he had set up a meeting with him through Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan.
In a CNN interview Wednesday night, Rauf indicated that he was open to moving the proposed Islamic center from its current location two blocks from Ground Zero.
"Nothing is off the table," he said. "But we are consulting. We are talking to various people about how to do this so that we negotiate the best and the safest option."
Rauf said that if he had known the proposed site would cause so much controversy, "we certainly never would have done this."
But he warned that moving the center could be construed as giving in to radicalism and could foment anti-American feelings abroad.
"If we move from that location, the story will be that the radicals have taken over the discourse," he said. "The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack."
Additional calls for Rauf and his partners to move the mosque came from developer Donald Trump, who made a splashy offer to buy the building for 25 percent more than its value. It was batted down as a publicity-seeking stunt given that Rauf's partners in the development have turned down larger offers, according to reports in New York newspapers.
In Gainesville, there was a sigh of relief that the Koran burning was called off. Safety officials had been bracing for the event and 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 Islam on Campus, a student group at the University of Florida at Gainesville, 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."