Terry Jones, 61, the pastor of a small evangelical Christian church in Florida is an expert at fanning the flames of hatred and intolerance. He first propelled himself into the public eye in 2010 when he announced that he was planning to burn a Quran — the Muslim equivalent of the Christian Holy Bible –on the anniversary of 9/11. On that occasion, however, he called off the book-burning. He and his congregation were not to be stopped the following year when they jointly burned the Muslim holy book in March of 2011. Last year he was content with promoting an anti-Muslim film. All three of these incidents sparked violence in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Unsurprisingly, the most violent protest happened after the 2011 Quran burning. Hundreds of protesters stormed a U.N. compound in Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan, killing seven foreigners, including four Nepalese guards.
Jones is back in the news today and naturally it coincides with the anniversary of the 9-11 Twin Towers tragedy. This year his plan was to burn 2,998 Qurans — one for every victim of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks — in a public park in Mulberry, a Polk County community of just under 4,000 people. The local sheriff’s deputies, however, to their immense credit, were not about to let Jones ignite what would have been a rather massive conflagration. They arrested Jones and his associate pastor, Marvin Sapp Jr., 44, each on a felony charge of unlawful conveyance of fuel as they conveyed themselves in a pickup truck heading for the park towing a large barbecue-style grill filled with Qurans soaked in kerosene. Sheriff’s officials stated that Jones was also charged with unlawful open-carry of a firearm, a misdemeanor, and that Sapp faces a charge of having no valid registration for the trailer.
Both were booked Wednesday night into the Polk County jail, according to Sheriff Grady Judd.
Although Jones is clearly an incendiary figure both literally and metaphorically, Mulberry’s mayor and other elected officials including a sheriff’s deputy and several Polk County residents have demonstrated wisdom and forbearance in publicly proclaiming the need to express love and tolerance for all faiths on Sept. 11.
Jones poses such a threat to public safety that even the U.S. military has asked him not to stage his protests stating that his inflammatory actions put American and Western troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere in danger. Naturally, however, Jones has repeatedly ignored the requests from our military officials.
The town of Mulberry is located on Highway 60 between Orlando and Tampa and has no connection to Jones’ church, which recently moved out of its Gainesville building.
Jones, along with seven Egyptian Coptic Christians, was convicted by an Egyptian court in absentia. They were all sentenced to death on charges linked to the anti-Muslim film they had promoted. The ruling was obviously symbolic because Jones and the Coptic Christians do not live in Egypt and probably have no plans of going there. (And please don’t think that I support the Egyptian court with their ludicrous death sentence in absentia. As my daughter is fond of saying, some people just need to calm down.)
Earlier on Wednesday, about 75 people, led by a man named Mike Ghouse, gathered in Mulberry for an interfaith prayer service to counter Jones’ actions.
Ghouse, who has spearheaded a 9/11 prayer service in his home state of Texas for the last nine years, made the decision to bring his his event to Mulberry this year because of Jones’ planned Quran burning. He teamed up with a group of Mulberry residents who had organized an anti-Jones Facebook page.
Ghouse did say that as an American, Jones does have the right to express himself and believe what he wants to believe. Self-expression, however, apparently does not include burning 2,998 kerosene-soaked Qurans in a public park. Other Mulberry residents said that while Jones was free to say or do whatever he wanted, the people of Mulberry didn’t want the world to think that its residents condone or agree with Jones’ views. Or as Polk County resident Butch Rahman stated:
“We don’t buy what Jones is selling.”