Who is Terry Jones and why is he burning the Koran?
September 9, 2010, 12:58 pm
Posted by David Gibson
That’s the headline of my profile of the Gainesville pastor who is managing to dominate the news and international diplomacy, though he heads just a 50-member church.
My short answer to the question: The Holy Spirit blows where it will, especially in Pentecostalism.
The AP’s national religion writer Rachel Zoll makes a similar point in her piece on Jones.
Many would like to ignore Jones, but perhaps this is a karmic blowback for our frequent focus on fringe figures in other religions or in opposition ideologies.
David-
Great piece. Thanks for the background and perspective.
AA
One would expect those involved in Pentecostalism to be releasing doves, not burning Korans.
“As of right now, we are not backing down,” Terry Jones told NBC on Wednesday.
But, he added, “If God told us to do it” — burn the Korans — “then I guess he could tell us to do something different.”
I also enjoyed your piece, David. NPR reported today that Jones has said he would give serious re-consideration to his Quran-burning plans if he were to get a call from the White House. It seems there might be something to the publicity tag some have branded him with.
Interesting how little non-Muslims know about the Koran. Here’s an introduction from Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qur'an
From that:
“Before returning that Qur’an text to Hafsa, Uthman immediately made several copies of Abu Bakar’s Qur’anic compilation and ordered all other texts to be burned.”
“Worn out, torn, or errant (for example, pages out of order) Qur’ans are not discarded as wastepaper, but rather are left free to flow in a river, kept somewhere safe, burned, or buried in a remote location.”
Does Terry plan to burn an English translation? Will that be as offensive as burning a copy in Arabic, richly illuminated, with fabulous calligraphy, etc.? Abebooks has some that cost over $50,000.
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?bi=0&bx=off&ds=30&recentlyadded=all&sortby=1&sts=t&tn=koran&x=52&y=14
Sorry, bad link to Wiki. Leaving out apostrophe might help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quran
Terry Jones and his ilk are certainly among the best reasons why the message of Christ is better served by a hierarchy of well-educated, relatively intelligent hierarchs than lone-wolf pastor about to foment a misguided protest because he thinks the Holy Spirit told him to (that or he’s a canny demagogue out to use media attention to beef up his flagging congregation).
Lord knows the RCC hierarchs aren’t perfect, and that I am a very imperfect observer of the various rules they’ve promulgated in the CCC. But the Church had sense enough to shut down Fr. Coughlin, and one yearns for an evangelical equivalent of the Vatican that could stop Jones’s crazy talk.
Ignorance > Fear > Contempt > Violence
Is more than ignorance at work with Terry Jones?
Might he be more of a cult leader taking advantage of others’ ignorance?
“Who is Terry Jones and why is he burning the Koran?”
I think a better question is, “Who is Terry Jones and why is the media giving him a larger forum than he could have ever dreamed?” I mean, if this were Billy Graham, or Pat Robertson, or someone with even a hint of stature, I could understand, but the guy is….er, was…a nobody. So if, God forbid, Muslim’s do react violently, who bears a larger share of the blame? Mr. Jones or the media?
What is your point, Gerelyn?
There are approximately 300,000,000 million people in the United States. Probably 2-5 percent are somewhat crazy. That’s where Terry Jones belongs. He is certainly not following Jesus who burned nothing although there were writings to false gods, and temples to false gods. The last person to burn books on a large scale was Hitler. Perhaps Jones is much more of a follower of Hitler than Jesus, and he’s just using Jesus’s name to give himself credibility. It’s a shame he gets so much free publicity.
Jones has called off the burning, claiming he extracted a promise from Feisal Abdul Rauf to move the “mosque” further away from Ground Zero. Rauf denies this.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39074573/ns/politics-white_house/?GT1=43001#slice-2
Terry Jones… Terry Jones… TERRY JONES! Of course! Monty Python! This explains everything!
Well imagine that.
After Mr. Bloomberg and all the other high and mighties in New York and DC (even in the white house) tried for several months but simply could not broker a resonable resolution of the NYC Mosque issue, this stubborn, small-town Protestant (Pentacostal) preacher in a little parish in nowhere USA has managed in a few days to get the would be mosque-builders of NYC to at least consider being more considerate of others’ feelings regarding that plot of land and 9-11.
Amazing.
Yes, Ken, religious dialogue at the point of a gun. Just what Jesus would do.
I think Palin and Beck helped him out, as Jones had never held out the idea of extracting a concession, nor had he made the (false) equivalency between building the Islamic center to promote interfaith dialogue and burnign Korans to piss off Muslims.
In any case, it’s all a face-saving effort for him, as he won no deal, just a meeting with Imam Abdul Rauf.
BTW, my take:
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/09/09/why-did-pastor-jones-back-down-on-koran-burning-maybe-the-bible/
Is anyone asking if the full court press against this was really the best thing to do? To be clear, I oppose the burning entirely, but, if I were a Muslim, I’m not sure that I would want the Pentagon, Interpol, the FBI, the White House, and who knows who else, all acting like the world was going to explode if Terry Jones actually burned some Qur’ans. I really liked the idea of the group that was going to give away free copies of the Qur’an to make up for what was burned. That is a good response. Acting like Muslims across the globe are going to be unable to stop themselves from countless acts of violence has at least two down sides: it suggests that the violence is understandable, which it is not; and it completely feeds into to preconceptions that Islamaphobes have of Muslims.
Youssef Islam (Cat Stevens to the old timers) does Peace Train. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7wEctHyuc0
I would love to see a sort of Band-Aid concert (or even a We Are the World type video)of Muslim musicians for peace and unity. We need a lot more countervoices to all the venom out there.
You have a point Joe but keep in mind that Muslims have shown time and again they will defend the honor of God no matter what the world thinks.
We can and should call them out for needless violence, but we should give Muslims the credit they are due. Simply put, they will always defend the honor of God (or “Allah” as they call Him).
While Christians in general and we Catholics in particular routinely tolerate crucifixes in jars of urine and paintings of the Virgin Mary slathered with elephant dung as “art”, and we tolerate a hundred other insults to God and to our faith, our Muslim brothers will not tolerate such offenses at all – end of story.
We Westerners like to make thing complex, we look for complexity and by doing so imagine ourselves to be more intelligent, more nuanced. Muslims are intelligent too, but on the point of public offenses to the Almighty, for them the matter is very simple – there is no nuance – they will not tolerate them.
Interesting to see the signers of a full-page ad against burning the Qur’an in the NYT this morning: Archbishops Dolan, Chaput, Wenski, Demetrios, Gregory, et al.
————
A very happy Eid al-Fitr to all Muslims and friends of Muslims!