Florida Pastor Still Wants Meeting on New York Islamic Center
Pastor Cancels Koran Burning, Says Goal 'Accomplished'
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Dove World Outreach Center Pastor Terry Jones attends a news conference in Gainesville, Florida.
Dove World Outreach Center Pastor Terry Jones attends a news conference in Gainesville, Florida. Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
The Florida pastor who planned to burn Korans on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks yesterday said he won’t “ever” burn Islam’s holy book.
Terry Jones, who arrived in New York City on Sept. 10, is still seeking a meeting with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who plans to build an Islamic center near the World Trade Center site. The pastor said in an interview on NBC’s “Today Show” that no meeting has been scheduled.
“We feel that God is telling us to stop,” Jones said yesterday. “And we also hope that with us making this first gesture, not burning the Koran, to say, ‘No, we’re not going to do it, not today, not ever, we’re not going to go back and do it, it is totally canceled.’
“We hope that through that maybe that will open up a door to be able to talk to the imam about the Ground Zero mosque.”
Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, said on “Today” that the goal of his protest had been accomplished and it wasn’t a publicity stunt.
“We feel that whenever we started this out one of our reasons was to show, to expose that there is an element of Islam that is very dangerous and very radical,” Jones said. “I believe that we have definitely accomplished that mission.”
He said he “can absolutely guarantee” there will be no Koran burning at his church, even if the Islamic center near Ground Zero is built. Jones, who has acknowledged receiving more than 100 death threats, said he “wasn’t scared into calling off the burning.”
Protest
President Barack Obama urged Jones to cancel the planned event, which sparked protests from Muslims around the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates telephoned the pastor on Sept. 9 to ask him to call off the burning.
“The headline in the Muslim world will be Islam is under attack in America” if the proposed Islamic center is moved, Rauf said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week with Christiane Amanpour,” according to a partial transcript released by the network. “This will strengthen the radicals in the Muslim world.”
Ceremonies, as well as protests for and against the Islamic center, were held yesterday at the three sites where terrorists crashed the hijacked planes in 2001, killing almost 3,000 people.
A man was escorted by police from one of the protests after ripping pages from a copy of the Koran and setting them on fire, the New York Daily News reported. The man, who wasn’t identified by the newspaper, didn’t appear to have been arrested, the Daily News said.
The Pentagon, Pennsylvania
Paul Browne, a spokesman for the New York City Police Department, didn’t immediately respond to a request seeking further information about the incident.
At the ceremonies, the president spoke and participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Pentagon Memorial near Washington, while Vice President Joe Biden attended the World Trade Center site ceremony. First lady Michelle Obama and former first lady Laura Bush attended a service in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The World Trade Center ceremony began shortly before 8:46 a.m., the moment when a jetliner hijacked by members of the Muslim terrorist group al-Qaeda smashed into the complex’s north tower. A second airplane hit the south tower 17 minutes later.
To contact the reporter on this story: Chris Dolmetsch in New York at cdolmetsch@bloomberg.net; Dan Hart in Washington at dahart@bloomberg.net.
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