Update: Jones Unrepentent, Islam Unforgiving, Christians And Muslims Continue To Suffer ... As Death Toll Mounts

As of this writing, riots continue throughout Afghanistan. Anti-American and anti-Christian furors have sprung up, injuring more people. The death toll is now at 10, with 83 wounded.


What hath Jones wrought?

It is said that Pastor Terry Jones virtually studied his hatred at the feet of Fred Phelps. Phelps has not spoken to Jones after Jones' plans to burn the Quran last Sept. 11 became public, primarily because his efforts received more attention (the Phelps clann had actually burned the Holy Book before). I wonder how Phelps is reacting to his former student's fatal publicity grab. 


To the nation and the world, Terry Jones looks like Fred Phelps on steroids: with his deliberate act to cause mischief and strife, Jones has now run past Phelps in the race to be the Most Hated Man In America. Let us not miss the irony that both hold the title of "Reverend." That title alone would have forced Jones to feign shock and dismay at the results in Afghanistan. However, he showed neither, thus relegating him to the status of  self-righteous, cold-blooded killer. His ubiquitous statement to ABC News ...

“Of course we were very saddened and devastated by that,” he told ABC News. “It is of course a terrible thing anytime anyone is killed.” relayed not even the least amount of sympathy or regret. 

Afghanistan's indignation has sparked terror and criticism around the world:

Endangering Christians

Last week, St Thomas church in Wah Cantt (Afghanistan) was attacked by a group of Muslims who tried to break through the front door and set fire to the building.
The church’s pastor, Father Yousaf, said: “This is a reaction of the desecration of the Koran in Florida. Although the Catholic Church has officially condemned the incident and we have also displayed a banner outside the church condemning the incident, still the innocent people are facing the consequences.”

Pakistan has released official letters to the Vatican and to Interpol, beseeching both to take appropriate action and calling Jones a blot on the name of humanity.


The city of Dearborn, MI is hoping to dissuade Jones from a scheduled protest. A northern Michigan Militia group invited Jones to help protest outside of Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in North America.


Ethiopia: 

... Muslim extremists burned dozens of churches near Jimma town in the western Oromia region over the past several days. Even though the census show that about 60 % of the Ethiopia is Christian, still the sever reaction of the Muslim extremist couldn’t not be controlled or stopped.

More than 11 countries so far have condemned the Quran burning by Terry Jones: India, Bahrain, Indonesia, Pakistan, Britain, Canada, Malaysia, Lebanon, Germany, Vatican City, Kuwait. Note that they have condemned JONES and not the afghans who rioted.

WE ARE NOT ALONE

According to Examiner.com "Close to one million bloggers responded, providing reports, comments and analysis to these tragic events." Most of them are kinder than this writer by not attributing the violence entirely to Jones, but statements of "idiot" and "lunatic" abound. 

The matter of Jones' accountability, however, will be on everyone's mind in the weeks to come. It engenders the same angst we suffered during the Phelps vs. Snyder case and its treatment by the Supreme Court: freedom of speech vs. accountability. This time, however, people will suffer both emotional and physical anguish - including death - because one man chose to spurn humanity in deference to his own ego, an ego which was fostered and enlarged by a section of our religious society that did little to silence him.

Rules From The Manual of Phelpsian Publicity Followed By Reverend Terry Jones

He Got What He Wanted From Taking 

The Fabulous Fred Phelps Course

In Demagoguery And Publicity

UPDATE (2:15PM - PDT) The Reverend Terry Jones has just called off his "International Burn A Koran Day". Millions of people are relieved. Now, of course, pundits and preachers will keep him in the news for at least the next several days. Until he comes up with another "stunt" (as the President called it). 

UPDATE (7:15pm - PDT) The "stunt" might be on again, so Jones is  saying that it has been "suspended." It seems that he assumed he would be flown over to New York for a confab with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. He assumed wrong.

The analysis of this "stunt" should begin with comparisons to that master of insult and public outrage, Fed Phelps. And the parallels of Rev. Terry Jones To Fred Phelps are, well, scary: it's already been documented that Jones is, in a way, a student of Phelps. And now that his exploits in Germany have become national news fodder, Jones has the same international cache of a religious martinet and demigod that Phelps has cultivated all these years. And some say the pupil might have outdistanced his trainer:

The Pitch:

Civil War-mustachioed Florida preacher man Terry Jones backed off his plans to burn the Islamic religious text on Saturday. So, after calling out Jones for stealing their church's 2008 attention-grabbing ploy, Phelps-Roper and her kin are picking up where Jones left off.



"The false prophet Terry Jones caved--like all false prophets do, and like we told you he would," Phelps-Roper bragged.

Some might argue that Jones still has a way to go in emulating Phelps, but let's face it: Jones definitely got what he wanted - PUBLICITY. For better or worse, his number of followers has grown exponentially and some are even calling him a "hero." He's solidified his base. 

He'll probably get a book deal.

So what are some of the rules/advisories that Jones cadged from Phelps? I've laid out the obvious ones.

From The Manual Of Phelpsian Publicity:

1. Plan an outrageously insulting event, like book burning or protesting at military funerals.

2. Make people angry enough for them to do most of the publicity work for you. Having religious leaders scorn you is OK, but get some celebrities, too. Angelina Jolie, for example.

3. Site all sorts of insane reasons for your actions, but always end up blaming God. That's easily done by putting words in God's mouth, like "God hates fags."

4. Be consistent. When you've got a good thing going, keep doing it the same way all the time. It's called "branding."

5. Make sure those apostate relatives don't get to the media before you do, if at all. They tend to spoil things. If they say that you beat them when they were kids, tell the media that they're lying, shake your head and tell them how sad you are that your children have been led astray.

6. Memorize no more than a dozen passages of scripture that support you and your actions. Anything more is unnecessary. If you get hit with a difficult question, just make something up and cite an obscure book of the Bible like Hosea. Who reads the Bible anyway?

7. Be proud of your ignorance. When asked a complicated question, hold your head up high and tell them that the Lord hasn't given you an answer to that one...yet.

8. Use your family at all times, except, of course, the ones who've run away.

9. Maintain your core group in a compound. And since America always strains to believe the little guy, it's OK if the compound is made up of small houses or trailers. Million-dollar estates tend to put people off.

10. Have a phobia, any kind of phobia. America's full of phobias. Find one and stick with it.

11. Get ostracized  by another country. This is always good publicity - it shows that people think you have influence.

And last: 

12. Keep repeating all of the above until you reach the Supreme Court.

In Flagrante Delicto: Dangerously Stupid Bigotry In Action From Gainseville, Florida

"But in America, there is the freedom to be ignorant"

Today I looked up the definition of inflagrante delicto: it comes from Latin - "in a blazing offence" - from which we get the term "caught red-handed." So it may be it ironic that the act of burning a religious holy book has brought out the Christian Right's Islamophobia: it's been there all along, but this time it was caught in the act just as its homophobia was caught in the act with Fred Phelps' antics at Matthew Shepard's funeral. 

And while we might argue that anything associated with  Westboro Baptist Church would be discounted as in bad taste, an ally of the church - the Dove World Outreach Center of Gainesville, Fla, however, is trying to prove that bad taste can be deadly. In a news item that summarily falls into the WTF? category:

(CNN) -- The U.S. commander in Afghanistan on Monday criticized a Florida church's plan to burn copies of the Quran on September 11, warning the demonstration "could cause significant problems" for American troops overseas.

"It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort in Afghanistan," Gen. David Petraeus said in a statement issued Monday.

And to further solidify the proof of his idiocy, Pastor Jones of Dove World Outreach Center

...insists the event is "neither an act of love nor of hate," but a warning against what it calls the threats posed by Islam.

The website of Dove World Outreach Center (activew membership - 50) is a chilling affair, primatily because he so purposely demonizes Islam and the Christian Right's usual targets (the LGBT community and Obama, e.g.) referring to them all as "evil." The undertone of "destroy them before they destroy us"  is so prevalent that it renders his "neither an act of love nor hate" statement totally meaningless. He expounds on the "unbelivable cruelty" of radical Islam while negating the fact that his rhetoric will cause harm to Muslims in this country because, of course, there are no Muslims in America who are not part of radical Islam.

BTW: Jones boasts that he has never read the Quran.

There is, of course, a plethora of Christian leaders calling the proposed September 11th International Burn A Koran Day an abomination. The most insightful and glaring protests, however have come from the Gainesville, FL communities. One of them has a website to which people can affix their name to a petition.

From Please Don't Burn The Koran:

We the people of the City of Gainesville Florida, and others everywhere who support freedom of religion, sincerely request that the Dove World Outreach Center Church not proceed with their plans to burn the Koran on 9/11 or at any other time. Freedom of religion is a founding principle of our Constitution and the burning of any people's sacred texts is in direct opposition to this principle. If you proceed with your plans to burn the Koran, please understand that this act will not serve to lessen our respect for the Muslim faith, but will only serve to lessen our respect for you and what you are preaching.

This petition is now closed.

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Jones has refused all demands to stop the book burning.

CNN:

Jones canceled a planned appearance on CNN's "Rick's List" to discuss the controversy Monday afternoon. Plemon el-Amin, the imam of an Atlanta, Georgia, mosque, said that Jones' criticism of Islam is "really quite uninformed."

"But in America, there is the freedom to be ignorant," el-Amin said. "The only problem is in the world, many people don't understand that particular freedom. So what he is doing is like shouting fire in a theater, in a world theater, and people are upset."

Afghans burn an effigy of Dove World Outreach Center's pastor Terry Jones during a demonstration against the United States in Kabul, Afghanistan, Sept. 6, 2010. Hundreds of Afghans railed against the U.S. and called for President Barack Obama's death at a rally in the capital Monday to denounce the American church's plans to burn the Islamic holy book on 9/11.

PLemon el-Amin was being kind  when he used the word "uninformed." Jones' foolhardy attempt at "evangelism" eerily conjures up the Christian Right's desperate attempt to gain control in a "Christian Only" nation and in doing so, magnifies its unreasonable and rather brainless world view. For example, the website for Dove World Outreach Center lists TEN REASONS TO BURN A KORAN. With it, Jones ticks off a litany that is so parallel to extreme/radical Reconstructionist thought  that it seems to simply switch the words Islam with Right Wingnut Religion. 

 - The Koran teaches that Jesus Christ, the Crucified, Risen Son of God, King of Kings and Lord of Lords was NOT the Son of God, nor was he crucified (a well documented historical fact that ONLY Islam denies). Parenthetical expressions can effectively point out ingnorance: Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and dozens of other faiths do not recognize Christ. The Koran, however, is an Abrahamic faith which does recognize Christ as a prophet. Also, Christ's crucifixion is only documented in one source outside the Bible. 

- The Koran does not have an eternal origin. It is not recorded in heaven. The Almighty God, Creator of the World, is NOT it's source. It is not holy. It's writings are human in origin, a concoction of old and new teachings. Hmmm...a lot of people say that about the Bible. Some reknowned Bible scholars are probably weeping at this statement.

- The Koran's teaching includes Arabian idolatry, paganism, rites and rituals. I wonder what he thinks about Catholicism and its Mariolitry or Eastern Orthodox and its reverence for icons?

- The earliest writings that are known to exist about the Prophet Mohammad were recorded 120 years after his death. ... Maybe Mohammad never existed. The earliest known writing about Christ (besides Paul's which did not chronicle Christ's life) were written over 50 years after the crucifxion in a language Christ did not speak. Some people doubt he existed.

 - Mohammad's life and message cannot be respected. And, of course, no one has ever attempted to arrange Christ's life and words to suit their own agenda.

- Islamic Law is totalitarian in nature. There is no separation of church and state. It is irrational. It is supposedly immutable and cannot be changed. The outcry of  "No separation of Church and State" by the Christian Right has totally obliterated Jones' reasoning here and he looks the fool for even mentioning it.

 - Islam is not compatible with democracy and human rights. The notion of a moral individual capable of making decisions and taking responsibility for them does not exist in Islam. The attitude towards women in Islam as inferior possessions of men has led to countless cases of mistreatment and abuse... Jones has never been to a battered women's shelter. The abuse continues. The irony that Fundamentalists have a higher divorce rate than the rest of the country is apparently lost on him. The Southern Baptist Convention still struggles with the definition of a wife being subservient to her husband.

 - A Muslim does not have the right to change his religion. Apostasy is punishable by death. It's a good thing Roger Williams didn't die after being ostracized by the Puritans. Anyway,  I supposed Jones' point could be well taken in that today's non-Christian only faces  extreme discrimination. The Christian Right is, however, making headway in Africa/Uganda.

 - Deep in the Islamic teaching and culture is the irrational fear and loathing of the West. Deep in the Christian Right teaching and culture is the irrational fear and loathing of the Middle East.

- Islam is a weapon of Arab imperialism and Islamic colonialism. Wherever Islam has or gains political power, Christians, Jews and all non-Moslems receive persecution, discrimination, are forced to convert. History will always come back to haunt us: Native Americans were forced into slavery (by the good Franciscan priests of the California Missions) and Puritans killed off whole tribes because they wouldn't convert. 

The next days will be frought with tension as to who will side with whom or who will start distancing themselves from Rev. Jones and his little band of bigots.  We've been hearing from organizations like Family Research Council about "protecting" our troops from "homosexuality" but will they be silent about protecting our troops from one of their own? 


At least American Family Association's Bryan Fischer has the courage of his own stupidity: he defends Jones in a way that only a hardline anti-everyone Rightwingnut can.

When atheists and secularists like the minions of the ACLU, get the Bible banned from schools what do Christians do? They make phone calls, send emails, and go to court. What do Muslims do under similar circumstances? They start shooting and throwing bombs.

So now the Christian Right has been caught in flagrante dilecto in its fight for a "Christian Only Nation." 

Too bad that lives will be lost.