Terry Jones poses in his office, which is papered with shooting-target and Braveheart posters, at the Dove World Outreach Center
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Although Jones has every First Amendment right to burn books, Lowe says city officials hope to persuade him to call off the Koran conflagration, which Jones insists on carrying out even though the Gainesville Fire Department has refused him a permit. This week Jones said that he and his congregation were "praying" over the statement of General David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, who warned that "images of the burning of a Koran would undoubtedly be used by extremists ... to inflame public opinion and incite violence." Christian leaders across the U.S., among them conservative Evangelicals, have condemned Jones' plan; his property insurer has canceled the Dove center's coverage and the North Carolina bank that holds the church's mortgage is demanding repayment of the $140,000 balance.
But Jones, 58, who is packing a pistol because of death threats he claims he's received, told CBS's Early Show on Wednesday morning that he is "still determined to do it" and send a message to "radical Islam" that it can't "push their agenda upon us." Jones, a bushy-mustached Missouri native who until a couple of years ago also ran the Dove's sister church in Germany, has written a pamphlet titled "Islam Is of the Devil." It's the same message he and his congregants have painted on signs that they plant alongside Gainesville roads and on T-shirts that they love to parade around the UF campus. He's also endorsed the anti-gay crusade of Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, whose members stage protests at the funerals of U.S. service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. (The WBC says the deaths of these soldiers is punishment from God for the U.S.'s condoning homosexuality.)
Such is the sad ignorance that Gainesville and the rest of the country are having to deal with this week. Jones admits he's never even opened a Koran — and doesn't know, therefore, that if he did, he'd find out he's about to burn a text that mentions Jesus Christ in reverential tones almost 100 times. Although Muslims don't believe that Jesus was God incarnate, as Christians do, they venerate him as a prophet and "believe in his miracles," says ibn Ali. But Jones is no theological heavyweight. In fact, Dove's standing as a tax-exempt religious institution is under investigation by Alachua County officials because of accusations by former church members that Jones and his wife require congregants to work for free at his for-profit company, which sells furniture on eBay. (The Joneses deny the charge.)
An equally pathetic facet of this exhibition is that if extremist Muslims do respond with violent or even terrorist acts — which will of course only prove them no worthier of being called true Muslims than Jones is worthy of being called a true Christian — the pastor will no doubt claim that as evidence that he was right all along. But as soon as the first match is struck on Saturday, communities like Gainesville will confirm that they were right all along to move beyond the likes of Jones. And they might also conclude that the residents of enlightened cities like New York aren't always such tolerant examples themselves.