Gainesville Sun/Doug Finger
Gainesville, Florida evangelical Christian pastor Terry Jones made headlines worldwide last year for his threat to hold a public burning of the Koran. Faced with unrelenting pressure from the local community and global leaders, Jones backed off his scheduled torching of the Muslim holy book and settled for the publicity his failed stunt generated.
On Friday in Afghanistan, there was no such reprieve for at least twelve United Nations workers killed by a mob apparently stirred up to protest a new Koran burning by Jones that actually took place last month.
The incident started when Afghan civilians left Friday prayers and formed a large protest in the city of Mazari-I-Sharif to speak out against the March 20 burning of the Koran by Pastor Jones in Gainesville, an event that had received little attention until the chaos erupted today. UN workers were “hunted down” by the enraged crowd, and some were reportedly beheaded.
Stirred up by a trio of angry mullahs who urged them to avenge the burning of a Koran at Florida church, thousands of protesters overran the compound of the United Nations in this northern Afghan city, killing at least 12 people, Afghan and United Nations officials said.
The dead included at least seven United Nations workers — five Nepalese guards and two Europeans, one of them a woman. None were Americans. Early reports, later denied by Afghan officials, said at least two of the dead had been beheaded.
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Afghanistan, deeply religious and reflexively volatile, has long been one of the most reactive flashpoints to perceived insults against Islam. When a Danish cartoonist lampooned the Prophet Mohammed, four people were killed in riots in Afghanistan within days in 2006. The year before, a one-paragraph item in Newsweek alleging that guards in Guantanamo had flushed a Koran down the toilet sparked three days of riots that cost 14 lives in Afghanistan.
Friday’s incident began when three mullahs, addressing worshippers at Friday prayers inside the Blue Mosque here, one of Afghanistan’s holiest places, urged people to take to the streets to agitate for the arrest of Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who oversaw the burning of a Koran on March 20. Otherwise, said the most prominent of them, Mullah Mohammed Shah Adeli, Afghanistan should cut off relations with the United States. “Burning the Koran is an insult to Islam and those who committed it should be punished,” he said.
The crowd — some carrying signs reading “Down with America” and “Death to Obama” — poured into the streets and swelled — the governor of Balkh Province, Atta Mohammad Noor, later put the number at 20,000. According to Lal Mohammad Ahmadzai, spokesman for General Daoud Daoud, the Afghan National Police commander for northern Afghanistan, the crowd soon overwhelmed the United Nations guards, disarming some and beating and shooting others.
While the immediate flash point for the violence on Friday appeared to be the Koran incident, anger has been building in Afghanistan over the continued killings of civilians by U.S. and international troops. It was only a few days ago that reports came out that a group American forces openly murdered Afghan civilians and celebrated the deaths with gruesome videotapes.
Nevertheless, the protest over Jones and the new Koran burning echoed warnings from Gen. David Petraeus concerning the controversy last year. Petraeus publicly urged Jones not to go through with the burning, predicting in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that such an event would “endanger troops.”
Gen. David Petraeus said the Taliban would exploit the demonstration for propaganda purposes, drumming up anger toward the U.S. and making it harder for allied troops to carry out their mission of protecting Afghan civilians.
“It could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort,” Gen. Petraeus said in an interview. “It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community.”
Pastor Jones made no apologies for his actions in a statement, calling the Afghan incident as a “criminal action” and denouncing those that make “excuses” for “terrorist activities.”
Of course he had the right to burn the Quran, he also had the right to use his brain and not burn it. Rights come with the responsibility to respect the rights of other people, it’s not an invitation to do whatever you want without consequence. This so called pastor has some of these peoples blood on his hands.
I hope the pastor and his followers enjoy the blood on their hands.
I’m really concerned how each world will take these events and use them to issue blanket judgments of the other side, how Muslims will look on Pastor Jones’ burning and say “this is what the west thinks of Islam” and we, in turn, look on this outbreak of violence in Afghanistan to judge Muslims. Our conflicts are becoming so intertwined this might push people to justify continued violence between our two cultures. Very sad and scary.
What struck me in this morning’s news coverage of this event was the unanimity of “condemnation” of the violence of the Islamists, with such statements ranging from the offices of the E.U. and NATO, through “pastor” Jones himself and including President Obama. In none of these reports that I saw was this condemnation extended to denouncing the provocative book-burning act itself. I’m afraid that too many non-Muslims will accept Jones’ statement that the riots simply prove the truth of his assertion that the Koran is an “evil” book and that the Islamic religion is inherently violent.
Some nitwit burns a book in Florida, and 12 innocent people on the other side of the world are brutally murdered. Seems like quite an unreasonable response.
Doesn’t that actually validate Jones’ assertion that the Islamic religion is inherently violent?
Should we ban all book burning, or only Koran burning, since that seems to be the only form of book burning that incites actual mass murder?
Should we ban all political cartoons, or only Islamic-themed political cartoons, since they seem to be the only political cartoons that incite actual riots and death threats?
It is tragic that innocent people got killed by fanatic mobs in Afghanistan but Terry Jones knew what he was doing and should not be able to get away with it. This maniac should not go free. He is a criminal. He may not care about it or feel any responsibility and neither is he intelligent enough to understand this.
No, Khan, the uneducated, ignorant, backward, abusive Afghan thugs are the ones who should not be able “to get away with it.” They are the criminals and are probably the same Afghan thugs who murdered around the world following the Dutch cartoons. Radical Islam has an agenda to take over the world and impose Sharia law (if you do not know what is involved in this, research it) on all of us. As long as we avoid denouncing their behavior, the more far reaching their influence will be. Think about it, for centuries, the middle east was filled with Christians and Jews, who populates it now? Muslims, most of them radical. Jews are living along a very small strip of land and Christians are no where to be found. Make no mistake, they are gaining ground. Every woman (and every thinking man) should be afraid, very afraid and start taking steps to stop their radical agenda.