Pastor Terry Jones, back at it, but Koran-burning isn't the issue...

When I first wrote about Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who ignited a worldwide firestorm last year by threatening to burn the Koran, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, something for which a number of people took me to task. Although I don't think I was necessarily wrong to have done so at the time, his recent behavior does indeed reveal him to be a pathetic publicity-seeker who deserves just about as much notice as the U.S. press gave him this time around. His feeble assertion that he is not responsible for the deaths of nine UN staffers at the hands of outraged Afghan civilians ten days ago is technically true, but how he can live with himself, I don't know. The mullahs who incited the violence, after the Koran burning was publicized by our "ally" Hamid Karzai, are responsible, along with the murderers themselves, but the tool they used was Jones. If his actions were--in any way--necessary or important, then one might view him with less disdain, but they weren't.

No one has attempted to restrict his free speech rights, in his church or in public. He can, and presumably has been, expressing his views about Islam and the Koran to whoever will listen. He said, last year, that he would not burn the Koran--then or ever--but went back on his promise. That, alone, condemns him and his motives. He should be ashamed and contrite, not to mention distraught at the deaths of the UN staffers.

But, Jones is not the point. Most of us can see the difference between his desire to burn the Koran--ultimately an act that is as pointless as it is inflammatory, if you'll pardon the pun--and the desire, for instance, of Danish
cartoonists to publish their work. We can see that in the latter case, there is a clear 'slippery slope' in censoring the cartoonists or expecting them to censor themselves, in spite of the fact that offense will be caused and people might get killed.

But the radical mullahs and their followers do _not_ see that distinction, and never will, because our notions of freedom of speech and religion, not to mention separation of church and state, mean nothing to them, if they even understand them. The murders of the UN staffers were precipitated by three mullahs who urged worshipers at Friday prayers to take to the streets to agitate for Jones' arrest. Whether these particular mullahs were ignorant of the fact that Jones did not commit an arrestable offense under American law, or not, doesn't much matter. Our supposed partner in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, certainly knows he didn't, yet he chose to exploit the incident for political gain by publicizing Jones' actions instead of simply ignoring them, like the rest of the world. This is the same Karzai who recently said he is eager to reconcile with the Taliban.

What are we doing there? The most prominent of the mullahs who incited the murders, Mohammed Shah Adeli, said that if Jones isn't punished, Afghanistan should cut off relations with the United States. What a great idea! I know it's all about Pakistan, really, but I can't help but wish we would just shake the dust of that place off our boots and leave them to it.