Read the fascinating, bizarre and vaguely comic background of Pastor Terry Jones, the guy who wants to hold the Koran-burning festival down in Florida. Before he and his wife were expelled from Germany in 2008, he ran a charismatic church in Cologne for more than two decades. There he was in constant trouble for tax problems, accusations of being a cult, tragically failed faith healings. And it was there that he got increasingly involved in anti-Islamic rants. He also became the darling of Senate Republicans who claimed he was the victim of religious persecution in Germany. We’ve got the whole story here.
Pastor Terry Jones just announced on live cable news that he has canceled his Koran-burning plans. The reason? According to Jones, the organizers of the planned Park51 Muslim center have agreed to move their project farther away from the World Trade Center site. That is a sign from god, Jones said, and just the kind of sign he and his followers in Florida were looking for to cancel the Koran burning. No word yet from the Park51 people on whether any such agreement has been struck. Jones says he is heading up to NYC on Saturday to meet with the Park51 folks. Color me skeptical. More soon …
Christina Bellantoni interviews the local GOP candidate in Ohio who became an internet sensation overnight for his impassioned (perhaps unhinged is more apt) speech to the local Republican Party. Phil Davison concedes he didn’t even know what YouTube was before now.
Several news outlets are now reporting that the Park51 folks say there is no deal with Florida pastor Terry Jones to move the “Ground Zero Mosque” farther away from the World Trade Center site.
We’ll have more shortly, but if you listened closely to the Central Florida imam who appeared with Jones at his press conference a short time ago, he only spoke of having arranged a meeting in NYC with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the public face of the Park51 project. The Florida imam didn’t mention a deal to move the GZM.
I remember that time the President and Secretary of Defense had to intervene to prevent a fringe pastor in Florida from dragging the United States into a global religious war. Those were strange days.
From TPM Reader MA …
I remember being sent to monitor a tiny Ku Klux Klan rally in, of all places, Ann Arbor, when I was a stringer for the Detroit News in the early 1990s. Clearly they had chosen an avowedly liberal college town in the spirit of provocation in the hopes of getting some coverage. The editors told me that they didn’t want to give the KKK any free press, but I should show up in case anything newsworthy happened.
Not sure I’ve ever seen a political ad quite like it. Just take a look.
Radical Florida cleric says he’s “reconsidering” cancellation of Koran burning.
News network mainly responsible for whipping up anti-Muslim furor, Fox News, will take ‘high road’ and not broadcast actual Koran burning, if it happens.
Our Ryan Reilly catches up with Alan Keyes and gets his read on the Koran situation and finds out his secret plan to stop the Park51 community center and the Koran burning festival. Natural law is also in the mix. See the video.