Afghans in east protest against Quran burning

Imam Shamshad Nasir, an Ahmadiyya Muslim leader with Baitul Hamid Mosque in Chino, Calif., called Jones “a foolish pastor” but said his community “rejects any killing in the name of religion anywhere even if it is done in the name of the most sacred scriptures.”

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: USA Today | Tuscon
By William M. Welch | April 3, 2011

As deadly demonstrations spread across Afghanistan, American Muslim leaders condemned the violence as well as the Quran-burning by a fundamentalist Christian minister in Florida whose actions were cited as provocation for the killings.

“Clearly the Islamist agenda is to use any tidbit of information out of the West to try to paint America and the West as anti-Islam and anti-Muslim,” said M. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy.


He said the killings over the weekend in Mazar-i-Sharif and Kandahar were the result of extremist leaders using the burning of a Quran last month in Gainesville, Fla., as an excuse for violence.

Rev. Terry Jones, 59, who runs the Dove World Outreach Center, held a mock “trial” of the Muslim holy book and burned a copy on March 20. He had threatened to do so last fall, on the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but backed down.

His actions last month gained little initial notice in the USA until the violence erupted Friday. Thousands of demonstrators in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif overran a U.N. compound, killing seven. On Saturday, nine people were killed when hundreds marched in Kandahar, attacking cars and businesses and confronting security forces. Demonstrations continued Sunday in Jalalabad, and a police officer was killed in a second day of violence in Kandahar, the Associated Press reported.

Jones did not return phone calls seeking comment. One of his group’s websites, StandupAmerica.org, posted a statement by Fran Ingram responding to what she said were calls to the church suggesting “you have the blood of the U.N. workers on your hands.”

“The teaching of the Koran is to be blamed. The leaders of Islam who teach the violence and hatred it contains have blood on their hands,” she wrote. “Free speech. We still have that in America.”

Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim advocacy group, said Sunday that his group tried to ignore Jones because he has a tiny following and is not representative of mainstream American thought.

“We believe he’s just in the mode of pure publicity seeking,” Hooper said of Jones. “We’ve purposely downplayed it as much as possible.”

Hooper denounced the violence as “a completely inappropriate reaction” to the Florida preacher.

“Everybody has freedom of speech. In this case, even freedom to do stupid and reprehensible things. But everybody also has the responsibility to act in a way that doesn’t harm others or doesn’t lead to the harm of others,” Hooper said.

Imam Shamshad Nasir, an Ahmadiyya Muslim leader with Baitul Hamid Mosque in Chino, Calif., called Jones “a foolish pastor” but said his community “rejects any killing in the name of religion anywhere even if it is done in the name of the most sacred scriptures.”



Read original post here: Afghans in east protest against Quran burning