9/11 Koran-Burning Canceled

Update 9/10/10: Claiming that he was misled about Cordoba House being moved, Pastor Jones says that the book burning may still occur. 9/12/10: The Koran-burning remained canceled.

After President Barack Obama, leaders of religious leaders around the world, and even U.S. generals called for the cancellation of a Koran-burning event on 9/11 by the Christian Dove Outreach Center in Florida, Pastor Terry Jones has finally given in and announced today that he will not go forward with "International Burn a Koran Day."

However, Jones also threw news reporters for a loop by declaring that he had reached a deal with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to stop the Koran-burning in exchange for moving the planned Islamic community center, Cordoba House/Park51, to a spot further away from the site of the 9/11 attacks in New York. Rauf contradicted Jones' comments, saying that he has never spoken with the pastor and certainly didn't reach any such deal. Just yesterday, Rauf had an editorial in the New York Times explaining why he believes going forward with the project, which proceeds "with the support of the downtown community, government at all levels and leaders from across the religious spectrum, who will be our partners," is the right thing to do. No deal, Jones: Koran-burning is a gesture of hate, what President Obama tagged as a "stunt" antithetical to religious tolerance, while the planned community center is a multifaith initiative bent on promoting, not undermining, peaceful relations.

Unfortunately, though Jones canceled the event, Facebook never stepped up to uphold its own terms and conditions prohibiting hateful content, despite emails from close to a thousand Change.org members, so the "International Burn a Koran Day" fan page still reminds. The MIT Technology Review further questions why Google-owned YouTube failed to uphold its own policies against hate speech and take down videos posted by Pastor Jones, author of "Islam Is Of The Devil," despite the fact that hosting provider Rackspace pulled Jones' organizations' website due to hate content.

The opposition to the Koran-burning event included national security concerns from such high-ranking figures as Gen. David Petraeus, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who warned that it could cause a backlash from extremists which would put troops in danger. This followed on recent statements from an former FBI agent that hateful displays of religious intolerance help extremist recruitment by convincing Muslims abroad that we are indeed their enemy and want to take away their ability to practice their religion.

Whatever the national security consideration at stake here, I hope that American opposition to Koran-burning and support for Cordoba House more often stems from American values. The first constitutional principle enshrined in the Bill of Rights is religious freedom, and we uphold this by demonstrating tolerance and rejecting hate. In addition, Muslim-Americans who live in the United States are just as much Americans as anybody else and should not be wrongly equated with a few religious extremists. Whether they are immigrants who have taken America as their adopted country or American-born citizens, they deserve the same respect and recognition as part of this nation as anybody else. As fellow Americans, we should want them to feel safe and secure, which is undermined by hate acts and rhetoric that can lead to the stabbing of a cab driver in New York, or the arson of a mosque in Tennessee, or the bombing of a mosque in Florida.

If you are in New York and want the opportunity to stand in support of religious freedom, a peaceful candlelight vigil will be held tomorrow, September 10th, at the planned construction site of Cordoba House.

Photo credit: bortecristian