Sharp criticism of the call by a Miami-based pastor to burn copies of the Holy Quran on the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks continued to pour in, with the presidents of Pakistan and the United States condemning the plan.
Also on Thursday, the website of the small church run by the pastor was taken offline by its host, due to its hate content.
President Asif Ali Zardari expressed grave concern over the plan spokesperson Farhatullah Babar said that the President took notice of the distressing reports and said that anyone who even thought of such a “despicable act must be suffering from a diseased mind and a sickly soul”.
He said it will inflame sentiments among Muslims throughout the world and cause irreparable damage to interfaith harmony and also to world peace. The President called for doing all that it takes to stop such a senseless and outrageous act.
The burning has been condemned by the leaders of several nations including President Barack Obama who said the plans to burn dozens of Qurans this weekend would be a “recruitment bonanza” for al Qaeda.
“You know, you could have serious violence in places like Pakistan or Afghanistan,” Obama told ABC television in an interview.
The church’s pastor, Terry Jones, has brushed aside global outrage and vowed to go ahead with the ceremony, at which hundreds of copies of Islam’s holy book will be burned, despite fears it will ignite a global wave of Islamic rage. However, he is reported to have said that he would possibly stop the event if approached by the White House.
The foreign ministry has also spoken out against the plan. “Pakistan strongly condemns and denounces the planned shameful burning of 200 copies of the Holy Quran by a small Florida Church on September 11,” foreign office spokesman Abdul Basit told a press briefing in Islamabad. “The government and the people of Pakistan including Christians are outraged at this planned act by a self-proclaimed pastor,” he said. Basit urged believers of all faiths to “strongly condemn this fanatic approach and oppose those, who in the name of freedom and liberty, are resorting to bigotry and undermining the work that has been done towards promoting interfaith harmony since 9/11”.
Meanwhile Jamaat-e-Islami has submitted an adjournment motion in the Senate on the issue and termed it a challenge for the whole Muslim Ummah.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik called on Interpol, the international police organisation, to stop the church from carrying out its plan to burn the Quran. Malik called the planned burning “a crime against humanity” and said that it falls under the category of an international crime since “it will inflict damage to the international peace and harmony.”
Dan Goodgame, a spokesman for the San Antonio, Texas-based web hosting firm Rackspace, told AFP that the evangelical Dove World Outreach Center church had, “violated the Offensive Content section of its Acceptable Use policy.”
The policy forbids content or links to material that is “excessively violent, incites violence, threatens violence, or contains harassing content or hate speech; and creates a risk to a person’s safety or health, creates a risk to public safety or health, compromises national security, or interferes with a investigation by law enforcement.”
It was no longer possible to access the site www.doveworld.org, which up until Wednesday had contained information on the church and the anti-Islamic preachings of its firebrand pastor, Reverend Terry Jones.
Other leaders from Pakistan as well as both the Muslim world and otherwise condemned the plan.
(With input from agencies)
Published in The Express Tribune, September 10th, 2010.
COMMENTS (3)
Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.
For more information, please see our Comments FAQ