What Pastor Terry Jones can teach us about America

In the wake of Jones's aborted attempt to burn the Qur'an, pundits weigh in on how the whole strange saga relates to American society, and give some context on the book itself.

This weekend the world’s attention was captivated by a book, and that book was in the hand of Florida pastor Terry Jones. At the last minute, Jones called off his plans to burn copies of the Qur’an to mark the ninth anniversary of September 11, after international outcry, condemnations from the president and the head of the Iraq and Afghan wars, and a personal intervention from Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The Globe and Mail’s Christie Blatchford expresses some admiration for Jones, not as a man, but as “an absurd creation of the glorious freedoms that exist in America.” Jones “could happen only in America” because “in no other country in the world do regular people so value freedom of expression and freedom of speech.” Blatchford despairs that if a Canadian attempted what Jones did, “muscular threats likely would have come from the institutions of government and society” and heavy-handed human-rights commissions, police, or the courts would have put an end to his actions. We are, at heart, a “constrained, if not constipated, people.”

The Toronto Star’s Haroon Siddiqui gives us an education in his column, providing some context for the idea that the Qur’an promotes violence, an argument that’s become “an article of faith for critics of Islam post-9/11.” The holy book “sanctions war only for defensive purposes. Peace is the norm, not violence and warfare,” he writes, “Islamic tradition also holds that the ‘sword verses’ were, in fact, overtaken by others revealed later when peace prevailed between Muslims and non-Muslims. Thus the Qur’anic exhortations to avoid war altogether.”

The always dignified Rex Murphy laments in the National Post that the Jones fiasco is indication that “this war has taken on aspects that are fundamentally not serious.” In fact, “Why is anyone paying attention to this guy? He’s not a new version of Billy Graham or even Jerry Falwell … he’s a non-entity of a splinter church.” Murphy interprets Donald Trump’s offer to buy the Ground Zero mosque site as a sign of the impending “parody apocalypse.” The whole thing is “profoundly unserious … undignified and immensely off base,” he writes.