Pastor Terry Jones, head of the Dove World Outreach Center, a tiny 50-member Florida church, had threatened to burn the Muslim holy book on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks over plans to build an Islamic center near where militants brought down the World Trade Center nine years ago.
He flew to New York and appeared on NBC's "Today" show.
He says that his church's goal was "to expose that there is an element of Islam that is very dangerous and very radical." He tells NBC that "we have definitely accomplished that mission."
Jones on Friday insisted he would not proceed with a planned Qur’an burning ceremony if he’s able to meet Saturday with the organizers behind an Islamic cultural center planned near Ground Zero in New York.
But during his appearance on the NBC show, he said he was no longer insisting on a meeting with the imam leading the center but he hopes one will take place.
Jones' earlier announcement to burn the Qur'an as Americans commemorate the 9/11 attacks on the United States has sparked protests in many parts of the world.
US officials and mainstream church leaders have also come out to denounce the plan, with President Barack Obama warning that the pastors plan could cause “profound damage” to US troops and interests around the world.
The US military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, said that he was "very concerned" about potential repercussions that could endanger troops and “the overall effort in Afghanistan."
In Afghanistan, at least 11 people were injured Friday in protests. Police in the northern province of Badakhshan said several hundred demonstrators ran toward a NATO compound where four attackers and five police were injured in clashes. One protester was shot dead outside a German-run NATO base, a government spokesman said. Protesters also burned an American flag and an effigy of Jones after Friday prayers. In western Farah province, police said two people were injured in another protest.
Hundreds of protesters rallied in two Pakistani cities Friday, burning American flags and calling for the hanging of Jones, witnesses said.
A reporter in Multan said about 600 demonstrators — including clerics, political party workers and activists — held four protests in various parts of the central city of nearly four million people.
Protesters carried placards reading “Death to America” and “We will lay down our lives and will not allow desecration of the Holy Qur’an.”
At Multan’s Gulshan market, political activists from the Pakistan Muslim League (N) party of former Prime Minster Nawaz Sharif joined local traders in setting an American flag on fire.
In southern Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, about 300 people from Islamist political parties Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan held three rallies with placards that said the pastor responsible for the plan should be hanged. “Hang the pastor” and “Death to America” read the banners at the rally that later dispersed, a reporter said.
Protests also flared Friday in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.
Najib Razak, prime minister of Muslim-majority Malaysia, warned that a “single act of abhorrence” could “ignite the feelings of Muslims throughout the world, the consequences of which I fear would be very, very costly,” he told reporters.
Senegal’s President Abdoulaye Wade issued a statement calling it “an unacceptable offense to Muslims” and urged the international community to do more to combat Islamophobia.
In the Gaza Strip, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called Jones an “insane lunatic,” while Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his part said the plan to burn the Qur’an was a “Zionist plot” that would end up in the speedy “annihilation” of Israel.
Jones, a previously obscure 58-year-old fundamentalist pastor with slicked-back gray hair and a shaggy mustache, demands strict obedience and unpaid labor from his tiny flock and sells used furniture out of his sanctuary, those who know him say.
He was ejected from a church he headed in Germany by his own followers. Even his daughter says she believes he has lost his mind in his fanatical crusade against Islam.
His estranged daughter, Emma Jones, called the church a cult that forced obedience through “mental violence” and threats of God’s punishment. She said he ignored her e-mails urging him not to burn copies of the Holy Qur’an.
“I think he has gone mad,” she told Germany’s Spiegel Online.
