For Imam Muhammad Musri, watching the mobs in Afghanistan incited to violence last Friday by the burning of a Quran by Gainesville Pastor Terry Jones was like a nightmare come true. He feared it, he foresaw it, he felt helpless to prevent it.
This is what Musri thought he had prevented last fall when he persuaded Jones to drop his plans to burn the holy book of Islam on the anniversary of 9/11. Instead, it was just a delayed reaction when angered Afghans overran U.N. offices and killed seven civilians.
“Muslims are outraged, but there is nothing we can do. We fully understand who Terry Jones is. This guy is a nut job,” said Musri, president of the Islamic Society of Central Florida.
Orlando’s Muslim community felt sadness, helplessness and fear while watching from afar as extremists on both sides, Christian and Islam, put their worst behavior on display to confirm their worst opinions of each other. While Central Florida Muslims felt the Afghan mobs no more represented Islam than Jones represented Christianity, they worried about becoming victims of retaliation by Christian extremists.
“There was a great deal of fear that it might cause a backlash here. There is too much hatred in the air,” Musri said.
Those fears failed to materialize, said Imam Tariq Rasheed, director of the Islamic Center of Orlando.
“We have not received hate-filled emails or any phone calls like what happened after 9-11,” he said.
Rasheed said there was as much despair in the Muslim community for the loss of life in Afghanistan as there was outrage at Jones’ provocation, which was largely ignored by the mainstream media. Jones, however, was able to circumvent efforts to dismiss his actions by filming the event and posting a YouTube video that traveled around the world.
He was aided by Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, whose public denunciation nearly two weeks later of the Quran burning on March 20 spurred the mobs. While Jones absolves himself of all guilt — insisting the mobs proved his point that Muslims are violent in their hatred of Christians — Karzai deserves some of the responsibility, Musri said. Here was a politician who knew he could score points with his Islamic constituency by elevating the obscure actions of a publicity-seeking fringe preacher.
“I blame his irresponsible speech,” he said. “He knows his people.”
But Jones knew what he was doing, too, and what the likely effect would be. Musri said he warned Jones when the pastor announced plans to burn the Quran on the anniversary of 9-11 that such an act would provoke violence that would endanger the lives of Americans abroad.
“He said he didn’t care,” Musri said.
Jones was dissuaded by Musri and pressure from leaders from President Obama to Pope Benedict XVI to drop his plans last fall. Seven months later, when no one was looking, he went ahead and burned the Quran after staging a mock trial of Islam on charges of inciting “murder, rape and terrorist activities.”
Musri predicts Jones isn’t finished inciting Christians against Muslims and Muslims against Christians.
“The guy is not stopping,” he said. “He wants to come across as a leader, as a spokesperson for Christians in America.”