Burning 2,998 Qu’rans On 9/11

I hesitate to condemn Florida here but it seems like the craziest stuff keeps coming up there. Pastor Terry Jones, most well known for planning to burn a Qur’an in 2010 on the anniversary of 9/11, was at it again yesterday except this time he planned to burn 2,998 of them, one for every person that died in the attacks. He did manage to hold such a holy book burning ceremony last year even as he promoted an anti-Islam film called “The Innocence of Muslims.” Predictably, it was used an excuse for violence in several Middle Eastern countries but most notably was initially blamed by the Obama Administration for an attack on a CIA black ops site U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya that resulted in the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stephens and three other American citizens.

So, the guy’s an incredible bigot and a troublemaker. He’s been asked repeatedly not to burn Qur’ans because every time he does people die but this hasn’t stopped him. This time, however, citizens of the town of Mulberry, where his church has been operating, organized a counter demonstration of peaceful prayer. Jones was arrested as he went to burn the pile of Qur’ans on Tuesday and, on Wednesday, was charged with unlawful open carry of a firearm and having no registration for the trailer/BBQ pit he was towing…which was to be used to burn the actual Qur’ans.

Wondering why he wasn’t charged with something else? Well, that’s because it’s not illegal to almost burn a pile of holy books even if spending $28,121 (the cheapest I could find per copy on Amazon) ought to be illegal for being such a waste.

In 2011, when Jones was pushing the above film, he and six other Egyptian Copts, all living outside the US, were convicted by an Egyptian court for supporting the film and sentenced to death. So yeah, tolerance all around.