The Quran-Burning Pastor, Jailed!

This story was reported in collaboration with Jessica Carreras from Dearborn's Patch.com.
Last month, the pastor of a tiny church in Florida dressed up in a judge's robes and held a mock trial in which he pronounced a death sentence upon the Quran, an order he then carried out using kerosene and a barbecue lighter. News of his deed spread to Afghanistan, where thousands rioted during two days of protests that left 21 people dead, including 7 U.N. workers.
This week, Terry Jones, 59, went back to court -- a real court this time, in Michigan's 19th District. He'd come to Dearborn, a city with a large Muslim population, to demonstrate what he described as "the rise of Sharia law." The plan: Stage a rally outside the Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in the United States.
On Thursday, Judge Mark Somers summoned Jones and a supporter named Wayne Sapp to the courthouse in response to a Wayne County prosecutor, whose office warned a protest in front of the mosque could "incite a riot." A jury determined the following day that the demonstration would likely "breach the peace," and Judge Somers ordered the men to stay away from the mosque for three years and pay a nominal $1 bond. Jones and Sapp initially refused to pay the bond and were briefly jailed.
Although the protest Jones organized figured to be sparsely attended -- at one point he said he expected only five participants -- the news of his plan triggered a huge reaction from locals opposed to him and sympathetic to the mosque.
Hundreds gathered at the Islamic Center on Thursday night for what was described as an interfaith rally against the Jones protest. An Episcopal bishop led a prayer, and about a dozen religious leaders from nearly as many faiths and sects led the crowd out of the mosque in silence. Participants stood outside for about ten minutes with their hands joined, no one talking. The religious leaders posed for photos with their arms interlocked.
Dearborn Mayor John O'Reilly Jr. attended the event after writing an open letter to Jones that read, "You are coming to protest against an imaginary threat that doesn't exist in our community."

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Will you stop it already?  You’re going to mess around and get more people killed.  So now you’re going to stage a rally in front of the largest mosque in America.  You dressed up in a judge’s robe and pronounced the death sentence for the Quran.  You also pronounced the death sentence for 21 people in Afghanistan whom you didn’t even know.  You must feel very important Mr. Jones. 

I don’t understand the thinking of Terry Jones and others like him; say Fred Phelps.  (Westboro Baptist Church) How people who profess to walk in the light of God can so easily and unabashedly bring harm to others is beyond my humble comprehension.  There appears to be a larger more ominous power at work here.

Can the need for public attention be at the root of this?  Are their convictions about what they are doing so strong, that they throw all caution to the side and act, even when it hurts others emotionally and physically? 

I hope it’s not the attention they’re after, but for some reason, I suspect that it is.  This kind of selfish indulgence and self importance is; in my mind, delusional.  Does anyone really care what the Phelps family has against homosexual military personnel?  Do we care that Terry Jones has a vendetta against the Quran?  Of course we don’t.  Sure we all have our own views about these two topics, but what motivates someone to act out the way these two men do, when they know it will bring harm to others?  My conclusion; it’s more about the self gratification rather than the causes they portend to champion. 

Fred Phelps, and Terry Jones; go home!  Go home and preach to your hate filled congregations, whatever it is that you choose to preach, but stay out of the public eye.  You’re causing harm with your ignorant self-promotion, and it’s not right.