Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center on his "Braveheart" show.

The President has condemned it – so why is the Dove World Outreach Center going ahead with plans to burn the Koran?

Islam is a danger. That’s the message that the Dove World Outreach Center, a small church in Gainesville, Fla., wants to send by burning copies of the Muslim holy book, the Koran, on the eighth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Unsurprisingly, the decision has reaped criticism from virtually all corners – and succeeded in achieving a substantial amount of publicity for a small, obscure evangelical Christian church that also believes that abortion is murder and homosexuality is a sin.

Dove World’s pastor, Terry Jones, the author of a book entitled Islam is of the Devil and a man of serious facial hair, has said that even the hundreds of death threats he’s received won’t deter him from burning a book that he’s never actually read. In a blog posting on the church’s site, Dove World explained, “We are using this act to warn about the teaching and ideology of Islam, which we do hate as it is hateful. We do not hate any people, however. We love, as God loves, all the people in the world and we want them to come to a knowledge of the truth. To warn of danger and harm is a loving act. God is love and truth. If you know the truth it can set you free. The world is in bondage to the massive grip of the lies of Islam.” Burning the book, the church claimed in a later blog post, is an attempt to “shock the world into focus”.

It’s certainly worked, at least in one sense. President Barack Obama urged Jones to call off the book-burning, claiming that it would be a “recruitment bonanza” for Islamic militant groups. General David Petraeus, the US’s top commander in Afghanistan and author of the “hearts and minds” counter-insurgency strategy, warned that the church’s Burn a Koran day endangers the lives of American troops; already, the plan has prompted large-scale protests in Kabul and Jakarta. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced the Burn a Koran Day protest as “disrespectful” and “disgraceful”; Attorney General Eric Holder branded it “idiotic” and “dangerous”. The Miami Herald, in one of its leading editorials Tuesday, condemned the plan as the “worst example yet of anti-Muslim bigotry” and as a “publicity stunt” with “no redeeming virtue at all”.

The AP‘s report on protests in Kabul:

Even the “armed Christian militia”, Right Wing Extreme, that had originally been slated to “guard” the Koran-burning has pulled its support, declaring, “After much thought and prayer the organization’s leadership determined this event does not glorify GOD in way that leads the lost to Jesus Christ.”

But should anyone be paying any attention to Jones and his book-burning cohorts at all – is it simply pouring oil on a small smouldering fire? “Everybody is talking about them and the pastor of this sect is being interviewed everywhere,” wrote blogger Jone Reynolds at The Daily Voice. “It makes me sick that bad behavior in our society is rewarded.”

In any case, legally stopping the church’s gleeful book-burning is out of the question – as Tunku Varadarajan pointed out on The Daily Beast, Jones and company do have the right to burn the Koran, regardless of international opprobrium. But that sheds an interesting light on the other issue of anti-Muslim prejudice bedeviling the US, that of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque. “Will people who object to this pastor’s plans as offensive or incendiary feel placated if some pundit tells them that the man has a ‘right’ (constitutional, no less) to torch his lot of Qurans?” Varadarajan asked. “If not, they should feel some sympathy for those people who believe that the building of a mosque near ground zero, though constitutionally protected, is not a great idea—being, to them, offensive and perhaps incendiary.”