Florida preacher Terry Jones’s proposal for burning Korans, first floated in a mid-July Facebook posting, has touched off waves of angry comment on Islamist Web sites that are now calling for revenge against “crusader” forces everywhere.
“Ideas for revenge ranged from targeting Pastor Jones and his church, to targeting churches in the Muslim world, to Muslims participating in jihad in battlefields such as Afghanistan, Iraq, North Africa, Somalia, and Yemen” said the SITE Intelligence Group, a private organization that monitors jihadist Web sites.
“One jihadist posted a picture on the Shumukh al-Islam forum of a beheaded Pastor Jones, with words on the picture reading: ‘Punishment for whoever dares to transgress against the Book of Allah,’” SITE reported (pdf).
One of the jihadists sites called for terrorist attacks, referred to Jones’s plan, which he has since canceled, as “another example of the West insulting Islam and receiving only words of condemnation rather than physical retaliation,” SITE reported.
“Crusader terrorism is only turned away by jihadi terrorism,” the jihadist said.
Update: A Shiite insurgent faction in Iraq also threatened attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq if Jones's “International Burn a Koran Day” went ahead, SITE reported. The so-called League of the Righteous posted a statement on its Web site on Sept. 7 saying that if "the disgraced enemy...tries to subject the Holy Koran to harm, no matter if it is just one page or one letter from the holy book, we will reciprocate two-fold and we will work to turn their headquarters and bases in wounded Iraq into unbearable hell.”
Another jihadist Web site said that the West will continue to mock Islam “for as long as Muslims remain docile,” SITE said.
“A preacher like this who is worth nothing and has no value, threatens the Ummah of Islam with the most precious of what it has,” the jihadist wrote of Jones, saying “the solution is to shake the earth under the worshippers of the Cross anywhere in the world, because the infidel community is one and all agree with this act.”
Some commentators believe that the pastor’s proposals were secretly backed by the U.S. government to “check the pulse of Muslims,” as one put it.
“Another jihadist on the forum suggested that burning the Koran on September 11, 2010, is a U.S. plot to rally Muslims against al-Qaeda,” SITE reported.
U.S. troops and embassies were on high alert for possible violence.
In India, which has the world’s third-largest Muslim population, security forces were preparing for anti-Western and anti-Christian riots, a visitor to New Delhi told SpyTalk.
“Police checkpoints are on the major roads,” said the visitor, a former FBI official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Indian TV is doing extensive interviews of local Muslims and they all say they view [Jones] as a typical American and he represents our view of Muslims."
