Planned 9-11 Koran burning scrapped (From Ealing Times)

Planned 9-11 Koran burning scrapped

10:15pm Thursday 9th September 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
•  

The pastor who planned an "International Burn-a-Koran Day" on September 11 has called off the protest after his plans were widely condemned.

Foreign Secretary William Hague was among those who condemned Pastor Terry Jones, who leads a tiny Florida church, describing his plan as "selfish and provocative in the extreme".

Mr Jones said he had called off the book-burning after he agreed to meet the imam of a proposed mosque in New York, close to the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks.

He claimed the imam had agreed to change the location of the mosque.

"Our thought was, the American people do not as a whole want the mosque at the Ground Zero location, that if they were willing to either cancel the mosque at the Ground Zero location or if they were willing to move that location, if they were willing to move it away from that location, we would consider that a sign from God," he said.

Mr Jones said he would accompany a local imam to New York on Saturday to meet Imam Rauf.

"He has agreed to move the location. That of course cannot happen overnight but he has agreed to move that," he said. "The American people do not want the mosque there and of course Muslims do not want us to burn the Koran. The imam has agreed to move the mosque. We have agreed to cancel our event on Saturday and on Saturday I will be flying up there to meet with him."

Imam Muhammed Musri, head of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, said he would be travelling with Mr Jones to New York.

He told reporters: "Because I, like many Americans, Muslims or not, feel that the placement of a mosque near the Ground Zero location is unnecessary and it has become a clear provocation to many people to be violent against mosques across the nation, I have made this morning contact with the office of the Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and got the commitment to fly up to New York and meet with him in the company of Pastor Jones."

But BBC News 24 reported the developers of the Ground Zero site had said in a statement that there were no plans to move the mosque.