Copyright by John T. Reed

Nobody ever heard of of Terry Jones. He claims to be the pastor of Dove World Outreach Center, which reportedly has 50 members, in Gainesville, FL. But the whole world knows about him now because he is doing a publicity stunt, namely burning Korans on the ninth anniversary of 9/11 and the news media, which would cover rather than prevent, the murder of its own mother, eagerly publicized Jones’ plan.

Predictably, the Muslim world is outraged. They are easily outraged.

Burning flags and books and Bibles is nothing but free speech in most countries and is used by the arsonists to provoke enemies and attract attention to themselves. In the advanced countries, we long ago learned to ignore such nonsense.

There is a legal doctrine called “fighting words.” Before I wrote this article, I thought fighting words went out with the cowboy and indian days. I was wrong. The doctrine was upheld 9-0 by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1942 and still is valid.

In a 1969 case, the Court said ‘mere offensiveness does not qualify as "fighting words".’ That would appear to apply to the Koran burning.

Inciting violence is the key element of the crime, but it appears to only cover the speaker inciting violence against others. Pissing others off to the point that they engage in violence against the provocateur would appear to be on the people who reacted to the speech in question with road rage. When Nazis wanted to marc through predominantly Jewish Skokie, IL, a Holocaust survivor there told the court he was not sure he could restrain himself from violence if the Nazis did the parade. In essence, the Supreme Court told him he’d better restrain himself by finding in favor of the Nazis.

For example, if Muslims in Detroit or wherever riot in response to Jones’ Koran burning, they go to jail and Jones does not even get a traffic ticket.

No injunction to prevent the Koran burning is possible because it would be prior restraint which is all but impossible to get in the U.S.

In other words Jones can burn his Korans and no one has any legal right to do anything about it.

Petraeus, Obama, Clinton

In response to Jones’ promise, Afghanistan commander General David Petraeus expressed concern that the Koran burning would hurt his efforts to win over Muslims. Obama and Hillary Clinton said it would be recruitment bonanza for al-Qaeda and would endanger Americans.

None of them would say any such thing if some Muslim somewhere with 50 followers said he would going to burn Bibles. They certainly would not have said such an act would be a recruitment bonanza for the Klan or endanger Muslims. That’s because the non-Muslim world is grown up about such publicity stunts and the Muslim world insists on acting like children or 7th century time machine visitors to the 21st century.

It is okay for Americans to point out to Muslims that Jones is atypical and just trying to attract attention to his heretofore un-noteworthy life. But that’s it. As Jones rightly points out, the blame for any resulting violence needs to fall on its perpetrators, violent Muslims, and that the U.S. should warn any who threaten violence that appropriate action will be taken by the U.S. if any U.S. citizens or property are harmed.

Bill O’Reilly correctly points out that Obama has been quick to get involved in both the Ground Zero Mosque and Koran-burning incidents on the side of Muslims but never showed any interest in the multiple incidents involving the Westboro Baptist Church trying to hurt the feelings of friends and relatives of American soldiers killed in action at their funerals. The glib answer would be that’s because Obama is a Musilm and never served in or even liked the military. The more accurate answer would be what I said in my Is Obama a Muslim? aricle. I think he really doesn’t give a shit about any religion including the Christian one he professes to believe in or the Muslim one he is suspiciously friendly to. I think he sucks up to Muslims because they are the official religion of the militant black movement like Kwanzaa is the official black holiday for December (Christianity and Christmas being rejected since the mid 1960s as being slave owner stuff). By speaking out on behalf of Muslims, Obama hopes to impress the world’s blacks that he is a real black man.

As O’Reilly suggests, the President defends the Muslims real quick but doesn’t give a damn about the families of U.S. soldiers being subjected to far more than “insensitivity.”

The problem is not Jones. We have 309 million people in this country—no doubt an endless supply of Jonesesque provocateurs and our laws prevent us from doing anything about them. Informed Muslims know Jones does not represent the American people. They need to tell their ignorant brethren that and deter violent reaction to Jones.

If the Muslim world misbehaves in response to Jones’ burning, we have to deal with it.

The problem is not Jones. There will always be people like him around. It is those who believe they are entitled to murder and destroy because of arcane and childish interpretations of their religion—like what they did on the original 9/11 which was followed by their dancing in their streets to celebrate it.

Very simply, the U.S. officials condemning Jones and expressing concern about violence in the Muslim world are thereby enabling that violence and encouraging it. They are also explicitly stating that they are intimidated by threats of Muslim violence to the point that they will behave as if Muslim law, not the U.S. Constitution, ruled the U.S.

FBI agents even went to see Jones to talk him out of burning the Koran.

That conversation should have gone like this:

Jones: You guys are law enforcement right?

FBI: Yes.

Jones: So what U.S. federal law are you here to enforce?

FBI: stutter stammer

Jones: Do you suspect that I have violated a federal law?

FBI: stutter stammer

Jones: Are you here because of my plan to burn a Koran on 9/11?

FBI: Yes.

Jones: Will that violate the law?

FBI: No.

Jones: Last chance. What U.S. federal law are you here to enforce?

FBI: stutter stammer

Jones: Then end this unconstitutional atempt to intimidate me from violating sharia law now and get your sorry asses off my property. Take your FBI badges and loaded guns with you.

I expect Obama told Holder to send the FBI to do this. The FBI agents should have refused. No such moral courage appears to exist in the FBI or U.S. government anymore. I do not recall Obama sending the FBI to talk to the Westboro Baptist Church or any American flag burners. Not that he should. What he should do is not send the FBI to intimidate anyone out of exercising their free speech rights. Sending them to Jones but not Westboro demonstrates a pro-Muslim anti-soldier bias on Obama’s part.

Jones is a jerk. The media who eagerly “paid him off” by giving him the publicity bonanza he sought are worse. The U.S. government has no right to say anything other than:

1. Jones does not represent anyone but maybe his 50 followers and
2. illegal acts against the U.S. will be responded to appropriately.

If Petraeus cannot accomplish his mission unless the U.S. adopts, tacitly or explicitly, sharia law regarding our many Terry Joneses—which may be the case—then the U.S. troops should come home.

Imam Rauf of Ground Zero Mosque fame said on Larry King Live on 9/8/10 that if he does not get his way on the Manhattan mosque, Muslims around the world may attack Americans. This is blatant blackmail and it encourages those Muslims to do just that, attack Americans. We started down this road when we let the Muslims intimidate us out of printing cartoons about Mohammed. Once they saw how easy it was to intimidate us, they started increasing the number of blackmail attempts and their severity. This will only stop when we start doing things like printing those cartoons, burning those Korans, and otherwise making it clear to the Muslim world that we will not allow them to impose sharia law on the non-Muslim world by their thugs-for-allah act.

Let the word go forth that the U.S. will not be intimidated by Muslim threats of violence. And tell the citizens of the U.S. that the Muslim world is not a safe place for Americans if it goes that way. We cannot allow a bunch of thugs claiming to act on religious impulse to intimidate the developed world. As soon as they can, they will add rattling their new nukes at us. We cannot go down the road of letting them profit from threatening us with violence.