JUN 12, 2014, 10:00 AM
Dawud Walid: Quran burning pastor’s antics are kept alive by undue attention
Infamous Quran burning pastor Terry Jones is returning to Dearborn this Saturday to stir up some hoopla with more anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant chatter.
Jones is able to keep his antics up in part to undeserved attention that continues to be showered upon him. In fact, his public stature is a creation of undue attention.
His stunt of burning the Quran as a form of showing disgust with Islam deserved no attention to begin with. Ironically, the preferred way that Muslims discard a copy of the Quran is by burning it.
An irresponsible response by a very small number of Muslims outside of a few embassies abroad was due to an incorrect perception that America endorsed Jones’ plan. Jones’ shenanigans were simply icing on the cake for those who already had grievances against our government for drone attacks that kill civilians and support given to corrupt leaders in their lands.
Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Martin Dempsey calling Jones, basically begging him to cut out his buffoonery, simply empowered Jones, a man whose entire congregation left him.
Fast-forwarding a little, a couple of hundred Dearborn Muslims along with the provocative organizing group By Any Means Necessary (BAMN) protested Jones at two rallies outside of Dearborn City Hall. The Dearborn Police got into the act with an ill-advised attempt to block him from protesting outside of a local Islamic center. Jones received even more media attention in the process and rightly won a lawsuit against Dearborn for blocking his free speech rights.
Chalk up two more victories for Jones.
Since these events two years ago, Jones has been irrelevant here. Even those Muslims who protested him before wised up and ignored him when he came back last year. The only attention that he has received then and continues to garner now is from local media.
It’s probably wishful thinking, but I hope that media simply ignores the upcoming trip of Jones. If not this time, he definitely deserves no attention for any future trips. It’s media attention that keeps resurrecting this xenophobic Lazarus.
If Jones can simply be ignored, he will float away into the sea of irrelevancy like other attention-mongers who have come before.
