Under fire Florida pastor Terry Jones has backed down on his plans to burn 200 copies of the Qur’an.
Jones said his flock had consulted God in prayer and that the conditions had been correct to cancel the burning of the holy book. “This idea we put out in prayer to God. That if he would want us to call this off, if we have accomplished our goal, then our thought was the American people do not as a whole want the mosque at the Ground Zero location,” he said in a statement.
“That if they were willing to either cancel the mosque at the Ground Zero location, or if they were willing to move it away from that location, we would consider that a sign from God.”
Jones claims that the Islamic cleric Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has agreed to back down from establishing a faith-based centre near “Ground Zero” in New York, the scene of the horrific September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the city. He said this allowed him to call off the symbolic burning of copies of the Qur’an.