BURNING THE KORAN

THE damage has probably already been done. Terry Jones, the pastor of an obscure Christian sect in Gainesville, Florida, US, with a congregation of 50 people, says he intends to burn copies of the Holy Koran on Saturday -- 9/11.

Within hours a newspaper in Lebanon comments that his action could “start a fire of rage that could consume swathes of the globe.” That language might seem extreme were it not for the fact that General David Petraeus, the level-headed US commander in Afghanistan, has warned publicly that if Mr Jones goes ahead with his threat “it would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan and around the world to inflame public opinion and incite violence.”

In America, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has described Mr Jones' intentions as “disrespectful and disgraceful” and US churches of all faiths have joined to condemn his “disrespect for a sacred text”. Yet despite all such protestations there is plenty of evidence that the United States is currently experiencing a near-frenzy of anti-Muslim feeling which Terry Jones in his simplistic way symbolises. He says that burning the Koran will send a message to “radical Islam”. It will indeed, but he does not seem to realise -- nor do those who cheer him on -- that there is nothing in the Koran that supports the ideas and actions of radical Islam -- which, in any case, represents a tiny fraction of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims.