Constitutional Law

Plan to burn Quran at church draws outrage

By By The Associated Press,
First Amendment Cente

MIAMI ? Florida pastor Terry Jones will undoubtedly offend and infuriate many people around the world if he follows through on a plan to burn Muslim Qurans at his church this weekend.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution will protect him, in the same way it allows the Ku Klux Klan to burn crosses and for protesters to torch the American flag.

The U.S. Supreme Court has made clear in several landmark rulings that speech deemed offensive to many people, even a majority, cannot be suppressed by the government unless it is clearly directed to intimidate someone or incite violence, legal experts said.

"Are you just saying something or are you trying to incite violence? That kind of becomes the dividing line," said Ruthann Robson, a constitutional law professor at West Virginia University. "You can speak, and express an opinion, and do it in a symbolic way by burning something, but you can't do it in a way that would incite violence."

The incitement exception comes from the U.S. Supreme Court?s decision in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), where the Court held that a Ku Klux Klan?s leader?s speech did not incite violence. The opinion said that ?the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.?

Jones, 58, pastor of about 50 followers at Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, has drawn condemnation from the White House, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, the Vatican, Muslim groups, military veterans and interfaith religious organizations for his plan to burn Qurans this Saturday, Sept. 11, on the ninth anniversary of the 2001 terror attacks.

Jones remains undeterred, saying he wants to dramatically emphasize his belief that the Quran is evil because it promotes violence and radicalism. "We are still determined to it, yes," Jones told the "CBS Early Show."

Muslims consider the Quran the sacred word of God and insist it be treated with the utmost respect, along with any printed material containing its verses or the name of Allah or the Prophet Muhammad.

Yet under U.S. court decisions, burning Qurans to make a point probably isn't illegal.

In one applicable Supreme Court ruling, Texas v. Johnson (1989), the justices struck down laws in Texas and 47 other states that prohibited desecration of the U.S. flag. That case grew out of flag-burning by otherwise nonviolent demonstrators outside the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas.

In that 5-4 decision, Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority: "If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."

Steven Schwinn, law professor at the University of Chicago, said any law that attempted to prohibit Jones from burning the Qurans would likewise be deemed unconstitutional.

"When the government is in the business of suppressing speech, even in the form of action, the regulation is likely to be overturned if it's content-based," Schwinn said.

In another key case in 2003, Virginia v. Black, the Supreme Court invalidated Virginia's law against cross-burning because it did not include a crucial component: whether the KKK intended to intimidate someone by burning the cross.

The Virginia law was so broad, the justices determined, that it would allow authorities to "arrest, prosecute and convict a person based solely on the fact of cross burning itself. As so interpreted, it would create an unacceptable risk of the suppression of ideas."

"The First Amendment does not permit such a shortcut," the justices added.

One wild card in Jones' plan is his failure to obtain a fire permit from local officials. Jones has said he plans to stage his bonfire anyway, and authorities said yesterday he would likely only be issued a citation for the violation unless the fire got out of hand.

Constitutional experts said the First Amendment's free-speech protections would not apply to a violation of local regulations, so long as the regulations do not single out a specific kind of conduct.

"Denying him the permit had nothing to do with the content of his speech and enforcement of the law presumably has nothing to do with the content of his speech," said Lyrissa Lidsky, a professor at the nearby University of Florida College of Law. "If I set a bonfire in my front yard here in Gainesville, presumably they would do the same thing."

Jones says he has received more than 100 death threats and has started wearing a .40-caliber pistol strapped to his hip since announcing his plan to burn the holy book on what he has called "International Burn-a-Quran Day."

Supporters have been mailing copies of the holy text to his Gainesville church to be incinerated in a bonfire.

Gen. David Petraeus took the rare step of stating a position as a military leader on a domestic matter when he warned in an e-mail to the Associated Press that "images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan ? and around the world ? to inflame public opinion and incite violence."

Gen. Ray Odierno, the former top commander in Iraq, said today he feared extremists would use the incident to sow hatred against U.S. troops overseas. "This feeds right into what they want," Odierno said on NBC's "Today Show." Odierno now heads of U.S. Joint Forces Command.

Jones responded to the AP that he was also concerned but was "wondering, When do we stop? ... How much do we back down? How many times do we back down?"

He added, "Instead of us backing down, maybe it's time to stand up. Maybe it's time to send a message to radical Islam that we will not tolerate their behavior."

Although Jones refused to cancel the protest, he said he was still praying about it.

Jones gained some local notoriety last year when he posted signs in front of his church declaring "Islam is of the Devil." But his Quran-burning idea attracted wider attention. It drew rebukes from Muslim nations and at home as an emotional debate was taking shape over the proposed Islamic center near the ground zero site of the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York.

The Vatican today denounced the planned Quran-burning as "outrageous and grave."

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder during a meeting yesterday with religious leaders to discuss recent attacks on Muslims and mosques around the U.S. called the planned burning idiotic and dangerous, according to the Justice Department.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton added her disapproval at a dinner in observance of Iftar, the breaking of the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

"I am heartened by the clear, unequivocal condemnation of this disrespectful, disgraceful act that has come from American religious leaders of all faiths," Clinton said.

David Axelrod, senior adviser to President Barack Obama, told CNN this morning: "The reverend may have the right to do what he's doing but it's not right. It's not consistent with our values ... I hope that his conscience and his good sense will take hold."

New York Mayor Mayor Michael Bloomberg, however, said yesterday that although the book-burning demonstration would be "distasteful," the minister had the right to do it.

"In a strange way, I'm here to defend his right to do that. I happen to think that it is distasteful. I don't think he would like it if somebody burned a book that in his religion he thinks is holy," the mayor said after a news conference about the progress of the reconstruction at the World Trade Center site.

The mayor emphasized that Jones' planned act was protected by free speech rights. "We can't say that we're going to apply the First Amendment to only those cases where we are in agreement."

In recent weeks, the mayor has been defending the rights of Muslims to build a house of worship about two blocks north of the site of the attacks led by Islamist extremists that destroyed the World Trade Center and killed nearly 2,800 people.

Local Gainesville religious leaders criticized Jones. At least two dozen Christian churches, Jewish temples and Muslim organizations in the city have mobilized to plan events ? some will read from the Quran at their own weekend services. A student group is organizing a protest across the street from the church on Sept. 11.

Gainesville's new mayor, Craig Lowe, who during his campaign became the target of a Jones-led protest because he is openly gay, has declared Sept. 11 Interfaith Solidarity Day in the city.

Jones dismisses the response of the other churches as "cowardly."

In Afghanistan, Jones' planned burning provoked outrage.

"It is the duty of Muslims to react," said Mohammad Mukhtar, a cleric and candidate for the Afghan parliament in the Sept. 18 election. "When their holy book Quran gets burned in public, then there is nothing left. If this happens, I think the first and most important reaction will be that wherever Americans are seen, they will be killed. No matter where they will be in the world they will be killed."

Kabul resident, Rajab Ali said, "If this (burning of the Quran) happens there will be chaos in Afghanistan and being a Muslim, if we don't defend the Quran then what else we can do?"

The Quran, according to Jones, is "evil" because it espouses something other than biblical truth and incites radical, violent behavior among Muslims.

Jones' Dove Outreach Center is independent of any denomination. It follows the Pentecostal tradition, which teaches that the Holy Spirit can manifest itself in the modern day. Pentecostals often view themselves as engaged in spiritual warfare against satanic forces.

The world's leading Sunni Muslim institution of learning, Al-Azhar University in Egypt, accused the church of stirring up hate and discrimination, and called on other American churches speak out against it.

Last month, Indonesian Muslims demonstrated outside the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, threatening violence if Jones goes through with it.

Full post as published by First Amendment Center on September 07, 2010 (boomark / email).