Terry Jones, Pastor Who Threatened to Burn the Koran, Banned From U.K.

LONDON -- He was the small-town preacher who nearly brought the world to a standstill when he planned a mass burning of the Koran on the anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Now, Pastor Terry Jones is back in the news: The British government says he is banned from entering the U.K.

Jones had accepted an invitation to speak next month to England Is Ours, a fringe anti-Islamic group with ties to the anti-immigrant British National Party. He was due to address protesters at a series of demonstrations against the expansion of Islam and the construction of mosques in the U.K.

But in a highly unusual move, British Home Secretary Theresa May put a stop to his visit. The home secretary has the power to exclude or deport anyone whose presence in the U.K. could threaten national security, public order or the safety of citizens, or if the person's views are deemed to glorify terrorism, promote violence or encourage other serious crimes.

After reviewing Jones' rhetoric, May concluded that he did indeed pose a security threat. As a Home Office spokesman put it: "The government opposes extremism in all its forms, which is why we have excluded pastor Terry Jones from the U.K. . . . Coming to the U.K. is a privilege, not a right, and we are not willing to allow entry to those whose presence is not conducive to the public good."

A letter from the Home Office was sent by courier Wednesday to the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., where Jones preaches. According to Wayne Sapp, the church's assistant pastor, the letter said that Jones' views could "foster hatred that might lead to inter-community violence in the U.K."

Jones -- who vows to appeal the ban -- disagrees. "I have done a countless number of interviews, and in those I have stated and assured the media and British government we have no intention of doing anything against British law." He added: "We are not against Muslims, we are not against Islam. We welcome Muslims and have only spoken out against the radical element of Islam."

Sapp echoed this, saying that any risk of "disruption" is "pure speculation because we have never had any violence at any of our events."

But the last time another far-right British group organized an anti-Islam march, 250 of their supporters went on a rampage through a South Asian neighborhood in the town of Luton. Shop windows were smashed, cars overturned and a number of people were attacked.

There's also the possibility that Jones' visit could ignite a wave of counter-violence by pro-Islam groups. At the height of the controversy over Jones' threat to burn the Koran, effigies of the pastor were burned in Afghanistan and there was widespread condemnation across the Muslim world. (President Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus all urged Jones not to engage in the provocative act, with Petraeus saying it could endanger U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Americans worldwide.)

Anti-immigrant -- and, in particular, anti-Islamic -- sentiment was rife in Europe throughout the summer and fall. In December, an Iraqi-born Swede set off a car bomb in the Swedish capital of Stockholm before killing himself with a second bomb strapped to his body. In the course of the investigation, it emerged that the man had studied and lived in Luton, a town with a large Muslim population that has become synonymous with Islamic extremism in the minds of many Brits.

Ironically, the same day that news of the Jones ban hit the British press, the Conservative Party chairman, Sayeeda Warsi, made a speech about the extent of prejudice against Muslims in the U.K. Warsi is the first Muslim to sit in the British Cabinet. She said that Islamophobia has "passed the dinner-table test" and become widely socially acceptable in the U.K.

Meanwhile, a press release issued by Stand Up America -- which organizes rallies around the U.S. at which Jones speaks -- said the U.K. ban exemplifies the sabotage of basic human rights such as freedom of speech.

Taken together, these two developments signal that ban or no ban, Jones may just be the tip of the iceberg where this debate is concerned.

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