Terry Jones

This page is about the Islamophobic bigot from Florida, not the nice man from Monty Python

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Terry Jones (1951–) is the love-child of Ron Paul and Hulk Hogan a nutty American Christian pastor and attention-seeking troll currently based in Florida. He was the head of a small Gainesville church, ironically called the "Dove World Outreach Center", until 2013. Jones and his church's main claim to fame is their threat to stage a mass burning of copies of the Qur'an to coincide with the anniversary of 9/11 attacks in 2010. The book-burning was condemned by other religious leaders in a rare show of unity, and Jones initially wussed out. Eventually, on March 20th, 2011, he went ahead and burned a Qur'an and posted it on the interweb. This set off a massive shitstorm that led to many deaths in Afghanistan, as pissed off Muslims at protests turned violent.

Expulsion from Germany[edit]

In 2009, he was expelled from a religious group in Germany, which he had run in a climate of "fear and control" (and, it seems, financial impropriety).^[1]

Book burning[edit]

The first Qur'an burners might have been Muslims themselves.^[2] This burning, however, had initially been planned to go ahead on September 11^th, 2010, coinciding with the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks but was canceled on the 9th after talks with Muhammad Musri of the Islamic Foundation of Central Florida. The rationale for canceling was an alleged agreement for moving the Park 51 site, although operators of that project have denied any knowledge of such an agreement.^[3] It later emerged that no such agreement was reached, and the situation degenerated into confusion and farce. Fred Phelps and several others then announced that they would stand in the gap for Jones and burn Korans if he didn't.^[4] By the time September 11^th came around, Jones' church was swamped with the media, and it became clear that the entire affair was turning into (if it wasn't from the start) a farcical publicity stunt, with many in the media wondering if it was even right to afford Jones the publicity in the first place.^[5]

An unbridled rage[edit]

On March 20, 2011, he fucking showed us, though. Dressed in judge robes, he held a mock trial against the Qur'an and, not surprisingly, found it guilty of some very bad things. He did not bother to have a mock appeals process: he immediately proceeded to burn the Qur'an. This was all streamed on the Internet with helpful Arabic subtitles.^[6] This caused shit to blow up in Afghanistan. Protesters in Afghanistan were whipped into a frenzy by Muslim extremists; rioting ensued. Five demonstrators and seven UN workers were killed in protests in Mazar-e Sharif and at least nine were killed and many more injured in Kandahar.^[7] Of course, none of the people killed by the protestors had anything to do with Terry Jones, his church, or any kind of book burning: they were innocent victims of religious extremism. Jones doesn't feel like he did anything over the top, though, and he is pondering putting Muhammad on trial.^[8]

Other creepy shit[edit]

In June 2012, he and his followers hung an effigy of Barack Obama in front of Dove World Outreach Center headquarters for all of the usual batshit crazy reasons. The irony of him doing so in a state where racially-motivated lynchings were once common probably didn't occur to him; that, or he simply doesn't give a shit.^[9] Later in early 2013, Jones set this effigy, along with an effigy of Bill Clinton, on fire, earning little attention except from the city of Gainesville, who cited the church for illegal burning.^[10]

In September 2012, he and a mysterious "Israeli real estate developer"/filmmaker purportedly named "Sam Bacile" (who turned out to actually be an Egyptian Christian Copt Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, notorious for drug convictions, tax evasion, and bank fraud)^[11] helped publicize a movie called Innocence of Muslims. The movie isn't much more than a collection of intentional slurs against Muhammad in particular and Islam in general. The release of a 14-minute YouTube clip had predictable results, namely violent demonstrations across the Middle East. It was also blamed for the murder of US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other American citizens in the 2012 Benghazi attack,^[12] but evidence would eventually show that the attack on Benghazi was actually premeditated.^[13] Jones' reaction was pretty much what you'd expect in terms of taking personal responsibility,^[14] which just means that he's graduated to an even higher level of the job classification "irresponsible douchebag".

Decline[edit]

In 2013, to the relief of his Gainesville Florida neighbors, Jones' Dove World church was closed and was sold off. Jones intended to move the church somewhere in the Tampa, Florida metropolitan area.^[15] However, the land purchased for the church organization ended up being a rural homestead in the exurbs of Manatee County (near Bradenton, Florida).^[16] While the church's incorporation remains active as of August 2023,^[17] there is no evidence that any further Jones-led "church" activity occurred after this date.

In 2013, Jones also planned a stunt where he would burn 2,998 Qur'ans on September 11 2013 (one for each life lost on 9/11) in an event at a public park in the tiny town of Mulberry Florida. Rather than being outraged, a former board member of the Islamic Society of Sarasota and Bradenton named Hytham Bakr simply told the local newspaper that Jones was merely "looking for publicity" and informed people that "if you ignore him, he'll go away".^[16] The town of Mulberry denied Jones a permit for the planned event, and then sheriffs arrested him on felony charges (unlawful conveyance of fuel) when he tried to go ahead with the event anyways.^[18][19]

By 2017, Jones was no longer making any headline news at all, and indeed had faded into the background. Jones had opened a couple of other businesses (opening a french fry stand in a shopping mall and starting a furniture moving business), both of which quickly went bust.^[20] In 2017, Jones told the Washington Post that his past notoriety played a part in the failure of the french fry stand. Jones also indicated that he was semi-retired and driving for Uber. After inquiries from the Post (who had initiated the article on behalf of a concerned Uber customer who rode with Jones), Uber fired Jones due to his habit of blabbering Islamophobic rhetoric to his passengers as well as his habit of carrying a 9mm gun in his car for "self-defense", in violation of Uber's firearms policy.^[21]

See also[edit]

• Fred Phelps
• Islamophobia

References[edit]