Pakistani archbishop calls for arrest of US pastor over Quran burning

(April 06, 2011) A top Pakistani church official has called for the arrest of a U.S. Protestant pastor, whose decision to burn the Islamic sacred book has caused fury in the Muslim world and the deaths of more than 20 people. Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha of Lahore said the U.S. government should seek to diffuse mounting tensions by detaining Rev.Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center Church in Gainesville, Fla., who oversaw the burning of the Quran by the Rev. Wayne Sapp, his assistant. "The U.S. government should detain the pastor for some time," Archbishop Saldanha told the British branch of Aid to the Church in Need, a Catholic charity for persecuted Christians around the world. "In view of the effects his actions have had all over the world, he should be controlled and made to understand the harm that has been done," he said in an April 4 telephone interview. "The U.S. government talks about religious freedom, but we call upon the U.S. government to prevent such actions by extremists and other fundamentalist Christians," the archbishop said. He added that although there had been no reports of attacks on Pakistani Christians by Muslims outraged by the Quran burning, he said he feared that the situation could become ugly.
Jones authorized a copy of the Quran to be soaked in gasoline and burned March 20. The incident, witnessed by a small number of people, went unnoticed until a video of the burning was posted on YouTube. Since then, Muslims in the Middle East have reacted violently, with four consecutive days of demonstrations in Afghanistan and demands for U.S. troops to leave the country.