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.