Pastor Terry Jones: Digitally Infamous

In Gainesville, Florida, lives a pastor of a small church of 50 people who is obviously a religious fanatic.

His hatred for the nation of Islam has compelled him to claim he will be having a Koran burning this Saturday, September 11, as a memorial for the Word Trade Center attacks 9 years ago. 

Seemingly overnight he became world renowned, with many main stream political figures trying to convince him not to burn the Koran, including President Obama, The Pope, Hillary Clinton, the main General for the Afghanistan war, as well as many religious groups and so on.

The main argument for many of these people against Pastor Terry Jones was that burning the Koran is deeply offensive to Muslims, and having a Koran burning would do nothing but invoke violence and retaliation in some of the more sensitive areas of the world like Afghanistan and other dominant Islamic nations which would inevitably affect the lives of our troops.

Despite the international concerns, Pastor Jones has the first amendment right to go through with it, which is partly why there has been so much outcry of protest by virtually everyone except him and his small congregation of churchgoers.

For a few days Pastor Jones fueled the fire, saying that Islam is of the devil and that him and his congregation are compelled as good church going Christians to go on with the Koran burning, even though biblically speaking the burning of the Koran not only is never mentioned but the overall teachings of the Christian bible are completely opposed to inciting any form of hatred to others.

Most Christians all over the country were outraged at his decision and have also spoken out against the southern, gun toting, handlebar mustache wearing fanatic of a pastor. His previous church that he started in Germany denounced him.

As tension over the issue began to reach a boiling point, Terry Jones made a statement yesterday, telling the Associated Press that the imam in charge of the very controversial Mosque/prayer center that was going to be placed right near Ground Zero had made a deal to move the mosque to a different location so that he would call off the Koran burning ceremony.

About an hour after his announcement the imam in charge of the ground zero prayer center denied ever speaking with Terry Jones about moving the Mosque somewhere else.

Speculation on the issue is that Terry Jones, seeing how unpopular he was becoming, decided to try and use the media to flip the switch and pose as a hero.

According to Yahoo! News, the imam has agreed to meet with Terry Jones in an effort to get some sort of restitution or peace from this issue, but does not seem to show any intent on negotiating with him on the relocation of the much debated prayer center in Manhattan.

Although Pastor Jones is scheduled to meet with the imam on Saturday when he originally had planned to have the Koran burning, if things don’t work out in his favor, who’s to say he doesn’t just reschedule the burning and do it anyway?

With technology as accessible as it is, the news can be received minutes after it happens. Because of the multitude of news sources out there and their ability to expose things like this to the masses you have to ask the question, is news in technology a good thing, or does it really just allow people like Pastor Jones to cause extreme problems because of the publicity?

Is technology making it too easy for people like Terry Jones?