By Jordan Heller and Michael Ventura
DNAinfo Staff
MANHATTAN — The Florida pastor who has threatened to burn Korans on the anniversary of Sept. 11 now says he will hold off on the inflammatory display if he gets to meet with the imam behind the planned mosque and community center near Ground Zero.
Terry Jones, the fringe preacher who has had the nation enthralled since he vowed to torch the Islamic holy books, went back and forth on Thursday over whether he would go through with the book burning. At first he called it off, saying he had been assured the mosque would move from Park Place. Then he said it was "suspended" when he learned no such move was happening, but not cancelled.
Speaking on the "TODAY Show" Friday morning, Jones said he would not burn the Korans if he got to meet Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the cleric behind Park 51, as the mosque project is known, on Sept. 11.
"Right now, we plan to meet with the imam on Saturday," Jones said in the on-air interview. "If we meet with him on Saturday, then of course we will not burn the Korans, no."
It was not immediately clear whether any meeting was scheduled to take place.
President Barack Obama said during a Friday news conference that Jones' stunt was a "recruiting tool for Al Qaeda" that "can cause us profound damage" around the world.
"If you can build a church on the site, if you can build a synagogue on the site, if you can build a Hindu temple on the site, then you can build a mosque on the site," Obama said.
The recent controversy and confusion about the burning started with a press conference Thursday where Jones said, "The Imam has agreed to move the mosque [near ground zero], we have agreed to cancel the event on Saturday, and on Saturday I will be flying up to New York to meet with him."
But it's unclear how Jones came to that conclusion.
Shortly after the preacher's press conference, Rauf issued a statement saying there was no deal in place with Jones, no plans to move the proposed Islamic cultural center near the site of Ground Zero, and he had never even spoken to the man, according to MSNBC.
"I am glad that Pastor Jones has decided not to burn any Korans," the Imam said in a statement, according to the network. "However, I have not spoken to Pastor Jones."
Jones later flip-flopped on his stance after the lower Manhattan Imam contradicted his claims.
"Given what we are now hearing, we are forced to rethink our decision," Jones said about his Koran-burning plan. "So, as of right now, we are not canceling the event, but we are suspending it."
Jones' initial announcement came after he met with the Florida-based Imam Mohammed Musri, who said the pastor misunderstood a talk they had had about the mosque near Ground Zero, the Daily News reported.
On "TODAY" Jones said he was "lied to" by the Florida imam.
When asked by anchor Meredith Viera whether he was crazy or any of the other adjectives used to describe him in recent days, Jones said, "I'm just a man trying to do what God has told us to do. What one of those things we feel is to shed a light, to take the cover off, to take the blinders off and to really look at how dangerous, violent Islam is. We have to get our head out of the sand."
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called Jones Thursday to ask him to call of the book burning, CNN reported, saying it put U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq in danger. Viera asked him whether he felt responsible for the death of a man in Afghanistan who was killed outside a NATO base during a Koran-burning protest.
"We do not feel responsible," Jones said. "We do not pull the trigger."
"It reveals the true nature of Islam," he continued. "Islam is killing people. We need to wake up and see the danger."
Obama on Friday urged Americans to "hang onto that thing that is best in us," namely religious tolerance, and reminded the nation that President George W. Bush said after 9/11 that the US was at war with terrorism, not Islam.
"We have to make sure we don't start turning on each other," Obama said. "I will do everything I can, as long as I am president of the United States, to remind the American people that we are one nation under God, and we may call that god different names, but we are still one nation."
