A Florida pastor was arrested on Wednesday, after he was found at a local park preparing to burn almost 3,000 Qur'ans on the 12 anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Law enforcement officials in Mulberry, Florida, arrested 61-year-old Terry Jones and fellow pastor Marvin Sapp, Jr. on grounds of unlawful conveyance of fuel. The pastor was also charged with illegally carrying a gun, while Sapp faced charges of no valid registration for the trailer toting the religious texts.
The pair drove a pickup truck carrying a huge barbecue grill filled with kerosene-soaked Qur'ans to the park at around 5 p.m. Jones said he wanted to burn one Qur'an for every American life lost in the 2011 attacks.
Both the men were booked at the Polk County jail, Sheriff Grady Judd told the Guardian.
Mulberry residents have stressed the importance of tolerance and love in observation of September 11. The mayor, in addition to some elected officials and a sheriff's deputy have all expressed the need to sidestep violence to respect the victims of the attacks.
This isn't the first time Pastor Terry Jones, who worked with Florida's Dove World Outreach Center, has threatened to burn Qur'ans.
Jones warned he'd protest the detainment of a pastor held in an Iran prison by burning Qur'ans in April of last year.
In 2010, he threatened to burn Qur'ans as part of another September 11 protest, but after he got more than 100 death threats, the Dove World Outreach Center decided to cancel the event.
"We feel that God is telling us to stop, and we also hope that... maybe that will open up the door to maybe be able to talk to the imam," he told NBC at the time.
© 2025 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
