Mojo-jojo
Minister (2k+ posts)
[h=1]Koran-burning pastor Terry Jones barred from entering Canada at border[/h] By Oliver Moore
[h=2]Mr. Jones had expected to enter Canada Thursday morning to participate in a debate on free speech in Toronto[/h] A controversial Koran-burning preacher trying to come to Toronto for a free speech debate has been denied entry to the country.
Florida pastor Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp, associate director of Stand Up America Now, say they were searched for hours, had provocative signs confiscated and were then turned away.
Mr. Sapp said the reason given was a breach of the peace charge in his past (which he says was overturned) and a German complaint about Mr. Jones' use of the title Doctor, based on an honorary degree from an unaccredited university.
"Because we don't have documentation of this they refused us entry into the country," he said Thursday afternoon. They were preparing to return to Florida to consider their legal options.
Mr. Jones had expected to enter Canada Thursday morning and participate in the event at the legislature in the early evening, leaving organizers to enlist one of their unidentified understudies.
The Toronto debate - which is billed as including participation by prominent Muslim, Sikh and Hindu representatives as well - is scheduled for 6 p.m. on the south side of Queen's Park and a substantial crowd was expected. Allan Einstoss, one of the organizers, says the event is a statement about the importance of freedom of speech. He believes it is crucial that people realize their rights.
"The highest form of free speech is when you've got dissenting views," he said. "Democracy can be a messy thing."
Mr. Jones rejects any responsibility if his actions result in violence - at least 50 were killed in the Koran-burning reaction and dozens more after a movie, The Innocence of Muslims, that Mr. Jones helped promotе as "historically true" - and insists that free speech means that people occasionally are going to be offended.
"It's just part of the price you pay for freedom of speech," he said in an interview Wednesday from Michigan, where he had a protest before carrying on toward Canada. "Freedom of speech is sometimes going to be controversial, it's going to be insulting sometimes."
But one of the Muslim representatives with whom he was to face off this evening counters that people like Mr. Jones go too far. Imam Steve Rockwell, of the Sheikh Deedat mosque in Toronto, notes that free speech is not absolute.
"Are we, under free speech, allowed to shout 'fire' in a movie theatre?" he asked. "It's illegal to deny the Holocaust. It should be illegal to make statements so offensive it incites a violent reaction. When you know what will be the consequences, when you deliberately provoke, there should be a law against that. Because you are posing a danger to the public."
Mr. Rockwell had planned to press the visiting pastor on just how much he knows about the Koran.
"I want to hear from him what he found in the Koran that was so reprehensible, so vile, that he had to burn it."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...rom-entering-canada-at-border/article4604222/
