"We Are Not Responsible For Their Actions"

Apparently it was brutal. Yesterday, I heard from Jeremy, a good friend of mine in Ottawa, who had himself lost an abiding friend in the raid of the UN compound in Afghanistan that left over a dozen people dead. I told him I didn't want to talk politics, or the election campaign; I just wanted to know how he was. He was a little nonplussed, mostly due to the surprise of it all. I thought of him all day as he adjusted to the news.It all started because one obscure pastor in Florida who hadn't learned the lessons of his own history our of his faith opted to light the spark the ended in the bloodshed. Terry Jones had become an overnight sensation months previous when he burned a Koran on the front lawn of his church. It was an embarrassment to the Christian faith and it had global ramifications. After strict condemnation from many Christian leaders he went silent, appropriately so. But his troubled spectacle dried the very wood that would to the recent Afghan brutality.There are three primary places where blame can assigned, though, by extension, there are other. Until President Hamid Karzai condemned the action in a press conference, the incident was barely known in Afghanistan. We will never fully comprehend his motives for introducing the story to his citizens, but he surely must have known the results wouldn't be peaceful. It was a foolish announcement destined to hurt his own country.What to say about those who actually committed the murderous acts? Of course they were offended. Of course it was a sinister act by a spiritually reprobate cleric in the U.S. But it hardly merited what followed. A planned protest against the incident by some 2,000 Afghans turned into a frenetic mob, pushing aside all official resistance, and descended on the UN compound with murder in mind. There is no excuse for this. A man thousands of kilometres away had perpetrated the act and the Koran itself calls for punishment to fit the crime. In this case it empowered the criminals.And then there is Jones himself. Responding to the incident, the pastor displayed no remorse - none. Instead he blurted out in his crude fashion: "We are not responsible for their actions." Is there any decent person in this world who believes that? His one stupid action resulted in the deaths of innocents - good and giving people who worked for the UN in an effort to rescue Afghans themselves from poverty. This isn't about the war in Afghanistan; rather, it's about the fragility of the worldwide order as it struggles to overcome poverty and aggression, creating peaceful co-existence. It's a complex world in a need of the kind of sophisticated leadership good diplomats possess. Terry Jones is no diplomat for Jesus. He's a pastor ignorant of the tolerance of Jesus and the allegiance all good Muslims have to their holy book.Other pastors - Martin Luther King and Desmond Tutu come to mind - understood the fragility of human nature and developed sensitive disobedience as a result. Terry Jones purposely instigated an action that tragically resulted in a mob, some of them trained vigilantes, running down the corridors of a UN building, killing along the way. It's a picture too difficult to mentally embrace, although my friend Jeremy is no doubt trying to keep those same images from flooding through his brain.Terry Jones was correct when we stated "we are not responsible." The full weight of that initial action and its brutal reaction is worn specifically by him alone. Neither Jesus nor Muhammad was have been so insensitive to the human condition. The murders took place on Friday, the Islamic holy day, and today is Sunday, the Christian day for remembrance and contrition. But now that it has occurred, both faith leaders would have demanded full repentance for such ignorant and debilitating acts.  The spark, however, was lit by Jones and he bears special guilt. Today is the day for him to truly practice his faith.