Burning of Quran disappoints many in East Lansing community (w/ video)

Burning of Quran disappoints many in East Lansing community (w/ video)
Nearby residents bring Muslim holy book's pages to mosque

Melissa Domsic and Matthew Miller • mdomsic@lsj.com, mrmiller@lsj.com • September 13, 2010

EAST LANSING - There was a carnival Sunday afternoon at the Islamic Center of East Lansing, part of the celebration of Eid al-Fitr, the three-day holiday that marks the end of Ramadan.

Children dressed in rainbow-striped Velcro suits waited in line for a chance to fling themselves at an inflatable velcro wall. Tables in the lobby were loaded with cupcakes and nachos and Little Caesars pizza. Outside, a group of young men played a game of touch football.

This was not the picture of a community shaken. Early Saturday morning, a burned copy of the Quran was found at the entrance of the mosque. Pages were shredded, some of them smeared with feces.

"The goal that these guys intended to achieve, which was to incite anger or to incite controversy, they were not successful," said Abdalmajid Katranji, a spokesman for the center.

The Quran was found at 1:30 a.m. Saturday by a group of young men who had just finished a basketball game, Katranji said. Members of the community walked the streets that night, retrieving shredded pages scattered by the perpetrators in the surrounding neighborhood.

But mosque leaders waited to make the incident public.

"We felt (Saturday) had its own purpose, its own need for reflection," Katranji said, "and so we wanted to make sure that the focus stayed on the issue of 9/11. We did not want the messages to be mixed."

They did file a police report, and, on Saturday, East Lansing Police left an unattended police vehicle in the center's parking lot as a show of support and means of protection, Katranji said.

They have not identified any witnesses or suspects, East Lansing police Lt. Kevin Daley said.
FBI contacted

The Council for American-Islamic Relations in Michigan also asked the FBI to investigate the act as a possible hate crime.

"We are aware of the situation and we're working with mosque leaders at this time," said Sandra Berchtold, spokeswoman for the FBI in Detroit.

CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid did not mince words when it came to the significance of what had happened.
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"To have the Quran burned at a mosque is equivalent to having a cross burned at a black church," he said.

'We stand with you'

Saturday morning, Karen Hoene's husband sent her a text message about the torn pages of the Quran he'd seen scattered around their neighborhood.

She did the only thing that felt right. She took her 9-year-old son, Elijah, and went out to pick them up.

A few hours later, she decided to return them to the mosque.

"I got real emotional at that point, because it was shameful to me," she said.

"I don't know if I felt shame as a white person, or as a resident of this town, or just a general disgust with anyone who would do something like that," she added.

"I naively thought higher of people. I didn't think that in this community something like that would happen."

She wasn't the only neighbor to bring back pages - some were found as far away as Michigan Avenue - nor was she the only member of the community to express her regret and disgust at what had happened.

A Quran reading was held Saturday night at All Saints Episcopal Church in East Lansing, an event designed to counter Florida pastor Terry Jones' plan, which he didn't carry out, to publicly burn the Quran that day.

When the Rev. Kit Carlson, rector of All Saints, heard Sunday morning about the incident, "I was sick, because we left last night on such a great note," she said.

A card was taped to the door Sunday that read: "We stand with you. In solidarity, All Saints Episcopal Canterbury MSU." Flowers were taped there as well.

East Lansing Mayor Victor Loomis met with members of the center Sunday afternoon.

"It's a very deplorable act, and we condemn the actions of whoever did this," Loomis said. "I suspect, along with members of the Islamic Center, that it was someone from outside our community."
'A copycat attempt'

In recent weeks, there has been "a perceptible increase in Islamophobic rhetoric in the country," said Mohammed Ayoob, a professor of international relations and coordinator of Michigan State University's Muslim Studies program.
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He chalks it up to the upcoming elections "and the attempt by the right to capitalize on this issue in the context of 9/11 and the controversy surrounding the establishment of an Islamic center close to ground zero."

He also chalks it up to media coverage, "or overcoverage" of Jones' Quran burning plans.

The East Lansing incident strikes him as "a copycat attempt."

But it's not an isolated incident. In the past week, there have been incidents of vandalism at mosques in Hudson, N.Y., and Phoenix.

The portion of the Quran that was burned has been handed over to police. But in the office of the Islamic Center, there are plastic bags filled with pages returned by neighbors.

"You may tear the book, but you're not going to tear the beauty that is the Quran," Katranji said.

"Ultimately, you have the freedom to express what you want," he said. "You have the freedom of speech. In fact, you have the right to burn the Quran. What we're asking is don't burn it here on our property, coming here and trying to intimidate our community."...more