By: David A. Patten

The anti-Muslim leader of a tiny Florida church says he was lied to and is rethinking his decision to cancel burning Korans to mark 9/11.

Pastor Terry Jones earlier Thursday had backed off his threat to burn the Koran after he said he was promised that a planned Islamic center and mosque would be moved away from New York’s ground zero. Muslim leaders denied there was such a deal.

Later outside his church he said that the imam he thought he made the deal with “clearly, clearly lied to us” about moving the mosque.

Jones and Imam Muhammad Musri stood side by side in a news conference where the pastor said he would cancel Saturday’s event.

Musri later told The Associated Press there was only an agreement for him and Jones to travel to New York and meet Saturday with the imam overseeing plans to build a mosque near ground zero.

After meeting with a Florida imam, Jones had agreed to cancel plans to burn the Koran on Saturday, and instead announced plans to fly to New York City, where he wants to protest against the Islamic center being built near ground zero.

Jones and Imam Muhammad Musri announced that the Koran-burning protest had been canceled shortly after 5 p.m. Thursday.

“If they were willing to either cancel the mosque at the ground zero location, or if they were willing to move that location, if they were willing to move it away from that location, we would consider that a sign from God,” Jones said.

Jones said Imam Musri had been in contact with Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf.

But Rauf, the controversial imam at the center of the ground zero mosque controversy, quickly denied he had reached any deal to cancel the planned Islamic center or had even discussed it with Musri.

“I am glad that Pastor Jones has decided not to burn any Korans,” Rauf said in a statement to CNN. “However, I have not spoken to Pastor Jones or Imam Musri. I am surprised by their announcement. We are not going to toy with our religion or any other, nor are we going to barter. We are here to extend our hands to build peace and harmony.”

Jones appeared to indicate that Rauf had agreed to move the ground zero mosque location. However, Musri did not speak to the imam, but spoke instead to the imam’s staff, who agreed to meet with Jones and Imam Musri on Saturday.

Slideshow: Prominent Voices Speak Out Against Koran Burning

The network also reports that Rauf’s staff said merely that the imam “was open” to selecting a new location, not that he promised to do so.

Nevertheless, Jones declared: “He has agreed to move the location. That cannot of course happen overnight. We felt that that would be a sign that God would want us to do it.

“The American people do not want the mosque there,” he said, “and of course Moslems do not want us to burn the Koran. The Imam has agreed to move the mosque.”

Jones also said he received a telephone call from Defense Secretary Robert Gates asking him not to proceed with the Koran-burning protest which had inflamed Islamic tensions throughout the world.

Interpol and the State Departments had issued alerts warning Americans that a backlash of violence abroad could result.

Imam Musri appeared to side with Jones on the question of the location of the ground zero mosque, saying it is unnecessary to place it that close to the site of the tragic terrorist attack of 9/11. He called on Muslims throughout the world to remain peaceful exemplars of the Muslim faith.

President Obama warned Thursday burning the Koran would be a “recruitment bonanza” for al-Qaida.

A few hours before the announcement of the burning cancellation, Obama told ABC that he hoped Jones “understands that what he’s proposing to do is completely contrary to our values. I just want him to understand that this stunt that he is talking about pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women in uniform who are in Iraq, who are in Afghanistan.”

The proposed event triggered flag-burning demonstrations abroad and sharp debates domestically over whether the same political correctness now flowing from the highest levels of the Obama administration also should apply to proposals to build a mosque two blocks from ground zero in New York City.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin commented: “People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation — much like building a mosque at ground zero. It will feed the fire of caustic rhetoric and appear as nothing more than mean-spirited religious intolerance. Don’t feed that fire.”

The State Department had advised U.S. embassies around the world to reassess their security measures.

The Rev. Franklin Graham, son of famed evangelist Dr. Billy Graham, had sent a personal letter to Jones, urging him not to burn the book that Muslims consider holy.

Graham, who professes love for Muslim people but has been outspoken in his view that Islam does not lead to salvation, said, “It’s never right to deface or destroy sacred texts or writings of other religions even if you don’t agree with them.”

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Catholic archbishop emeritus of Washington, D.C., went even further Wednesday during a news conference at the National Press Club sponsored by the Islamic Society of North America.

If “someone sees the Gospel as the truth of God’s presence in our world, that person should embrace the Gospel,” McCarrick told CNSNews.com. “If a person sees the Koran as proof of God’s presence in the world, then I cannot say, ‘Don’t embrace the Koran.’”

Jones, whose church has just 50 members, ignited international protests with his plan to burn Korans to protest Shariah and acts of violence he contends are linked to the Islamic faith. Demonstrations included the following

• Thousands of Afghans burned the U.S. flag and chanted “death to the Christians” on Thursday.
• About 200 Pakistanis marched in Multan and burned a U.S. flag at the rally.
• A Muslim cleric in Afghanistan said Muslims would have a religious duty to react if the Koran were burned, heightening fears that Americans could be attacked.
• Gen. David Petraeus, who met with Afghan President Hamid Karzai Wednesday to discuss the controversy, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that extremists would use images of the Koran in flames “to inflame public opinion and incite violence.”
• Declaring “shame on you,” evangelical Richard Cizik lectured Christians who openly reject Muslims because of their religious faith. “As an evangelical, I say, to those who do this, I say, ‘you bring dishonor to the name of Jesus Christ. You directly disobey his commandment to love our neighbor,” Cizik said at the National Press Club event.
• The nations of Pakistan and Bahrain issued official denunciations of the planned burning of the Koran.
• The president of Indonesia sent a letter to Obama, asking that the book-burning be halted.

Several U.S. leaders and organizations, including New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, have condemned the Koran burning while at the same time defending the church’s First Amendment right to express its views.

“We defend his right to the speech,” said Brandon Hensler, a spokesman for the Florida ACLU, “and we absolutely, simultaneously condemn the things that he’s saying, because they’re not tolerant of different religious viewpoints. The reverend himself has admittedly not read the Koran, and he’s simply using this as a jumping stone to get on the world stage, which he’s clearly achieved.”

The debates over the appropriate exercise of First Amendment rights in the case of the mosque and the burning of the Koran is triggering a broader discussion of the uneasy relationship between Islam and Christianity in America.

The Koran-burning protest comes in the context of the controversial decision to build a Muslim community center and mosque a few blocks away from ground zero in New York.

The imam behind the Park51 facility, formerly known as the Cordoba initiative, warned that relocating the facility could also spark Muslim violence against Americans.

“The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack,” said Imam Feisel Abdul Rauf in an exclusive CNN interview, adding that, “if you don’t do this right, anger will explode in the Muslim world.”

Rauf also suggested that, if he had it all to do over again, he would have selected a different location.

“If I knew this would happen, if it would cause this kind of pain, I wouldn’t have done it,” he said.

The recent controversies over the coexistence of Islam and Christianity appear to be creating cultural ripples nationwide.

Muslim, Christian, and Jewish groups are planning rallies to celebrate unity and tolerance on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks Saturday. It is not known if any of those observances will be held in Hartford, Conn., however, where the town council is embroiled in controversy after city leaders announced they would allow imams, as well as rabbis and Christian pastors, to provide the invocation before council meetings.

“If they check their history, we’re a Christian nation,” Pat McEwen of the evangelical group Operation Save America told Fox News. “For years, prayers just referred to God. I think breaking with that tradition is a bad idea.”

© Newsmax. All rights reserved.