Quran burning put on hold, but outrage builds as Muslims mark Eid

In a turbulent start to the festival of Eid al-Fitr, when Muslims worldwide mark the end of the Ramadan fasting month, leaders of countries including Afghanistan and Indonesia issued dire warnings against the provocative act.

Radical Florida evangelist Terry Jones issued a heavily conditioned offer to call off his event, which he had planned for Saturday's ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks in protest at the “evil of Islam.”

“We have heard that in the U.S., a pastor has decided to insult Qurans. Now although we have heard that they are not doing this, we tell them they should not even think of it,” Afghan President Hamid Karzai said.

“By burning the Quran they cannot harm it. The Quran is in the hearts and minds of one and a half billion people. (But) insulting the Quran is an insult to nations,” Karzai said in an Eid message.

The commander of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan and leading aid organisations have all said the burning will endanger the lives of Afghans and foreigners if it goes ahead.

Thousands of protesters threw rocks at a small NATO-run base in the remote town of Fayzabad, capital of Badakhshan province in northeast Afghanistan, after traditional prayers for Eid, police said.

“They numbered in their thousands, it is a big crowd,” provincial deputy police chief Sayed Hassan Jafary told AFP.

“People almost from all city mosques gathered,” he said, adding that the crowd chanted “death to America” and threw rocks at the German-run military base in the city.

The crowd demanded authorities give them an American flag “so they can burn it and end the demonstrations,” Jafary said. “But we don't have an American flag.”

As thousands of Afghans rallied at protests across the country, clerics voiced their disgust, with imam Noor Zaman of Kabul's Hazrat Mustafah mosque telling worshippers: “Those who threaten to burn the Quran must know that they will set their own nations alight.”

In neighboring Pakistan, hundreds of protesters gathered in the central city of Multan to torch U.S. flags.

“We have heard that they have postponed the plans to burn the Holy Quran, but it is not enough. We will continue to raise our voice so that it never happens again,” cleric Mufti Hidayatullah Pasroori said in an address to the protestors.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono lashed out anew against Jones and his tiny evangelical denomination, located in Gainesville, Florida, a day after calling on U.S. President Barack Obama to intervene.

“This threatens peace and international security. This is something that endangers harmony among religious people,” Yudhoyono said in a nationally televised address marking the end of Ramadan.

“I'm of course aware of the reported cancellation of the deplorable act by Terry Jones. However, none of us can be complacent until such a despicable idea is totally extinguished,” he said.

The governments of Pakistan and India, which after Indonesia have the world's biggest Muslim populations, have added their voices to a chorus of global outrage against Jones.

Najib Razak, prime minister of Muslim-majority Malaysia, warned Friday the fraught relationship between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds would enter “a very dangerous chapter” if the burning went ahead.

“I hope the pastor will have a change of heart because by that single act of abhorrence ... it will ignite the feelings of Muslims throughout the world, the consequences of which I fear would be very, very costly,” he told reporters.

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