Meet Pastor Terry Jones, America’s Enemy No 1

PASTOR Terry Jones seems like an unlikely candidate for the title of America’s Enemy No 1, but that is what he has become, almost overnight, in his attempt to lead his band of Christian soldiers against the sword of Islam.

President Obama must have felt a bit like the 12th century Henry II pleading: “who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” when he made a very public appeal to him to abandon his plan to burn copies of the Koran, fearing that American soldiers would be killed in retaliation.

Jones, who declares Islam as the incarnation of the Devil, sees himself as the saviour of Christianity against a malevolent force, but he is no Thomas Beckett. The grizzly 58-year-old packs a .40-calibre pistol and heads a small congregation of around 50 members on a pine-studded tract of land in Gainesville, Florida.