Life in the end times, part 2

Picture this: Last October, a group of American exchange students is walking through a pedestrian plaza in downtown Wiesbaden late at night. Suddenly, they're approached by a gang of young ethnic Turks who don't like the fact that one of the students is speaking English. "Hey!" the gang leader barks at him. "You're American, aren't you?"

"Keep walking, Sam," I say, and we do. We're slightly outnumbered, and we don't know what they're capable of.

But Sam, who takes his role as cultural ambassador very seriously, tries to calm the guy down. He offers his hand in a gesture of friendship.

"Don't touch me!" the guy shouts. "You're American. We hate you. You guys burn the Koran."

Sam had no idea what was going on. When we got to safety, I explained to him that a few weeks earlier, a radical cleric in Gainesville, Florida, had threatened to publicly burn the Koran on September 11. It was meant as a protest against plans to build an Islamic center in New York, near the site of the 9/11 attacks. Sam hadn't heard about this because most of the American media hadn't reported it — they'd wanted to avoid giving it any publicity.

Although the Koran-burning was eventually canceled, however, word spread — to precisely those people who would blow their lids over it.

Fast-forward to March 20 of this year. The same preacher, Terry Jones of the ironically named Dove World Outreach Center, goes ahead and burns the Koran. But again, the media ignore him. And again, the story gets out anyway — thanks mainly to Afghan leader Hamid Karzai.

This time, thousands of people protest in southern and eastern Afghanistan, burning the US flag and shouting "Death to President Obama". A few of them have killed at least 12 United Nations workers, from Nepal and Scandinavia and obviously not from Jones's church.

The Dove Center says it's done the right thing because — you guessed it — we are living in the end times. The organization describes itself as an "apostolic church". This means that its followers believe in the same biblical interpretation, the same religious phenomena and the same call to action as in the 1st century AD.

This comes with the expectation that Jesus might be back very soon — though, according to some interpretations, only after a final showdown between good and evil. Nearly all Christians are willing to wait this out, but a few on the fringe probably want to get the holy war started so that Jesus can finally set up shop.

What Turkish street gangs and Afghan mobs need to know, however, is that the extremists aren't representative of Americans or Christians, apostolic or otherwise. Here's what typically happens at Koran-burning events:
- Hardly anyone shows up.
- Hecklers and protesters greatly outnumber the organizers.
- Laws prevent anyone from starting outdoor fires in cities.

When David Grisham of Amarillo, Texas, got around the fire law by putting the Koran on a barbecue grill, he was thwarted by a 23-year-old skateboarder:

"I snuck up behind him and took his Koran. He said something about burning the Koran. I was like, 'Dude, you have no Koran!' and ran off."

Amen.