Un-Christian behavior on the part of an attention-seeking ‘pastor’ and his 30-person fringe church in Gainsville, Florida, has led Muslim extremists in Afghanistan to savagely murder innocent people.

Terry Jones, the 58-year-old pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center, presided over what he called an “International Judge the Koran Day” on March 20, in which he supervised the burning of Islam’s holy book in front of some 50 people.

A 15-year-old girl from Birmingham, UK, has been arrested on suspicion of inciting religious hatred after allegedly burning an English-language version of the Qur’an – and then posting video footage of the act on Facebook.

The incident comes just two and a half months after six people were arrested after filming themselves dousing a Qur’an with fuel and setting it ablaze behind a pub in Tyneside.

More than 50 members of Sacramento’s interfaith community – including Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Quakers, Muslims and Druids – will meet at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament on Saturday, the ninth anniversary of 9/11, for a “blessing of peace on the Quran.”

The 7 p.m. event, on the steps of the cathedral at 11th and K streets, is designed to blunt the threats of Florida Pastor Terry Jones to burn the Quran.

Jones’ associates said today that no Qurans will be burned, but organizers of Saturday’s event “wanted to send an alternative vision from America – placing roses on the Quran as a symbol of peace and tolerance.

A Florida church says it will go ahead with plans to burn copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, despite the city refusing to issue a burn permit, Orlando’s Fox35 TV reports.We think this kind of behavior is so ill-advised that we feel comfortable slapping this news item with the ‘religious insanity‘ tag.

A young Christian shopkeeper was sentenced to a life term in prison and fined more than $1,000 last week following a dubious conviction of desecrating the Quran, according to Pakistan’s National Commission for Justice and Peace.

A conviction for blaspheming Muhammad (Section 295-C) is punishable by death under Pakistani’s notorious blasphemy laws. Widely condemned by the international community as easily invoked to settle personal enmities, Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have come under review in recent months, but to no avail.

Dutch far-right politician Geert Wilders is due to appear in an Amsterdam court on Wednesday on charges of religious insult and anti-Islam incitement.

The prosecution claims his 2008 short film “Fitna“, as well as statements made in interviews and speeches, incite hatred against Muslims. Wilders has called Islam a “backward” culture and the Koran a “fascist book that incites people to violence.”

A “miracle” baby has brought a kind of mystical hope to people in Russia’s mostly Muslim southern fringe who are increasingly desperate in the face of Islamist violence.

From hunchbacked grandmas to schoolboys, hundreds of pilgrims lined up this week in blazing sunshine to get a glimpse of 9-month-old baby Ali Yakubov, on whose body they say verses from the Koran appear and fade every few days. [video]

The Amsterdam court has ruled that the Public Prosecutor’s Office should after all prosecute the populist politician Geert Wilders for anti-Islamic remarks.

“In a democratic system, hate speech is considered so serious that it is in the general interest to… draw a clear line,” the court in Amsterdam said.

Among other things, Wilders has compared the Quran to Hitler’s book Mein Kampf.

The move drew a frosty response from the main Gaelic church in the Western Isles.

Rev Iver Martin, the minister of Stornoway Free Church, said: “I wouldn’t have thought there would be much of a market for this. I’m not sure that a lot of Gaelic-speaking people would be inclined to read it. Of course, Muslims have the freedom to do what they want, but it’s worth pointing out that in many Muslim countries, Christians do not have the freedom to freely read the Bible.”