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City Disavows Pastor’s Talk of Burning Koran
Chip Litherland for The New York Times

Corinna Johnston photographed her 2-year-old with a peace sign Friday at the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla.
By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: September 11, 2010

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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Stephanie George used to see members of the Dove World Outreach Center at her neighborhood grocery store, wearing T-shirts that said “Islam is of the devil.” But on Friday, she and her friend Lynda Dillon showed up early at Dragonfly Graphics to order a dozen shirts with a different message: “Love, not Dove.”
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Mary Altaffer/Associated Press

Pastor Terry Jones at La Guardia Airport in New York on Friday night.

The design itself, complete with a lyric made famous by Elvis Costello (“What’s so funny ’bout peace, love and understanding”), takes direct aim at the pastor Terry Jones, his church and his threat — first suspended, now canceled — to burn copies of the Koran on Saturday, Sept. 11.

But Ms. George and others who have lined up for the shirts from Dragonfly frown and sigh with exasperation that such a public stand is even necessary.

“He’s a lunatic, and yet I still feel like I need to get the message out that we’re not lunatics with him,” said Ms. George, 46. “I don’t want this to represent my neighborhood.”

Mr. Jones went on television on Saturday morning to unequivocally call off the Koran burning.

“It is totally canceled," he told “Today.” But the people of this youthful city in central Florida are still dealing with the fallout and taking his actions personally, with anger and heartbreak, as one of their neighbors drags their hometown into nearly nonstop news coverage and infamy.

Gainesville, after all, is a university town that until a few months ago was best known for producing college football champions, Gatorade and rockers like Tom Petty.

Educated and progressive, with a gay mayor and a City Commission made up entirely of Democrats, Gainesville is a sprawling metropolis of 115,000 people where smoothie shops seem to outnumber gun shops.

Fanatics can come from anywhere, Gainesvillians will tell you, but why did this one have to come from here?

“He doesn’t represent the community,” said Larry Wilcox, 78, reading the newspaper at a local Panera restaurant. “This guy is obviously a publicity hound and a weirdo.”

Before his announcement on Saturday, Mr. Jones again turned the lawn at Dove into a spectacle on Friday, featuring dozens of photographers and newly arrived supporters, including a former Marine in full camouflage holding an American flag and demanding an apology from Muslims for the Marine barracks bombing in 1983 that killed 241 service members in Beirut.

“It’s frustrating,” said the Rev. Larry Reimer, pastor of the United Church of Gainesville. It was just before noon and he was standing at the door of Dove in a pressed sport coat, with a pile of 8,048 signatures and comments from 97 countries, all demanding that Mr. Jones unequivocally call off his plan to burn the Koran. The thick document was carefully tied in a white ribbon.

Mr. Reimer said people from all over the world had called him and sent e-mail messages offering to help Gainesville counter Mr. Jones. Mayor Craig Lowe said he, too, had been inundated with suggestions.

One resident said he might sue the city or Mr. Jones so the community would be forced to go to court and talk through what happened. Someone from out of town had suggested using the National Guard to stop Mr. Jones from setting the holy texts ablaze.

“The amount of e-mail that we’ve gotten is just massive,” Mayor Lowe said in an interview. “It’s almost one a second.”

The challenge for many seems to be managing their anger, and figuring out how to keep Mr. Jones in perspective. Some are looking to direct confrontation; Jose Soto, a leader with Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Florida, stood across the street from Dove on Friday afternoon with a group of students shouting, “Hey ho, hey ho, Dove Outreach has got to go.”

He said that even after this weekend, his group was thinking of following Dove’s leaders when they wore their “Islam is of the devil” T-shirts and surrounding them with signs that identified them as hate-mongers.

“Ignoring them hasn’t worked,” he said. “They just escalate.”

John L. Esposito, a scholar of religion and international affairs at Georgetown who has acted as a consultant to the State Department, had offered a different option. Politicians, the news media, all of Gainesville, he said, should stop pleading or arguing against the Koran burning and shift their energy toward all that Mr. Jones is not. “What we have to start doing is delivering the positive side of our message of who we are, and then that will set an example for others in our society who are maybe on the fence,” he said.

That seemed to be exactly the goal of Dragonfly. For 24 years, the tiny four-person company (with part-time help from the owner’s mother) has been printing T-shirts for companies, students, events and churches.

Joy Revels, the owner, said she even used to print generic polo shirts for Dove before last year, when Mr. Jones put a sign outside his church saying, “Islam is of the devil.”

“He called me for the T-shirts” with that slogan, she said, T-shirts that young members of the church wore to school last year and that led to standard uniforms this year. But she refused.

On Tuesday, after seeing the firestorm Mr. Jones created, she decided to act. She said “Love, not Dove” sounded like a good motto, and her graphic artist — Josh Huey, 24, thin, scruffy and lip-pierced — turned out a tattoo-like image of a dove in distress.

Because that seemed a little harsh, Ms. Revels returned to a favorite Costello song (written by Nick Lowe), which sets peace, love and understanding against an opening of “As I walk through this wicked world searchin’ for light in the darkness of insanity.”

Perfect, she thought. She printed 200 shirts to test demand, asking only for donations. As of Friday evening, more than 1,000 shirts had flown out the door.

By nightfall on Friday, Ms. Revels, looking younger than her 50 years, with spiky hair and long plaid shorts, was in the back working the presses with Mr. Huey. Strangers and friends streamed in asking for shirts. One gone. Six more. Then a dozen.

“Whatever Mr. Jones does, it’s still the same in our community,” Ms. Revels said.

She struggled to explain conflicting emotions. “This isn’t ‘We hate you, Terry Jones,’ ” she finally said.

“It’s ‘This is who we are, Gainesville.’ We’re not going to stoop to his level.”