Sarah Palin Condemns Koran-Burning Protest

(NewsCore) - Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin weighed in Wednesday on the current controversy surrounding a Florida pastor's vow to mark the anniversary of 9/11 by burning a Koran, calling his proposed action "antithetical to American ideals."

In a note posted on her Facebook page entitled "Koran Burning Is Insensitive, Unnecessary; Pastor Jones, Please Stand Down," the 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate condemned the pastor's plans which have drawn worldwide condemnation.

"Book burning is antithetical to American ideals. People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation ’ much like building a mosque at Ground Zero," Palin said on the social networking site.

"It will feed the fire of caustic rhetoric and appear as nothing more than mean-spirited religious intolerance," she continued. "Don’t feed that fire. If your ultimate point is to prove that the Christian teachings of mercy, justice, freedom, and equality provide the foundation on which our country stands, then your tactic to prove this point is totally counter-productive."

Rev. Terry Jones, the pastor at the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla. has said that he plans to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center with a mass Koran burning.

On Wednesday, Jones held a press conference where he stated that despite mounting pressure and opposition, he has "no intention of canceling" Saturday's event.

Palin ended her note on religious freedom by saying that a civil society rested on the ideals of toleration "without unnecessarily provoking strife."

"Isn’t that what the Ground Zero mosque debate has been about?" Palin asked.

Palin and many other prominent Republican leaders have said that while they believe in developers' rights to build a mosque and cultural center two blocks away from the site of the World Trade Center, it should be moved to another location out of respect for the victims' families.