"Palin: Koran burning is 'unnecessary provocation'
Sep 8 06:38 PM US/Eastern

Former US vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin on Wednesday condemned a small Florida church's planned Koran burning ceremony as an "insensitive and an unnecessary provocation."

"Book burning is antithetical to American ideals," Palin, a possible Republican contender for the White House in 2012, said in a post on her Facebook page.

"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," said the former Alaska governor.

She was comparing the evangelical Christian Dove World Outreach Center's plans to torch Islam's holy book on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist strikes to plans to build a community center to include a mosque some two blocks from the site of the attacks in New York City.

Palin urged the Koran burning organizer, Pastor Terry Jones, to reconsider the possible effects of their planned gesture, which has drawn expressions of outrage from around the globe.

"It will feed the fire of caustic rhetoric and appear as nothing more than mean-spirited religious intolerance. Don't feed that fire," she said.

"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."

Palin noted the importance of freedom of religion in the United States and warned against "unnecessarily provoking strife." "