U.S. best—selling novelist John Grisham condemned on Thursday the plan by an evangelical preacher to burn the Quran, saying it was the crazy act of a religious fanatic.
Mr. Grisham, 55, was in Germany to promote Ford County, a volume of seven novellas which he published in the United States last year.
He told the German Press Agency dpa the burning was the work of a “very intolerant person” and religious fanatic who was spreading hate instead of getting on with his job as a pastor.
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Terry Jones, who has set up his own 50—person church in Gainesville, Florida, plans to burn a copy of the Quran this Saturday.
Mr. Grisham also said, however, he did not accept that Rev. Jones’s actions showed the United States in a bad light because they were the act of one person.
He said it worried him the media had built up Rev. Jones’s threat into an international news story, giving him too much publicity.
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Mr. Grisham, who was previously a lawyer, worships at a church that is part of the Southern Baptist Convention. He was also a Democratic Party member of the state legislature of Mississippi from 1983 to 1987.