The Live Indian Entertainment Blog

The Dove World Outreach Center, AKA the "Quran Burning Church," has been booted off the Web. At least two accounts attributed to the church, hosted by Rackspace, a web hosting service based in Texas, have been booted off the Internet.

However, while Dove World says this is a violation of their right to free speech, RackSpace says that the issue for them is contractual, not freedom of speech. Rackspace said that the church violated the "hate-speech provision of our acceptable-use policy."

That statement came from Rackspace spokesman Dan Goodgame, who added that "This is not a constitutional issue. This is a contract issue." Reportedly, Dove World had until midnight Wednesday night to find another host or remove its content, and as they did not, Rackspace shut them down.

The two sites in question were the Dove World site itself, as well as a site dedicated to a book by the pastor of the church, Terry Jones, called IslamIsOfTheDevil.com. While both sites are currently down, there are cached versions available that can be viewed.

The furor around the church, at least this time, is a "Burn a Koran Day" even that Jones and the church have planned for Saturday, Sept. 11, which would be the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Many have warned Jones that such an act would endanger troops overseas. The Vatican said that burning the Quran would be an "outrageous and grave gesture."

Even GOP pundit Sarah Palin spoke against the burning of the Quran, saying on Facebook that:

I would hope that Pastor Terry Jones and his supporters will consider the ramifications of their planned book-burning event. It will feed the fire of caustic rhetoric and appear as nothing more than mean-spirited religious intolerance. 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.

According to Gainesville mayor Craig Lowe, on an interview with NPR, Dove World's permit to burn the Quran was denied. Gene Prince, the interim chief of Gainesville Fire Rescue, said earlier that under the city’s fire prevention ordinance, an open burning of books is not allowed.

Update: Jones has agreed to cancel the burning, as reported by AP. AP says that he did that in a tit-for-tat move, where the Islamic cultural center in New York City, also the center of a firestorm, would be moved. The AP said that was unconfirmed; meanwhile the New York Times simply said that Jones would meet with the imam involved in the center.