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ABC – May 16, 2005
Muslim reaction: Apology is too little, too late
Distrust intensifies following Koran desecration allegations
News Analysis by HODA ABDEL-HAMID
May. 16, 2005 - Newsweek magazine may have apologized, but to many in the Muslim world, it's too late and much too little.
Muslims brushed off an apology to readers that appeared in this week's edition of the newsweekly that acknowledged errors in a story alleging U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Koran, Islam's holy book. Interestingly enough, Newsweek has an Arabic issue but there was no mention of the apology in this week's issue. Critics called it a strategic move in the face of the overwhelming and violent reaction. The report sparked protests in Afghanistan, where at least 15 were killed and more than 100 injured.
Newsweek later retracted the story entirely.
Many Muslims believe Newsweek succumbed to pressure from the U.S. government to backtrack. Many believe that that whatever the truth may be, the harm has been done.
Saudi Arabia was the first country to officially react by asking for an investigation. It was followed by blanket condemnation and demands for investigation from all over the region by officially appointed mainstream clerics or governments.
In Egypt, the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, the highest Sunni authority in the world, usually a subdued man, demanded immediate action. "The Koran's desecration is a great crime and should be dealt with at once," he said.
Reaction to the Newsweek article, which appeared in the May 9 issue, has been particularly virulent for a number of reasons.
In the Muslim world, Guantanamo has become the symbol of the confrontation between Islam and the United States. The fact that this allegedly happened in Guantanamo makes things much worse. A member of the Muslim Brotherhood said perhaps if it had happened somewhere else, it would not have resonated so much.
Secondly, the Koran is part of the Muslim identity. By desecrating the Koran, one is desecrating the identity of all Muslims. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, desecration of the Koran is punishable by death, which explains the more violent reaction to the Newsweek story.
Many analysts believe this episode will just increase the level of distrust. The Arab world, especially the Middle East, is more likely to believe such reports after the prison scandal at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
Moreover, many believe that a soldier or interrogator would not act without his or her superior's approval and say this episode is yet another reminder that the United States is at war against Islam.
One moderate cleric said, "The U.S. keeps on handing out reasons for extremists to become more ferocious. These stories are amazing recruiting tools, and more young people will now join the fight." …..
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=761361&page=1
CNN - May 16, 2005
Muslims doubt Quran climb down
KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan were skeptical after a U.S. magazine backed away from a report that U.S. interrogators desecrated copies of the Quran while questioning prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.
The account in Newsweek magazine's May 9 issue has been blamed for sparking deadly riots in Afghanistan and other parts of the Muslim world.
On Sunday, Newsweek backed away from the report and offered its sympathies "to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst." (Full story)
But Muslims said they suspected that pressure from Washington was behind the magazine's climb down, Reuters reported Monday. "We will not be deceived by this," Islamic cleric Mullah Sadullah Abu Aman told Reuters in the northern Afghan province of Badakhshan. "This is a decision by America to save itself. It comes because of American pressure. Even an ordinary illiterate peasant understands this and won't accept it."
On Sunday, a group of clerics led by Aman vowed to call for a jihad, or holy war, against the United States in three days unless it handed over the interrogators reported to have desecrated the Quran. He said the call for a holy war still stood.
In the May 9 story, Newsweek cited sources as saying investigators looking into abuses at the military prison found interrogators "had placed Qurans on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet."
CNN terrorism analyst Peter Bergen said "desecrating the Quran is a death-penalty offense" in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan.
The Pentagon said last week it was unable to corroborate any case in which interrogators at the U.S. Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, defiled the Muslim holy book, as Newsweek reported.
At least 15 people were killed and dozens injured last week when thousands of demonstrators marched in Afghanistan and other parts of the Muslim world, officials and eyewitnesses said.
"Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we," Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker wrote in the magazine's May 23 issue, out Sunday. "But we regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst."
Some Afghans, however, were unconvinced. "It's not acceptable now that the magazine says it's made a mistake," Reuters quoted 42-year-old writer and journalist Hafizullah Torab as saying. "No one will accept it."
Sayed Elyas Sedaqat, who heads a cultural group in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, where the protests began last Tuesday, said: "Possibly, the American government put pressure on the magazine to issue the retraction to avoid the anger of Muslims."
In neighboring Pakistan, a religious party said it was going ahead with a call for protests on May 27.
"Newsweek is backtracking, but it's not just their report," said Ghaffar Aziz, a top official of the Jamaat-e-Islami party. "All innocent people released from U.S. custody have said on the record that there was desecration of the Koran."
A spokesman for the Taliban, who denied any involvement in last week's Afghan protests, said the original report was true.
"Newsweek is changing its story because of pressure from the U.S. government," Abdul Latif Hakimi told Reuters by telephone.
In Kabul, the U.S. military said it must reach out to the people of Afghanistan in the aftermath of last week's deadly demonstrations. (Full story)
"We want to redouble our efforts to communicate with the Afghan people," said Col. Gary Cheek with the U.S. Army in Kabul. "We want to ensure there is trust and confidence in the U.S."
Despite Newsweek's partial retraction, Cheek promised to re-evaluate U.S. military tactics being used in Afghanistan that have drawn criticism from Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai.
U.S. forces have been criticized for breaking into homes unannounced and for taking people into custody, sometimes on faulty intelligence….
http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/05/16/newsweek.quran.intl/
The Guardian - Tuesday May 17, 2005
Newsweek apology fails to cool Qur'an anger
By Declan Walsh in Islamabad
Newsweek's apology for its controversial Qur'an desecration story was greeted with scepticism and scorn both at home in the US and across the Muslim world yesterday.
From the White House to remote Afghan hamlets, critics responded furiously to the magazine's initial admission that it had been wrong to claim US officials discovered that interrogators in Guantánamo Bay had flushed a copy of the Qur'an down the toilet.
Following criticisms yesterday from the White House and the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, Newsweek made a full retraction of the story. "Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Qur'an abuse at Guantanamo Bay," the editor, Mark Whitaker, said in a statement.
In Afghanistan, where the 200-word story sparked riots that left 17 dead and more than 100 injured, many Muslims said the apology smacked of a US government cover-up. "We will not be deceived by this [retraction]," said Mullah Sadullah Abu Aman, one of a group of clerics who threatened on Sunday to wage a holy war against the US for the alleged abuse. "This [decision] comes because of American pressure. Even an ordinary illiterate peasant understands that and won't accept it," he told Reuters.
A spokesman for the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, expressed "in the strongest terms our disapproval of Newsweek's approach to reporting, which allowed them to run the story without proper examination beforehand".
Anti-American militants, who gained political capital from the protests, also rejected the mea culpa. "Newsweek is changing its story because of pressure from the US government," said a Taliban spokesman, Abdul Latif Hakimi.
In Pakistan, officials reiterated a call by President Pervez Musharraf for the US to mete out "exemplary" punishment to the alleged culprits. "We have asked for a thorough investigation conducted by the US administration and we would expect the results of the official investigation to be shared with us," said a foreign ministry spokesman…
Imran Khan, the cricket legend who first drew attention to the Qur'an story, said: "This will not die down unless the US isolates itself from these abuses against our religion."
He told the Guardian: "It's not good enough to say Islam is a peaceful religion and they are only after terrorists. They must show respect." ….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1485635,00.html
Antiwar.com – May 16, 2005
Newsweek got Gitmo right
by Calgacus
Contrary to White House spin, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo published by Newsweek on May 9, 2005, are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States. Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Koran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it. Prior to the Newsweek article, the New York Times reported a Guantanamo insider asserting that the commander of the facility was compelled by prisoner protests to address the problem and issue an apology.
One such incident (during which the Koran was allegedly thrown in a pile and stepped on) prompted a hunger strike among Guantanamo detainees in March 2002. Regarding this, the New York Times in a May 1, 2005, article interviewed a former detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, who said the protest ended with a senior officer delivering an apology to the entire camp. And the Times reports: "A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans." (Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt, "Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay," New York Times, May 1, 2005.)
The hunger strike and apology story is also confirmed by another former detainee, Shafiq Rasul, interviewed by the UK Guardian in 2003 (James Meek, "The People the Law Forgot," Dec. 3, 2003). It was also confirmed by former prisoner Jamal al-Harith in an interview with the Daily Mirror (Rosa Prince and Gary Jones, "My Hell in Camp X-Ray," Daily Mirror, March 12, 2004).
The toilet incident was reported in the Washington Post in a 2003 interview with a former detainee from Afghanistan:
"Ehsannullah, 29, said American soldiers who initially questioned him in Kandahar before shipping him to Guantanamo hit him and taunted him by dumping the Koran in a toilet. 'It was a very bad situation for us,' said Ehsannullah, who comes from the home region of the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar. 'We cried so much and shouted, "Please do not do that to the Holy Koran."' (Marc Kaufman and April Witt, "Out of Legal Limbo, Some Tell of Mistreatment," Washington Post, March 26, 2003.)
Also citing the toilet incident is testimony by Asif Iqbal, a former Guantanamo detainee who was released to British custody in March 2004 and subsequently freed without charge:
"The behavior of the guards towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view, designed to cause us as much distress as possible. They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet, and generally disrespect it." (Center for Constitutional Rights [.pdf], Aug. 4, 2004.)
The claim that U.S. troops at Bagram prison in Afghanistan urinated on the Koran was made by former detainee Mohamed Mazouz, a Moroccan, as reported in the Moroccan newspaper, La Gazette du Maroc. (Abdelhak Najib, "Les Américains pissaient sur le Coran et abusaient de nous sexuellement," April 12, 2005.) An English translation is available on the Cage Prisoners site (which describes itself as a "nonsectarian Islamic human rights Web site").
Tarek Derghoul, another of the British detainees, similarly cites instances of Koran desecration in an interview with Cage Prisoners.
Desecration of the Koran was also mentioned by former Guantanamo detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and reported by the BBC in early May 2005. (Haroon Rashid, "Ex-Inmates Share Guantanamo Ordeal," May 2, 2005.)
http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=5959
Reuters – May 16, 2005
Muslims skeptical over Newsweek back-track on Koran
By Sayed Salahuddin
KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan were skeptical on Monday about an apparent retraction by Newsweek magazine of a report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran and said U.S. pressure was behind the climb-down.
The White House said the report based on an anonymous source had damaged the U.S. image overseas.
The report in Newsweek's May 9 issue sparked protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Gaza.
Newsweek said on Sunday the report might not be true.
"We will not be deceived by this," Islamic cleric Mullah Sadullah Abu Aman told Reuters in the northern Afghan province of Badakhshan, referring to the magazine's retraction.
"This is a decision by America to save itself. It comes because of American pressure. Even an ordinary illiterate peasant understands this and won't accept it."
Aman was the leader of a group of clerics who on Sunday vowed to call for a holy war against the United States in three days unless it handed over the military interrogators reported to have desecrated the Koran. That call for a jihad, or holy war, still stood, he said….
Afghans were not convinced the magazine's acknowledgment of error meant the desecration didn't happen.
"It's not acceptable now that the magazine says it's made a mistake," said Hafizullah Torab, 42, a writer and journalist in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, where the protests began last Tuesday. "No one will accept it."
In Pakistan, a religious party said it was going ahead with a call for protests on May 27.
"Newsweek is back-tracking but it's not just their report," said Ghaffar Aziz, a top official of the Jamaat-e-Islami party. "All innocent people released from U.S. custody have said on the record that there was desecration of the Koran." …
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=8504765
Media Reports May 13, 2005
Massive anti-U.S. protests across the Muslim world
May 13, 2005: Massive anti-U.S. demonstrations raged across the Muslim world from Gaza to Indonesia on Friday, protesting against the U.S soldiers’ ‘desecration’ of Qur’an at Guantanamo Bay.
A report recently published at The Newsweek magazine showed that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had put copies of the Qur’an on toilets, in at least one case flushing it down.
In Afghanistan, nine people were killed in Friday protests, bringing to 16 the number of Afghans killed over the past three days in the country's worst anti-American demonstrations since the fall of Taliban regime.
Analysts say that this was the worst anti-U.S. protests in Afghanistan since Americans invaded the country.
During weekly Friday prayers in Afghanistan, Islamic clerics told worshipers that protests over the desecration of Qur’an were justified. At least 100 people were wounded in Afghanistan protests that were held over the past three days.
More anti-U.S. protests took place in Pakistan, which called on the U.S. to launch an immediate investigation into The Newsweek magazine report.
"Demonstrations serve no purpose, we should do something practical. I am ready to blow myself up for the sake of my religion to embrace martyrdom," said Mohamed Ghafoor, 18, a student protesting, Pakistan.
In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, hundreds of people held a peaceful protest. The protestors gathered peacefully at the mosque in south Jakarta and read statements criticizing the alleged action reported by US magazine Newsweek. "We demand the US Government apologise openly to Muslims worldwide and punish the perpetrators," one of the speakers, Muhammad al-Khattah, was quoted as saying by the state Antara news agency.
Students in the Indonesian city of Makassar on Sulawesi island took to the streets and searched hotels and the airport for any Americans, Detikcom news portal reported. No Americans were found.
The Indonesian foreign ministry on Friday urged the United States to investigate the allegations, saying that if true, the incident would constitute an immoral act. "Holy books like the Koran, the Bible and others must be treated with reverence. We urged the US Government to punish the perpetrators," said foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa.
Also in Gaza, thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in a protest organized by Hamas resistance movement. Also hundreds Palestinians held protests in the West Bank city of Hebron. According to reporters present at the scene, some protesters burned U.S. and Israeli flags.
And Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, said it was following the issue with "deep indignation."
On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged the Muslim nations to resist calls for violence, saying that the U.S. authorities are investigating the Qur’an "desecration" report.
But the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Richard Myers, told a Pentagon press conference no evidence had been found to back the claims.
Analysts say that the recent scandal of U.S. soldiers abusing the Holy Qur’an hurts the United States' reputation, already damaged with the release of disgracing photographs a year ago, showing U.S. military personnel abusing and torturing Iraqi inmates at Abu Ghraib jail.
OIC calls for probe into Quran desecration
Jedda, May 14, 2005: International Islamic organizations based in Saudi Arabia today called on the United States to investigate reports that its officers in Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Holy Qur’an and bring the culprits to justice.
The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) said it had written to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressing “astonishment and dismay” at the incident.
The OIC said the report had enraged hundreds of millions of Muslims and would “provide fanatics and extremists with excuses to ... justify their acts of violence and terrorism”.
The organization said it had asked the US to “bring the culprits to justice, to take measures which would appease the enraged sentiments of the Muslim world, and prevent the recurrence of such abhorrent acts in the future”.
The World Muslim League (MWL), which is based in the holy city of Makkah, also called for a speedy investigation and said perpetrators should be held accountable.
“The MWL expresses the resentment of Muslims and Islamic organizations in the world over the desecration of the Holy Qur’an at Guantanamo prison,” Dr. Abdullah Al-Turki, secretary-general of the organization said. (Source: Media Reports)
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