Koran desecration

There is plenty of it on the record. Newsweek backing off the story has more to do with the fallout than the truth


Gitmo haircut: humiliation using belittling and denial of cultural and religious practice is routine in US detention

For months now the US hegemon has been naked concerning torture and abuse practices against its detainees. But the story the right wing noise machine has latched on to is the stand-down of Newsweek on its Koran-flushing story.

I'm puzzled. Given the extraordinary amount of anti-Islam rage found on these rightist sites, and the extant proof and photos of detainee torture and abuse, why should it be so hard to see Koran desecration as at least plausible?

True, we do not have a specific confirming memo on the Koran-flushing practice like we do on many other similar practices. And the US government has stated that Koran desecration claims are ``not credible.'' Condoleeza Rice chipped in that, ``Disrespect for the Holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be, tolerated by the United States. Disrespect for the Holy Koran is abhorrent to us all.''

But claims of desecration are consistent amongst persons who spent time at Guantanamo and other US torture centers. Look at this report entitled Statement of Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal and Rhuhel Ahmed from the Center for Constitutional Rights, for example:

They were never given prayer mats and initially they didn't get a Koran. When the Korans were provided, they were kicked and thrown about by the guards and on occasion thrown in the buckets used for the toilets. This kept happening. When it happened it was always said to be an accident but it was a recurrent theme.

...Asif says that ``it was impossible to pray because initially we did not know the direction to pray, but also given that we couldn't move and the harassment from the guards, it was simply not feasible. The behaviour 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. It is clear to me that the conditions in our cells and our general treatment were designed by the officers in charge of the interrogation process to `soften us up'''.

Also check out this report from cageprisoners.com. Its pages are filled with stories of

The ridiculing of the athaan (call to prayer); forcible shaving of the beard -- as punishment; use of sexual enticement during interrogations; derision of the Prophet; withholding of food in Ramadhan; prohibition of Quranic recitation, proscription of athaan and congregational prayer in Bagram, Afghanistan - a Muslim country; derision of Islamic rituals and supplications; forcible removal of prisoners whilst in the act of prayer, in addition to the degradation of the Qur`an have all been categorically reported by men formerly detained by the US military. The reports are far too recurrent, concurrent and consistent to deny, particularly as former US interrogators and soldiers have corroborated these reports.

And one more extended quote partly concerning religious humiliation of a US detainee from The Observer of January 2, 2005:

A British detainee at Guantanamo Bay has told his lawyer he was tortured using the 'strappado', a technique common in Latin American dictatorships in which a prisoner is left suspended from a bar with handcuffs until they cut deeply into his wrists.

The reason, the prisoner says, was that he was caught reciting the Koran at a time when talking was banned.

He says he has also been repeatedly shaved against his will. In one such incident, a guard told him: 'This is the part that really gets to you Muslims, isn't it?'

The strappado allegation was one among many made about treatment at both Guantanamo and the US base at Bagram in Afghanistan made to the British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith when he visited his clients Moazzam Begg and Richard Belmar at the Cuban prison six weeks ago, having tried for the previous 14 months to obtain the necessary security clearance.

But it is clear the disturbing claim is only the tip of the iceberg. Under the rules the United States military has imposed for defence lawyers who visit Guantanamo, Stafford Smith has not been allowed to keep his notes of meetings with prisoners, and will not be able to read them again until they have been examined and de-classified by a government censor.

He cannot disclose in public anything the men have told him until it too has been been de-classified, on pain of likely imprisonment in the US.

Stafford Smith has drawn up a 30-page report on the tortures which Begg and Belmar say they have endured, and sent it as an annexe with a letter to the Prime Minister which Downing Street received shortly before Christmas. For the time being - possibly forever - the report cannot be published, because the Americans claim that the torture allegations amount to descriptions of classified interrogation methods. [emphasis added]

Unsettling here is the notion that the US desires to cover up such reports with a wall of secrecy, evidently aware of the fallout in the Musllim world of the sort the Newsweek story eventually contributed. Desperate attempts by Scott McClellan to focus an administration response against Newsweek, rather than it's own responsibilities for prisoner torture, seems too little and too late to prevent serious continued anti-American rioting.

Meanwhile, it would be hilarious watching the right wing bloviators decry the ``riots and death'' post hoc the Newsweek story if their own hypocrisy and endorsement of administration lying about mass destruction weapons in Iraq was not so tainted with blood.

See also this Kos posting for more on the rightwing hyenas attacking Newsweek. Newsweek's ``mistakes'' in reporting the story have everything to do with the reversal of an inside source, but not the essential truth of the story. Juan Cole has even more.