Outcry over Guantanamo desecration

The Muslim world is up in arms over the desecration of the Qur'an by prison staff in Guantanamo Bay, writes Laila Saada from New York

For all of last week, images of American flags on fire dominated the news. Afghan demonstrators marched in their thousands; More than 15 were killed and dozens wounded; Yemeni students chanted "Death to America", while in India, Gaza and Pakistan, as the anger rippled in Muslim countries, hundreds rallied in protest of the alleged desecration of the Qur'an at the United States detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

On Monday, Newsweek retracted the allegations which were originally published in the magazine on 9 May, revealing that a soon-to-be published military report cited religious abuses of detainees at Guantanamo, including at least one incident of flushing the Qur'an down the toilet. Still, Afghan media insisted that the report is accurate and accused the US government of pressuring the magazine to change its position.

Amidst the international uproar and despite local efforts to prove the allegation wrong, Muslims in North America today remain sceptical.

"Whether or not Newsweek retracts its story is not the point," said James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute in Washington DC. "We have engaged in a pattern of abusive behaviour using Islamic sensitivities by design. And we have encouraged this culture."

Americans, whether Arab or Muslim or neither, should all feel angry that such incidents including ones the government has already admitted to, have all gone unpunished, said Zogby.

"Whether or not this particular story stands true doesn't change the fact that there are far too many similar stories and no senior person has been held accountable for this culture of abuse."

Officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, assured leaders of the Muslim countries that "appropriate action" would be taken if the incidents were proven to have occurred. On Sunday, four days after the Newsweek story, the US administration insisted that Newsweek 's claims were unfounded. Newsweek, in return, failed to bring forward its "knowledgeable government source", who decided he was unsure where he had read of the incidents after all.

Yet, investigations shrouded in secrecy and occasional war crime scandals have all but tarnished Washington's reputation among Muslims both in the US and abroad. As Americans witness the developments of this investigation unfold, they too are questioning the forces that might have induced Newsweek 's hasty apology as well as the truth behind the government's claims of innocence of religious abuse tactics.

"We had already heard similar stories from other reports. So this was no news," said Nihad Awad, executive director and co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest non-profit Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation in the United States. "The feeling among Muslims here is that this incident really happened. We need to get to the bottom of this and take proper action."

In a statement directed to President George W Bush issued immediately after the 9 May report, CAIR said: "The allegations, if true, can only serve to fuel anti-American sentiment. Vague assurances of a military investigation are insufficient to keep this incident from being used to further harm relations with the Muslim world. We urge President Bush to initiate an open probe of the incident, make public its findings and punishing those responsible."

Lawyers and human rights organisations working closely with Guantanamo detainees confirm public doubt.

"I am shocked they retracted their story," said Tina Foster, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based human rights organisation. "We have heard many reports confirming this type of religious abuse. There is no way that detainees who come from almost every country in this world can conjure up such identical lies. The pattern is too well defined to be anything but true."

According to the centre, former prisoners in Guantanamo have been issuing credible reports of religious humiliation and abuse since early 2004. One report by three released UK citizens meticulously documented the abuses, including religious humiliations that they and other prisoners experienced.

These reports, as well as documents disclosed by the government and presented by the CCR and others, reveal a systemic use of religious humiliation that includes sexual taunting, depriving clients of long pants during prayer times, deliberate interference with prayers, wrapping a prisoner in an Israeli flag, desecration and mishandling of the Qur'an, and, most recently, religious slurs directed towards prisoners' attorneys.

"The loss of human life over this incident is unfortunate," said Foster of the 15 Afghan demonstrators who died last week. "But the facts remain that the news agency did not endanger those people's lives. It is the administration's failure to comply with international standards of human rights that has created this dangerous climate."

For many in the US, the question remains: Why did the Newsweek report instigate so much anti-American anger while similar news reports can be traced back to 2003? Repercussions then were barely palpable.

"Anger against the US is continuously on the rise," said Awad of CAIR. "Our image as a nation is continuously tarnished by such scandals like Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the Guantanamo reports. How can we tolerate the abuse of our human rights, our religious symbols and the basic values that we try to preach all over the world?"

And along with anger among the five to eight million Muslims in the US, of whom 25 per cent are estimated to come from Arab decent, have come apathy and despair.

"I would be very sceptical even if the government admitted to this kind of disrespectful behaviour towards religious symbols," said Amal El-Rafei, 42, a Syrian/ Egyptian/American living with her family in New Jersey.

"I will not believe anything less than a fully open investigative report about the incident and an acknowledgement that there is something inherently wrong in the training of our military people to allow them to use such denigrating techniques," she said. "Mark my words, even if they do acknowledge it, they will pin it on one or two individuals claiming they are outside the norm, just as they did in the Abu Ghraib incident in Iraq."

AL-AHRAM weakly on line

2 - 8 June 2005
Issue No. 745
International