Newsweek Backtracks as Anger Spreads Over Koran Claim

Nine more people have been killed in Afghanistan, clerics are threatening a holy war, and Islamic leaders are urging worldwide Muslim protests in response to a Newsweek report claiming that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay threw a Koran into a toilet—a report the magazine now concedes may be inaccurate.

“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,” Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker said in an editorial published in Newsweek’s latest edition and posted on the magazine’s website.

Protests spread from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Indonesia and Arab countries on Friday, stoked by mosque imams’ sermons during Friday prayers.

The death toll in a week of rioting in Afghanistan rose to at least 15 and several hundred clerics issued a statement Sunday saying they would call for a jihad against the U.S. if those responsible for the alleged desecration were not handed over to an Islamic country for punishment within three days.

The statement was read by a senior official after clerics met in a mosque in Faizabad, capital of the northeastern Badakhstan province.

In Newsweek’s May 9 edition, a brief item carried a single sentence saying that a U.S. military investigation had found that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, where Islamist terror suspects are being held, had flushed a Koran down a toilet.

A populist politician in Pakistan called a press conference to draw attention to the claim, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia issued strongly worded statements, and protests erupted in the Afghan city of Jalalabad and spread.

The item was picked up by Muslim media outlets, some of which have depicted the toilet allegation as a fact rather than a claim made by an unnamed source. Pakistan’s Dawn daily stated in an editorial—without qualification—that “the desecration of the Holy Koran at Guantanamo ... has sent a wave of revulsion across the Muslim world.”

Late last week Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice added her voice to earlier administration statements saying the allegation was being investigated and that any desecration of the Koran would not be tolerated.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday the military’s own probe could find no evidence of the supposed incident.

Newsweek now reports that, on rechecking with the senior U.S. official who earlier reported seeing details of the Koran incident in a report on a military investigation, the “longtime reliable source” could no longer be sure exactly where he had seen them.

Whitaker said Newsweek reporters had sought comment from two Defense Department officials. One declined, while the other challenged another part of the story but did not dispute the Koran claim.

“Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we.”

‘Orchestrated’

Myers said at the Pentagon briefing Thursday that according to U.S. commanders in Afghanistan, the Jalalabad protests had more to do with the political situation on the ground than anger about the report.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a U.S. ally, has also suggested that foreign elements and “enemies of peace” were responsible for the violent rioting.

Some regional observers appear to agree that the Koran issue was merely a spark that ignited a highly-flammable situation - in Afghanistan, at least.

“They are fed up with the United States and they just needed a spark to vent their feelings,” said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Pakistani journalist considered an authority on the Pakistan-Afghan tribal areas.

South Asian political and security analyst Bahukutumbi Raman said the protests in Afghanistan were not spontaneous.

“They had been well-prepared, and were well-organized and well-orchestrated. Groups of students went from town to town instigating the local students to take to the streets.”

Raman, who is director of the Institute For Topical Studies in the Indian city of Chennai, also reported that many members of the police and army appeared to have sympathized with the protestors.

He cited “reliable Afghan sources” as saying the demonstrations had been organized by a growing global movement called Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami.

Raman describes Hizb ut-Tahrir as a veteran group with a secretive leadership and structure, which shares al-Qaeda’s goal of an Islamic caliphate under Islamic law, but focuses on mass agitation rather than acts of terrorism.

The movement emphasized the importance of clandestine penetration of security forces, he said. The violence in Afghanistan illustrated “the extent of its penetration not only in the student community, but also in the Afghan security forces.”

Hizb ut-Tahrir (Islamic Party of Liberation) was founded in the then Jordanian-occupied East Jerusalem in the early 1950s and has spread across Europe and Asia, with a particularly strong foothold in the Central Asian Republics.

Anger spreads

Beyond Afghanistan, reaction has been instigated by radical rhetoric and fiery sermons, while calls for calm have been largely absent.

In Pakistan, an influential six-party alliance of Islamic groups, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) said it has contacted Muslim leaders around the world, organizing a global day of protest on May 27.

MMA president said Qazi Hussain Ahmed told a media conference he had been in touch with several dozen leaders in the U.S., Britain, Indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey and elsewhere.

“It is time to unite the Muslim world against any such conspiracy against them,” he said, adding that since the desecration claim had been published in Newsweek “there is no doubt about the truth of its happening.”

On Friday, Pakistani Muslims chanting “Death to America” demonstrated in Karachi, Lahore and the capital, Islamabad, while American and Israeli flags were burnt by several thousand Palestinians protesting after Friday prayers in the northern Gaza Strip.

A mosque in Jakarta, Indonesia was also the scene of another protest after Friday prayers, and thousands of students demonstrated in the Yemeni capital, San’a.

Adding its voice to other calls, the International Association of Muslim Scholars (IAMS) - a body of Sunni and Shi’ite scholars from around the world - demanded a U.S. apology and urged Muslims to rise to the challenge facing their religion.

“This latest scandalous incident will only serve to increase anti-American sentiments amongst Muslims worldwide,” opined the Muslim Association of Britain, while Lebanon’s senior Shi’ite cleric, Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah railed against what he called an American campaign aimed at “disrespecting” and smearing Islam.

The situation echoes instances in the past in which Muslims have been roused to fury over issues deemed offensive to their faith, including the Salman Rushdie “blasphemy” affair, and unfounded rumors in 1996 that Israel was digging under the mosques on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Both episodes led to considerable loss of life.

“Newsweek’s belated retraction is unlikely to blunt the force of this as yet another new pretext for jihad,” wrote Islam scholar Robert Spencer, author of a website called Jihad Watch.

“The pretexts are ever new; only the jihad is constant,” he said.

Source:http://www.cnsnews.com/