Seriously Sandeep

Again.

If you need more evidence for how Islamism has matured as a world-threatening force, go no farther than this–the hottest news item doing rounds today, namely, the Koran’s alleged desecration in Guantanamo prison.

In one stroke, we’re witnessing the most concrete evidence for how, despite all its internal clashes, the Muslim Ummah is really one monolithic unit when it concerns the “roots,” so to say. From Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan to Indonesia, the entire Islamic world is outraged. The weak-kneed Bush government had a scapegoat waiting for it: Newsweek, the paper that had published the news first. And later retracted obviously under governmental pressure. Poor Mark Whitaker, Editor of the paper eats his words as follows:

Editor’s Note: On Monday afternoon, May 16, Whitaker issued the following statement: 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.

This again underscores the urgent need for the US–before it’s too late–to wake up to the real nature of the Islamic threat instead of trying to muzzle criticism on Islam. Europe is a lost case already . No matter how many times, and to any (ridiculous) lengths we go to appease Islamists, they’ll think of innovative ways to keep up the Islam is in danger refrain.

Whether the Koran was in truth flushed down the toilet is not the issue; what the world should notice is the astonishing swiftness with which the Islamic world was able to unite and just show a sample of what it was capable of.

Hundreds rioted over reports that interrogators at America’s Guantanamo Bay prison had flushed at least one copy of the Koran down a toilet.

The city is now said to be calm after widespread damage to property. All but essential UN staff are being withdrawn. [...]Two United Nations guest houses were attacked, as were shops and government buildings, and the offices of two international aid groups were destroyed. [.] The protesters chanted “Death to America” and smashed car windows and damaged shops.

All this over a mere news report that alleged the supposed desecration. Here’s an excerpt from the (original) damaging item:

Investigators probing interrogation abuses at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay have confirmed some infractions alleged in internal FBI e-mails that surfaced late last year. Among the previously unreported cases, sources tell NEWSWEEK: interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur’an down a toilet and led a detainee around with a collar and dog leash.

A phrase, enough to set fire at a remote corner of the world. If we hypothesize that this had happened (heaven forbid!) in India, the consequences that’d follow is anybody’s guess: bloody riots would be the inevitable first aftermath followed by the secular brigade having a field day. The Muslim community in the US–despite a growing presence of fundamentalists there–has largely remained silent. Interestingly, the legal provision in the US about insulting religious books reads as follows:

As a legal matter, U.S. citizens are free to deface the Qur’an as an exercise of free speech, just as they are free to burn the American flag or tear up a Bible; but government employees can be punished for violating government rules.

However, I do not endorse hurting sentiments of any religion on whatever ground: in this, I share the same views as Niraj and JK, who’ve saved me the effort of writing what they’ve done. Nor do I support the insult to the Koran–if it really did happen.

But there is more that meets the eye. From this article,

A U.S. military spokesman, Army Col. Brad Blackner, dismissed the claims as unbelievable. “If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels,” he said.

A statement that conveys a lot. That the Al Qaeda training manual is an extremely well-thought document is beyond dispute: it shows the precise knowledge its drafters have about the US legal system. So, if the Newsweek report is indeed false, the US probably faces greater trouble because the jail inmates have proved to be slick manipulators, and there’s no telling what they’ll be up to next. However, if it is true, we should also consider that this isn’t the first time the Koran has been desecrated in the (so called) free world. From the same MSNBC article,

NEWSWEEK was not the first to report allegations of desecrating the Qur’an. As early as last spring and summer, similar reports from released detainees started surfacing in British and Russian news reports, and in the Arab news agency Al-Jazeera; claims by other released detainees have been covered in other media since then. But the NEWSWEEK report arrived at a particularly delicate moment in Afghan politics. Opponents of the Karzai government, including remnants of the deposed Taliban regime, have been looking for ways to exploit public discontent.

I cannot fully agree with the timing aspect; the reason is that the present incident chooses to target the US specifically–the worldwide outrage is precisely because the Koran was allegedly desecrated in a US jail. Again, this is probably part of the price the US has to pay in waging its “battle against terror.” In the Islamic world, no country is hated and feared as much as the US. Its policy of making friends with terrorist states–Islamic ones–like Pakistan only adds to the hatred. To make it more dramatic, the hatred multiplies because of the helplessness of these countries; they vent it out by taking to the streets. So, in Pakistan, the rogue General pretending to support the US is himself helpless against the Mullahs. Silence is his only retort to statements such as this:

The Chief of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), Qazi Hussain Ahmad [...] further said that the torching of the Pakistani consulate in Jalalabad was also a direct result of General Musharraf’s pro-US policies, which was hunting down Muslims at US’s behest.

“Pakistanis, regarded as US stooges, are condemned everywhere in the world. Publication of a derogatory cartoon about Pakistan in the US press is also the reflection of similar sentiments,” he said, adding that the strong public reaction against extremist and unjust US policies all over the world was now directly damaging Pakistani interests as Islamabad was seen as the custodian of US interests.

“The Jalalabad incident should serve as an eye-opener for the Musharraf regime because the US-patronized government in Kabul had badly failed to protect Pakistan from the anti-US reaction of its own people,” he added.

I had earlier mentioned about the futility of appeasing Islamists. This item adds more weight to it:

“Just an apology is not enough. They should think 101 times before publishing news that hurts hearts,” Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said. Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri, speaking during a visit to New Zealand, said Newsweek’s retraction “will definitely help” defuse some of the anger, but “unfortunately some damage has been done”. [.]

Deputy Secretary General of the MMA, Liaquat Baloch, warned that Muslim anger over Newsweek’s story will not subside despite the magazine’s retraction. “Those who planned and flashed this story in Newsweek must be exposed and punished,” Baloch said.

So when (or how?) will the Muslim anger subside? By a second Sept 11 bombing? The elite policy makers, master strategists, and all the supposedly-smart people lack commonsense that once you give in, you keep giving in, that the demands never stop. In principle, this incident has a parallel in our own Ayodhya affair: the Islamic coterie backed by self-proclaimed intellectuals kept refusing to accept historical evidence after historical evidence, asking for more. The appeasers, eager to prove their point kept piling more and more. Finally, the Islamic clique and the gangs that supported it got what they wanted: if we can’t have it, we won’t let you have it either. An eunuchesque situation–neither here nor there. And the party, which promised to rebuild the Ram temple has paid dearly for it–its credibility of fulfilling promises is shattered. When is the last time you heard the BJP rake up the Ayodhya episode?

If Newsweek’s story is indeed true, and they have, by own their own admission, reliable sources to back it up, they have by retracting the story, sucuumbed to State pressure, a State which staunchly refuses to see eye to eye the Islamic menace. But then, the US has only itself to blame because it has befriended only terrorist nations: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to name two.

Although other major news organizations had aired charges of Qur’an desecration based only on the testimony of detainees, we believed our story was newsworthy because a U.S. official said government investigators turned up this evidence. So we published the item.

Compare it with the tame abjuration on May 16:

Editor’s Note: On Monday afternoon, May 16, Whitaker issued the following statement: 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.

A bit of guts would have served the paper better, a la Katharine Graham who took on Nixon headlong. And won.

In closing, I’m amazed that among all these accounts of humiliating the Koran, hurting sentiments, etc., not one mentions a crucial aspect: while it is true that some amount of courtesy, sensitivity and all the nice things should be extended to prisoners on humanitarian grounds, what are the chances that if they’re set free, they will exhibit the same lofty principles? What is the guarantee that they won’t do another Sept 11?