Yes it should have never been published. And even now they are trying hard to make sure that at least to the Quran, to promote their anti-americanism. There are so many Bible and Church burnings in the east, no one wants to report on that.
Such a double standard here.
I disagree. Anyone is free to publish whatever story they want. Right now, prison abuses are a big issue. If someone wants to publish something they think relevant, so be it. Don't confuse different issues as double standards.
Here's a great article on something relevant.
Why Muslims Distrust the West
by H.D.S. Greenway
"There appears to be a very unpleasant feeling existing among the native
soldiers, who are here for instruction, regarding the grease used in
preparing the cartridges," a young British officer in India, Captain
J.A. Wright, wrote to his general in the winter of 1857. ''Some evil
disposed persons have spread a report that it consists of a mixture of
the fat of pigs and cows," and the rumor ''has spread throughout
India."
The British had recently introduced a new rifle, the Enfield, that
required that the end of the cartridge be bitten off before it was
rammed down the rifle's muzzle. And since good Muslims cannot touch pig
grease, nor Hindus the fat of cows, the ''sepoys," as Indian soldiers in
the service of the British were called, perceived a Western assault on
their religions.
Wright tried to tell his men that ''the grease used is composed of
mutton fat and wax," but his denial was not enough. The first serious
unrest broke in Bengal. A sepoy named Mangal Pande of the 34th Native
Infantry incited his brothers to mutiny yelling, ''it's for our
religion," fired at an English officer, and struck him with a sword. By
spring the fire of the great Indian Mutiny had spread across north
India, spreading death and insurrection that rocked the British Empire
to its core.
I thought of Captain Wright's denial when I heard Mark Whitaker of
Newsweek retract his story of American interrogators flushing a Koran
down a toilet -- a story which helped fuel deadly riots across the
Muslim world. For it is unlikely that Whitaker's retraction will
convince Muslims that their religion is not under attack any more than
British denials about the cartridge grease stemmed the mutiny.
Reports of desecrating the Koran have been seeping out of Guantanamo,
Afghanistan, and Iraq for a couple of years now. In March of 2002,
prisoners in Guantanamo staged a hunger strike over mistreatment of the
Holy Book. Numerous former detainees have reported similar incidents.
Aryat Vahitov told Russian television in June 2004 that ''they tore the
Koran to pieces in front of us, threw it into the toilet." Abdallah
Tabarak told Moroccan newspaper in December that Americans had trampled
the Koran underfoot and ''throw it in the urine bucket."
Former detainees may not always be reliable sources, but then the
International Committee of the Red Cross also said it had ''multiple
reports" of Koran misuse in the early days of Guantanamo. And the
Pentagon itself has reprimanded two female guards for acts designed to
make prisoners feel unclean and thus unable to pray.
Clearly the Newsweek report was used by people trying to stir up trouble
and instigate riot. President Bush might even use Captain Wright's words
to describe them as ''evil disposed persons."
But the larger point is that neither the Newsweek article nor the
greased cartridges 148 years ago were the real reason that the two
rumors gained traction. Historians tell us that India was going through
a period of great change in the mid-19th century. In the 18th century
the British in India often adopted an Indian way of life and culture.
But the 19th century saw British customs and mores making themselves
felt across the subcontinent in what are now the nations of Pakistan,
India, and Bangladesh.
Reforms that looked quite sensible to British eyes were often
misunderstood and resented. Land reform had affected not only big land
owners but thousands of lesser landlords too, and many of them
relatively poor -- the classes among whom most sepoys were recruited.
They ''felt deeply aggrieved by the government's reforms, apprehensive
as to what further deprivations their British rulers might have in
mind," according to Christopher Hibbert, author of ''The Great Mutiny."
''Nor were the peasants as pleased with the reforms as the government
had expected," he writes. ''They preferred their own ways to the
strange ones being imposed upon them by foreigners." And they believed
their religion was in danger.
Today we are in another age of great change, and there are Muslims who
are suspicious of the reforms foreigners would impose. They fear what
America may have in mind for them. Today many perceive in rapid and
all-encompassing Westernization a threat to their religion, just as the
sepoys did a century and a half ago.
© 2005 Boston Globe
