not the way to win hearts and minds

Juan Cole:

The Guardian reports that news (from Newsweek) that US soldiers desecrated the Koran--and at one point flushed pages of it down the toilet as a technique for humiliating and breaking detainees at Guantanamo--has provoked a second day of protests and then rioting in Jalalabad, this time with loss of life. On Tuesday, 2000 students had demonstrated. On Wednesday, 5,000 to 10,000 university, medical and K-12 students came out, and then they went on the attack, including against US troops. Four died and 70 were injured... ...In secular American society, I suppose the shock value here could only be hinted at if we imagined someone flushing a small American flag down the toilet. But probably we can't imagine it at all. The technique of humiliating Muslims as a way of "breaking" them for interrogation has often veered toward torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and it wasn't effective as a technique. The Israeli flag was also used at one point, apparently. The US military has a tradition of such humiliations, going back to treatment of the Filipino Muslim rebels in the early 20th century. But there is a difference between humiliating Muslim prisoners and humiliating Islam. Whatever goddam military genius came up with the bright idea of flushing the Koran down the toilet at Guantanamo should be court-martialed, and Bush had better get out there apologizing before this thing spirals further out of control.

Can we at least agree to not desecrate sacred religious texts and scriptures? When Americans says "it's not a war on Islam", people look at things like this and they take that as so many lies. Added: The protests and riots are spreading. There isn't a lot of goodwill left for America in the Muslim world, but this will probably destroy most of what's left. Update: Newsweek published a retraction that some say is not really a retraction at all. Why? Similar stories about desecration of the Quran have already been reported elsewhere (see also here). Juan Cole and Arthur Silber comment. Update 2: Lots more: more stories of Quran desecration reported elsewhere (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) including from the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch as well as the FBI, more on Newsweek's "non-retraction" retraction (1, 2, 3), more commentary (1, 2, 3), an editorial, a Muslim perspective, and a reality check about reactions in the Muslim world (see also Riverbend on this). And what was really going on in Afghanistan anyway? Doesn't have much to do with Newsweek, actually. Update 3: Government confirms five instances of Quran desecration, commentary, and the policy that this is a part of. Aside: A complaint I've seen in some quarters is that Muslims seem to be more concerned with descration of the Quran than with the torture of Muslims. In case you're curious, I have one entry (this one) about Quran desecration and (at last count) 99 about torture. Try that claim somewhere else.