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Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| Americans Flush Quran down the toilet to show thei |
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| abdullahcohn |
| 05/13/05 at 06:58:31 |
| KABUL, Afghanistan May 12, 2005 — Afghans enraged by the alleged desecration of Islam's holy book at a U.S. prison staged a third day of violent protests Thursday, burning an American flag in the capital and ransacking relief group offices to the south as demonstrations spread to neighboring Pakistan. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice promised "appropriate action" would be taken if the allegations are proven true, while key U.S. ally Saudi Arabia urged that any offenders be quickly disciplined. Three more demonstrators were shot and killed in clashes with police, officials said, bringing the death toll to at least seven in the biggest anti-American protests in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban in 2001 and presenting a fresh challenge to efforts to stabilize the country. U.S. Offensive Intensifies at Syrian Border Head of Abu Ghraib Prison Speaks Out Full Coverage: Sudan While most of the protesters were students, officials suggested that elements opposed to Afghanistan's U.S.-backed government were stirring the violence, which has also targeted American troops and the United Nations. The demonstrations could complicate President Hamid Karzai's plans to ask for military aid on a trip to Washington this month, a prospect that has stoked a previously muted debate on how long U.S. troops should stay to secure the country, still riven by a Taliban-led rebellion. That debate may play out in parliamentary elections this year. The Afghan leader, on a trip to Europe, has played down the violence as the growing pains of Afghan democracy. The trigger of the unrest was a brief report in the May 9 edition of Newsweek magazine that interrogators at the U.S. prison on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, placed Qurans in washrooms to unsettle suspects, and in one case "flushed a holy book down the toilet." Desecration of the Quran is punishable by death in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, but diplomats and officials have been taken aback by the intense reaction further enflamed by bloodshed in a police crackdown on anti-U.S. protesters in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on Wednesday that left four dead and over 70 wounded. Continued 1. 2. 3. 4. NEXT» ABC NEWS |
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| jannah |
| 05/16/05 at 02:52:37 |
| Newsweek has gone back on their story that this took place... the US says they are investigating "vigorously" so we'll see what happens... wlm, |
| Americans Flush Quran down the toilet to show thei |
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| Ember |
| 05/16/05 at 11:05:43 |
| [slm] Newsweek has said that their source has some doubts on the report that he/she specified as the one that has the information but they have not 'retracted' the story. They apologized for any violence caused as a result of the story. |
| News week is not the only sorce |
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| abdullahcohn |
| 05/16/05 at 18:06:13 |
| The British Brothers who were released mentioned how the Americans desecrated the Quran. But no one listens to Muslims, instead people relied on the Zionist media. And when the Zionist Rulers of America told their Zionist Media to retract it, they did! Is it any supprise? |
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| Muslims Skeptical Over Newsweek Weasel Words |
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| abdullahcohn |
| 05/16/05 at 18:28:40 |
| Muslims Skeptical Over Newsweek Weasel Words uploaded 16 May 2005 By Sayed Salahuddin KABUL (Reuters) - Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan were skeptical Monday about an apparent retraction by Newsweek magazine of a report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran and said U.S. pressure was behind the climb-down. The report in Newsweek's May 9 issue sparked protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Gaza. Newsweek said Sunday the report might not be true. "We will not be deceived by this," Islamic cleric Mullah Sadullah Abu Aman told Reuters in the northern Afghan province of Badakhshan, referring to the magazine's retraction. "This is a decision by America to save itself. It comes because of American pressure. Even an ordinary illiterate peasant understands this and won't accept it." Aman was the leader of a group of clerics who Sunday vowed to call for a holy war against the United States in three days unless it handed over the military interrogators reported to have desecrated the Koran. That call for a jihad, or holy war, still stood, he said. Newsweek originally said investigators probing abuses at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay found that interrogators "had placed Korans on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet." Muslims consider the Koran the literal word of God and treat each book with deep reverence. Last week's bloody anti-American protests across Afghanistan were the worst since U.S. forces invaded in 2001 to oust the Taliban for sheltering Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. "NOT CERTAIN" Newsweek said Sunday its information had come from a "knowledgeable government source" who told the magazine that a military report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay said interrogators flushed at least one copy of the Koran down a toilet in a bid to make detainees talk. But Newsweek said the source later said he could not be certain he had seen an account of the incident in the military report and that it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Afghans were unconvinced. "It's not acceptable now that the magazine says it's made a mistake," said Hafizullah Torab, 42, a writer and journalist in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, where the protests began last Tuesday. "No one will accept it." "Possibly, the American government put pressure on the magazine to issue the retraction to avoid the anger of Muslims," said Sayed Elyas Sedaqat, who heads a cultural group in the city. In neighboring Pakistan, a religious party said it was going ahead with a call for protests on May 27. "Newsweek is back-tracking but it's not just their report," said Ghaffar Aziz, a top official of the Jamaat-e-Islami party. "All innocent people released from U.S. custody have said on the record that there was desecration of the Koran. A spokesman for the Taliban, who denied any involvement in last week's Afghan protests, said the original report was true. "Newsweek is changing its story because of pressure from the U.S. government," Abdul Latif Hakimi said by telephone. In Kabul, a U.S. military spokesman told a news briefing the Newsweek retraction had no bearing on the U.S. position. "Any disrespect to the Koran and any other religion is not tolerated by our culture and our values," said Colonel Jim Yonts. Kabul University student Abdul Khaliq said Newsweek should be held accountable. "If this was a mistake by Newsweek it should be banned," he said. At the weekend, President Hamid Karzai urged Washington to punish anyone found guilty of desecration. The government had no immediate comment on the Newsweek clarification. In Pakistan, where a November edition of Newsweek was banned for publishing a photograph of a woman's body painted with inscriptions from the Koran, the government last week expressed deep concern about the Guantanamo report and said perpetrators of the reported desecration should be held accountable. (Reporting by Qurban Ali Hamzi in BADAKHSHAN, Dawood Wafa in JALALABAD, Saeed Ali Achakzai in SPIN BOLDAK, Tahir Ikram in ISLAMABAD, Robert Birsel in KABUL) Source: Reuters |
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| Newsweek Got Gitmo Right |
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| abdullahcohn |
| 05/16/05 at 18:37:38 |
| Newsweek Got Gitmo Right uploaded 16 May 2005 by Calgacus* Contrary to White House spin, the allegations of religious desecration at Guantanamo published by Newsweek on May 9, 2005, are common among ex-prisoners and have been widely reported outside the United States. Several former detainees at the Guantanamo and Bagram prisons have reported instances of their handlers sitting or standing on the Koran, throwing or kicking it in toilets, and urinating on it. Prior to the Newsweek article, the New York Times reported a Guantanamo insider asserting that the commander of the facility was compelled by prisoner protests to address the problem and issue an apology. One such incident (during which the Koran was allegedly thrown in a pile and stepped on) prompted a hunger strike among Guantanamo detainees in March 2002. Regarding this, the New York Times in a May 1, 2005, article interviewed a former detainee, Nasser Nijer Naser al-Mutairi, who said the protest ended with a senior officer delivering an apology to the entire camp. And the Times reports: "A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans." (Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt, "Inquiry Finds Abuses at Guantanamo Bay," New York Times, May 1, 2005.) The hunger strike and apology story is also confirmed by another former detainee, Shafiq Rasul, interviewed by the UK Guardian in 2003 (James Meek, "The People the Law Forgot," Dec. 3, 2003). It was also confirmed by former prisoner Jamal al-Harith in an interview with the Daily Mirror (Rosa Prince and Gary Jones, "My Hell in Camp X-Ray," Daily Mirror, March 12, 2004). The toilet incident was reported in the Washington Post in a 2003 interview with a former detainee from Afghanistan: "Ehsannullah, 29, said American soldiers who initially questioned him in Kandahar before shipping him to Guantanamo hit him and taunted him by dumping the Koran in a toilet. 'It was a very bad situation for us,' said Ehsannullah, who comes from the home region of the Taliban leader, Mohammad Omar. 'We cried so much and shouted, "Please do not do that to the Holy Koran."' (Marc Kaufman and April Witt, "Out of Legal Limbo, Some Tell of Mistreatment," Washington Post, March 26, 2003.) Also citing the toilet incident is testimony by Asif Iqbal, a former Guantanamo detainee who was released to British custody in March 2004 and subsequently freed without charge: "The behavior of the guards towards our religious practices as well as the Koran was also, in my view, designed to cause us as much distress as possible. They would kick the Koran, throw it into the toilet, and generally disrespect it." (Center for Constitutional Rights [.pdf], Aug. 4, 2004.) The claim that U.S. troops at Bagram prison in Afghanistan urinated on the Koran was made by former detainee Mohamed Mazouz, a Moroccan, as reported in the Moroccan newspaper, La Gazette du Maroc. (Abdelhak Najib, "Les Américains pissaient sur le Coran et abusaient de nous sexuellement," April 12, 2005.) An English translation is available on the Cage Prisoners site (which describes itself as a "nonsectarian Islamic human rights Web site"). Tarek Derghoul, another of the British detainees, similarly cites instances of Koran desecration in an interview with Cage Prisoners. Desecration of the Koran was also mentioned by former Guantanamo detainee Abdul Rahim Muslim Dost and reported by the BBC in early May 2005. (Haroon Rashid, "Ex-Inmates Share Guantanamo Ordeal," May 2, 2005.) *Calgacus has been employed as a researcher in the national security field for 20 years. Source: AntiWar.com |
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| jannah |
| 05/16/05 at 20:15:19 |
| slm, no doubt it is very suspicous for Newsweek to print this story then say that they were re-investigating and then totally retract it. i don't doubt for a minute that interrogators have desecrated the Quran at some point or another for their own purposes. first hand accounts and witnesses (including the new book expose by an officer there) tell of horrors that we can't even imagine. using someone else's holy book would mean nothing to people who have no humanity and decency towards prisoners and fellow human beings. the article in time describes repeated beatings, torture, pain, solitary confinement, psychological and sexual humiliation. he says that he knows at least half the prisoners there have tried to commit suicide! that they would do anything to get a razor to end their own life because they are beyond psychological forbearance. and these were men who considered themselves devout muslims at one time.... they KNOW that killing onself is forbidden islamically and they KNOW what the punishment is, yet they are at this point where they would do anything, anything to escape the absolute torture and evils they are undergoing. may Allah have mercy on them. i cannot understand why desecration of the Quran causes uprisings and anger and desecration of human beings, fellow muslims, did not. i cannot believe in this day and age where we call ourselves civilized we are living through a war and time where things like this take place, and people go home and eat their dinner and continue on their way building more dunya some nights i stay awake thinking of the muslims who are in pain all over the world.. men in jail being tortured, mothers crying for their children, losing their homes, their loved one's, living in poverty and fear and constant war. the time we live in is a trial. the only thing that can comfort us is that we know that this is the price for entrance to Paradise, how else is Allah to distinguish the righteous from those who commit every evil with impugnity. jannah is not handed to us, it is indeed earned. we may be angry and upset about what is happenning in our world but we need to direct it to our own selves first. we need to take a long hard look at ourselves and ask what we have done/not done to earn all our problems. it is because of our heedlessness and sins that we are undergoing this test/punishment. we can blame others all we want but when it comes down to it we are the first to blame, the others are a far secondary. may Allah forgive us for our mistakes, guide us back to Him, and grant us wisdom and vision for the future |
| 05/16/05 at 20:26:36 |
| jannah |
| ya |
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| safa |
| 05/22/05 at 02:35:41 |
| [slm] "i cannot understand why desecration of the Quran causes uprisings and anger and desecration of human beings, fellow muslims, did not." That was the first thought that came to my mind when i watched the report of the Afghan riots on the news. Anyway, Karzai actually saying he was shocked was a surprise. I would have expected him to play it down... |
| Can we believe what we hear? |
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| abdullahcohn |
| 05/23/05 at 05:23:31 |
| We are taking the word of the Zionist press that there were riots. And the only indication that we have that other religions don't react in this way is the Zionist press refusing to report Jewish, Christian and Bodhist riots(they happen often). ____________________________________________________________ The Boston Globe (May 19, 2005) published an op-ed Why Islam is disrespected, by Jeff Jacoby. Here is my response: The Guilty Lamb by Israel Shamir Muslims can’t be respected if a simple come-on like wasting of the Koran works them up into a frenzy, exclaims Jeff Jacoby , and they go around murdering innocent folk; while “decent people”, Catholics, Jews and Buddhists take it easy if “someone has offended their religious sensibilities”. If that were the case, we still may respect the Muslim world. Our indifference to sacrilege and their awareness of things sacred would imply that our profaned civilisation is doomed to extinction to be replaced by the Muslim one, alive and vibrant - though disrespected by a Jacoby. But it is not the case at all. Jacoby is speaking through his hat. His piece reminded me, an Israeli writer from Jaffa, of a Jewish joke: “Is it true that Katz won a million dollar in a lottery?” “Yes, it is true, but it was poker, not a lottery; ten dollar, not a million, and he lost, not won.” Every statement in Jacoby's piece is wrong, and it is not a small achievement. Jacoby notes “widespread Muslim rioting… brutal threats and the slaughter of 17 innocent people” and exclaims: “decent people do not resort to murder just because someone has offended their religious sensibilities”. How true! But it is not that the Muslim fanatics murdered seventeen innocent American investigators. Other way around, peacefully protesting Muslims were killed by American occupation forces and their auxiliaries in Afghanistan, Gaza and Andijan. The slaughtered innocents were Muslims, while the slaughtering brutes were paid for their deed by the US taxpayer. Jacoby offers a positive example: “Jewish communities [didn’t] erupt in lethal violence in 2000, after Arabs demolished Joseph's Tomb, torching the ancient shrine and murdering a young rabbi who tried to save a Torah.” Again, all wrong. Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus is an old Muslim shrine; it was not demolished but rebuilt by the Muslim Nablus municipality; the only Israeli that died at the fighting at the Tomb was not “a young rabbi who tried to save a Torah”, but a Druze mercenary. Jewish community, otherwise known as the Jewish state of Israel, indeed erupted in lethal violence: Israelis killed over twenty Muslims at the shrine and hundreds more elsewhere. Jacoby writes: “It would be unthinkable for a mainstream rabbi to demand that a blasphemer be slain.” However, this ‘unthinkable’ happens daily: many mainstream rabbis issued a fatwa amounting to a death sentence to a person involved in the ‘sacrilege’ of Gaza disengagement. It worries our Chief of Security Services; he spoke of it on the national TV. Jacoby could read of it in our Haaretz and elsewhere. The calls to “exterminate Muslims” are quite common, too; witness this graffiti on a wall in Israel-occupied Hebron. Moreover, every case of sacrilege against Jewish holy places – graffiti on a synagogue’s wall or in a cemetery, - causes hundreds of thousands Europeans and Americans to march in solidarity, while Kofi Annan calls up a special meeting of the UN General Assembly and the heads of states fly into Jerusalem to swear their full support of the Jews. Thus Jewish religious sensitivities are well protected; in addition, Israeli law allows for snatching and trying in Israel of every person who committed such an act anywhere on earth. If it is not enough, France, Germany and a few other states have a special law punishing an offence given to Jewish sensitivities by long imprisonment, and there are a few dozen offenders languishing presently in European jails for this misdeed. However, Muslim sensitivities are protected neither by the UN, nor by national law, nor by mass demonstrations of Europeans and Americans. I doubt the US interrogators guilty of offending the Muslims will land in jail next to Ernst Zundel who offended the Jews. This week, the Jewish state did not allow the Muslim retired leader Mahathir Muhammad to pray at the holy al-Aqsa mosque in occupied Jerusalem – and this flagrant breach of freedom of worship did not bring the UN into an emergency meeting. So much for Muslim sensitivities and for our concern! The reasons offered by Jacoby as to “why Islam is disrespected” collapsed as a house of cards in the fresh wind of reality. May I venture a better reason? Islam is disrespected – not by us, but by Jacobys of this world because it has little influence; because it is peaceful and non-aggressive; because the Muslims still do not understand why they are attacked in the Globe and tortured in Guantánamo. Islamic militancy never had deep roots in the Muslim world – this was created from scratch by the CIA in order to fight Russians in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Pro-American Muslim activists were surprised to find themselves framed as The Enemy, when, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the US proclaimed them ‘the main threat to world peace’. The Muslims were as guilty as the lamb in the La Fontaine fable, guilty for the Wolf was hungry. The US military complex needed an enemy to justify its expenses; the pro-Zionist media needed an enemy to justify multi-billion transfers to the Jewish state; and the Islamic world was chosen for the role of the Villain. It was not prepared for this role; wealthy Muslims invested in the US stocks and bought the US hardware; they stay in the dollar zone and spend their dividends buying Western gokds. Even now, ten years after the beginning of the War to Islam, they can’t understand the problem and respond. They have means, and perfectly peaceful, too. The Muslims may put pressure on dollar and on US securities. They may buy up the US media and turn the tables on Jacobys and his kin. But it does not happen: the Muslims do not assert themselves in the media and do not act on the financial markets. Apparently, they are satisfied with sitting in their sitting rooms, thumbing the Boston Globe and pondering, “why Islam is disrespected?’ Israel Shamir Jaffa |
| Todays Cair Alert |
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| Kathy |
| 05/23/05 at 08:28:01 |
| STUDENT REPORTS QURAN IN CAMPUS TOILET - TOP By Greg Kane, The Record, 5/20/05 http://www.recordnet.com/articlelink/052005/news/articles/052005-gn-2.php STOCKTON -- A San Joaquin Delta College student discovered a copy of the Quran in a library toilet Wednesday evening, an incident similar to one described in a now-retracted news report that sparked Muslim protests worldwide last week. Delta police wouldn't release the name of the student, whom they say found the Muslim holy book in the toilet of a second-floor men's bathroom in the library just after 7 p.m. Wednesday. Sgt. Geff Greenwood said the student removed the book from the toilet and placed it on a bathroom shelf before contacting the police. The scenario mirrors one described in a retracted Newsweek article that led to deadly riots in Afghanistan and protests in other Muslim nations last week. That Newsweek article, citing unidentified sources, claimed interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had flushed a Quran down a toilet to intimidate detainees. The Quran is the most revered book in Islam. Desecrating it is seen as an offense to Allah. Word of the discovery spread quickly across the Delta campus Thursday morning. Muslim students said they were more disappointed than angry to learn that someone at school had desecrated the book. "We have respect for all other religions," said Ramsey Abboushi, a 19-year-old Muslim student. "We can only hope to get that same respect." (MORE) |
| Amnesty International |
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| thezman |
| 06/02/05 at 02:45:32 |
| Bismillah [slm] "It doesn't matter whether he takes Amnesty International seriously. he doesn't take Torture seriously; he doesn't take the Geneva Convention seriously; he doesn't take Due Process seriously; and he doesn't take International Law seriously." William Schultz, Executive Director of Amnesty International U.S.A, In response to Vice President Dick Cheney's comment that he wasn't putting much weight on Amnesty's criticism of U.S. treatment of detainess at Guantanamo Bay. You can also check out this link: www.moderateresponse.joeuser.com/index.asp?AID=76726 Bush & Rice claim that they want to win the heart's and mind's of the Muslim World, yet the facts on the ground say the opposite! Fi Amanillah Z. |
| Pakistani police arrest Muslim for allegedly desec |
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| Moe_D |
| 07/01/05 at 00:12:48 |
| Pakistani police arrest Muslim for allegedly desecrating Quran Pakistani police have arrested a Muslim for allegedly desecrating the Quran, police said Thursday. Police detained and released the suspect earlier this week, saying he was a drug addict and did not know what he had done. But the suspect was re-arrested Wednesday, a day after hundreds of villagers set fire to a small police station near Sheikhupura city to protest officers' decision to let him go, said local police chief Ijaz Ahmed. "We still believe that he didn't intentionally tear pages of the Quran and throw them on road," Ahmed said Thursday, adding that senior investigators continue to interrogate the suspect to clear up the case. Insulting Islam, its prophet Muhammad or the Quran can be punished with death under Pakistan's blasphemy laws. Sheikhupura is about 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Lahore, the capital of Pakistan's eastern Punjab province. Earlier this week, police in northwestern Pakistan arrested a Christian man for allegedly tearing pages from the Quran and setting them on fire. After his arrest, police arrested five rioters and quelled a crowd of about 300 Muslims who had taken to the streets to demand a quick punishment. |
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