Category Archives: State Oppression

The Qur’an question

Posted on by Bob Pitt

More from Newsweek on its Qur’an desecration story. They spoke to US Defense Department spokesman Lawrence Di Rita:

“According to Di Rita, when the first prisons were built for suspected terrorists at Guantánamo in early 2002, prison guards were instructed to respect the detainees’ religious rituals. The prisoners were given Qur’ans, which they hung from the walls of their cells in cotton surgical masks provided by the prison. Log entries by the guards indicate that in about a dozen cases, the detainees themselves somehow damaged their Qur’ans. In one case a prisoner allegedly ripped up a Qur’an; in another a prisoner tore the cover off his Qur’an. In three cases, detainees tried to stuff pages from their Qur’ans down their toilets, according to the Defense Department’s account of what is in the guards’ reports. (Newsweek was not permitted to see the log items.) The log entries do not indicate why the detainees might have done this, said Di Rita, and prison commanders concluded that certain hard-core prisoners would try to agitate the other detainees by alleging disrespect for Muslim articles of faith.”

So copies of the Qur’an were defaced at Guantánamo – by the prisoners themselves! The next thing you know, we’ll be told that the torture at Bagram airbase was all self-inflicted.

Newsweek, 30 May 2005

Little Green Footballs finds Di Rita’s account entirely convincing.

LGF, 23 May 2005

Hijab activists see European campaign a ‘success’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Rajnaara AkhtarMarking the end of three months of intense lobbying and painstaking efforts to make their voice heard and gain the support of Members of the European Parliament, Protect Hijab activists see the campaign a “success” and “positive step”.

“If we look at the number of Written Declarations (WDs) that have been put before the European Parliament this year, from eight WDs only two got more signatories than ours,” Vice-Coordinator of the London-based Assembly for the Protection of Hijab (Protect Hijab), Rajnaara Akhtar, told IslamOnline.net Tuesday, May 24.

She was referring to a Written Declaration on Religious Rights and Freedoms, which was tabled by Protect Hijab and MEPs to the parliament February 21 as a preliminary step towards a binding resolution obliging European countries, particularly France, to lift ban on hijab in state-run institutions like schools.

Continue reading →

Release Jose Padilla

Posted on by Bob Pitt

May 8 marked the third anniversary of the illegal imprisonment of Jose Padilla. Padilla was apprehended at O’ Hare Airport in 2002 by Federal officers under the shaky “material witness” provision and trundled off to prison. In a conspicuous effort to poison public opinion, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced on national TV that Padilla was conspiring to set off a “dirty bomb” (radioactive device) within the United Sates. To date, the government has never produced a scintilla of evidence to corroborate their spurious claims. Simply put, Padilla is innocent of all charges.

Information Clearing House, 22 May 2005

Muslim world turned into a tinderbox

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Muslim world turned into a tinderbox

Haroon Siddiqui says US is fooling no one over use of Qur’an as instrument of torture

Toronto Star, 22 May 2005

Iraq. Uzbekistan. The Qur’an. These issues in the news expose American double standards, hypocrisy and outright lies. They also help explain how George W. Bush has turned the Muslim world into a tinderbox.

It is his policies, not a Newsweek item on the desecration of the holy book at Guantánamo Bay, that sparked the anti-U.S. protests that killed 17 people. What the magazine reported, albeit sloppily, is not new.

Four Britons, one Moroccan, one Kuwaiti and at least one Afghan released from the American base last year have said, separately, that the Qur’an was routinely stomped upon, ripped apart and strewn about toilets. They spoke of three hunger strikes in protest.

The International Red Cross has confirmed it repeatedly told the Pentagon, starting in 2002, that detainees were complaining of Americans using the Qur’an as a tool of torture.

Whom are Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and others fooling, other than their pliant half of the American electorate, with phony pronouncements about how America would never tolerate such criminality?

The Qur’an episodes are but one part of a broad offensive of violating the religious sensibilities of Muslims in Guantánamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and other prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Some had pork or alcohol forced down their throats; they had tape placed over their mouths for reciting the Qur’an; many Muslims were forced to be naked in front of each other, members of the opposite sex and sometimes their own families,” said The Times of London.

Physicians for Human Rights also cited forced nudity, masturbation and other transgressions of religious and cultural norms.

Continue reading →

‘Closing the book on Koran abuse’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Paul Sperry dismisses the ludicrous stories about desecration of the Qur’an at Guantánamo.

“Despite what rioting Islamic fanatics around the world want to believe, the US did not authorize any interrogators to desecrate the Koran to rattle Muslim detainees at Gitmo – at least not according to a military intelligence memo I’ve obtained. Distributed in early 2003 by an Army JAG officer, the sensitive internal document lists approved techniques for interrogating Taliban and al-Qaida detainees at the for interrogating Taliban and al-Qaida detainees at the US military prison in Guantánamo, Cuba, and none of those techniques include defiling the book Muslims hold sacred. No flushing it down the commode or laying it in the toilet seat; not stomping or spitting on it.”

Front Page Magazine, 23 May 2005

So that’s all right, then. It didn’t appear in the handbook, so it didn’t happen. Presumably the same argument applies to those other ridiculous tales about torture and murder of prisoners at Bagram and Abu Ghraib.

Anti-hijab party wins elections

Posted on by Bob Pitt

In an unhappy outcome for German Muslims in the largest regional state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), the conservative anti-hijab Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won state elections Sunday, May 22, triggering a decision to hold a snap general election across Germany in the autumn.

The CDU’s resounding victory sent shock waves among the Muslim minority in NRW, home to one million of Germany’s 3.4 million Muslims. During the election campaign, Christian Democrat leader in NRW Juergen Ruettgers said he would swiftly ban hijab from state schools.

Ruettgers’s plan to ban hijab within three weeks of his election victory, despite opposition from other parties, was not the only reason for Muslims’ concern. His anti-Muslim drive is shown in many statements he made in the run up to state elections and even before.

Late last month, he told a German news channel that he is a Catholic who believes Christianity presented the best image of man and should therefore be leading all other religions worldwide.

Islam Online, 23 May 2005

Why don’t we Muslims grow up?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Irshad Manji poses the question. Of course, when she says “we Muslims” she’s not talking about herself, just her co-religionists. She blames them for the outbreak of the sometimes violent protests provoked by the Newsweek report about desecration of the Qur’an at Guantánamo.

Times, 20 May 2005

Ramzy Baroud points out that the Times “made a clever choice when it selected a Muslim, Irshad Manji, to address the fierce response to the scandal”. By pinning blame on her fellow Muslims rather than on those responsible for the oppression that gave rise to the protests, Manji provided a useful alibi for imperialism.

Islam Online 22 May 2005

For the Muslim Council of Britain’s response – “It is hard not to conclude that Manji’s main interest is actually in provoking Muslims in order to promote herself and fatten her bank account” – see here.

Guantánamo comes to define US to Muslims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Guantanamo“Accounts of abuses at the actual American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, including Newsweek magazine’s now-retracted article on the desecration of the Koran, ricochet around the world, instilling ideas about American power and justice, and sowing distrust of the United States. Even more than the written accounts are the images that flash on television screens throughout the Muslim world: caged men, in orange prison jumpsuits, on their knees.”

New York Times, 21 May 2005

Jury anger over threat of torture

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jurors who acquitted four Algerians in the so-called “ricin plot” trial that ended at the Old Bailey last month have expressed outrage at the news that the government is seeking to deport three of the accused to Algeria. They have told the Guardian that they are very angry that their verdicts of not guilty appear to have been ignored, and fear that the men face torture or death if deported.

“If anyone has grounds for asylum in this country, it is these men,” said one of the jurors. “They would almost certainly be subjected to abuse, torture or worse if repatriated. We as a jury made a decision. To see the government disregarding our verdict and preparing to send them back to almost certain torture is horrifying. We would try to do anything to stop it.”

The jurors – who gave a robust defence of jury trials in terrorist cases – contacted the Guardian after reading a report last week that there were plans to deport to Algeria three of the acquitted men and others who were formally acquitted in a second trial that the prosecution abandoned.

Guardian, 21 May 2005