Category Archives: USA

Newsweek’s victims

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Left’s journalistic jihad against the War on Terror inspired the deaths of 16 Muslims, the injury of at least 100 more, the destruction of numerous Western buildings, and untold hatred for U.S. troops stationed in the Arab world – with a lie.”

Ben Johnson attacks Newsweek for reporting that torture of Guantánamo Bay detainees included the desecration of the Qur’an.

Front Page Magazine, 16 May 2005

However, in its forthcoming issue, Newsweek points out that it 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.”

(See, for example, Al-Jazeera, 7 July 2004 or BBC News, 4 August 2004)

Reporter Evan Thomas also states that Newsweek has since contacted Marc Falkoff, a New York defence lawyer representing 13 Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo. “According to Falkoff’s declassified notes, a mass-suicide attempt – when 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves in August 2003 – was triggered by a guard’s dropping a Qur’an and stomping on it. One of Falkoff’s clients told him, ‘Another detainee tried to kill himself after the guard took his Qur’an and threw it in the toilet’. 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.”

Newsweek, 23 May 2005

So that’s alright, then. Along with other allegations of torture at Guantánamo, it’s all an Al Qaeda plot, aided and abetted by the “Left”.

For Juan Cole’s take on the Newsweek report, see Informed Comment, 16 May 2005

British Muslims express their outrage at desecration of the Quran

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) condemns the latest attack on Islam and all that is sacred to the Muslims. The reported flushing of the Holy Quran down the toilet by US soldiers at Guantánamo Bay detention centre represents the extreme contempt held for Islam and Muslims by the perpetrators of this shameful act which regrettably has been nurtured by the policies of the US Administration at all levels.”

MAB press release, 14 May 2005

See also “Muslim outrage at desecration of Qur’an – President Bush must take responsibility”, Muslim Council of Britain press release, 15 May 2005

Anti US movements sweep Muslim world

Posted on by Eddie Truman

Quran desecration protestRevelations about the use of torture techniques used by US military forces that include the desecration of the Qur’an have sparked unrest across the Muslim world.

Aljazeera reports here.

At least nine people were killed yesterday as a wave of anti-American demonstrations swept the Islamic world from the Gaza Strip to the Java Sea, the Times reports.

CNN report on events in Afghanistan here.

Prosecutions symbolise new American Gulag

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Arab American prosecutions symbolize the new American Gulag

By Ray Hanania

Arab Media Watch, May 13, 2005

If anyone in the Arab World has any doubts about the bankruptcy of the American pledge to bring Democracy and freedom to their country, all they need do is examine the case of Sami Al-Arian.

Al-Arian is one of four political prisoners being prosecuted for criticizing Israel, supporting the liberation of Palestine and opposing the Soviet war against Muslims, issues shared by nearly every citizen of the Arab World.

Next week, American prosecutors will pick a jury to hear charges that Al-Arian, 47, a former University at South Florida professor, raised money to support Palestinian and Islamic causes, and gave speeches denouncing Israel at rallies and conferences.

His co-defendants include: Sameeh Hammoudeh, 44, a former instructor and student at USF and an administrator at the Islamic Academy of Florida; Ghassan Zayed Ballut, 43, a small business owner who lived in Tinley Park, Ill.; and Hatem Naji Fariz, 32, who was manager of a medical clinic in Spring Hill, Florida.

Both Ballut and Fariz are also Arab American journalists who I know. While they are devout Muslims with strong political views critical of Israel, they have never engaged in anti-American activities or promoted violence.

None of the four defendants danced around handing out cookies on Sept. 11 after Al-Qaeda terrorists and followers of Osama Bin Laden crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or try to hit the White House.

Yet that is exactly why they can’t get a fair trial in America. They have been targeted unfairly as a part of the emotional wave of post-Sept. 11 anti-Arab hate that is sweeping this nation.

Continue reading →

Terror suspects sent to Egypt by the dozens

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The United States and other countries have forcibly sent dozens of terror suspects to Egypt, according to a report released Wednesday by Human Rights Watch. The rights group and the State Department have both said Egypt regularly uses extreme interrogation methods on detainees. The group said it had documented 63 cases since 1994 in which suspected Islamic militants were sent to Egypt for detention and interrogation. The figures do not include people seized after the attacks of September 2001 who were sent mainly by Middle East countries and American intelligence authorities. The report said the total number sent to Egypt since the Sept. 11 attacks could be as high as 200 people.

CAIR news brief, 12 May 2005

For the HRW report, see here.

CAIR’s ‘Islamophobia and anti-Americanism’ conference

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“For groups like CAIR, especially after September 11, to name-call and label Americans as racists and bigots because they are simply exercising their right to free speech in criticizing Islam and Muslims is nothing short of asinine.

“Americans constantly hear that we ‘just don’t understand Islam’. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but there’s no need for us to understand Islam. It’s not our responsibility to understand any culture but our own.

“It’s very simple: obey American laws, respect the dress codes, uniforms, rules and regulations of the companies that employ you or the schools in which you’re enrolled, and respect the wishes of your American hosts. Then you won’t have a problem.”

Another sensitive, thoughtful contribution to the discussion of Islam from the folks at Jihad Watch.

Dhimmi Watch, 12 May 2005

Muslim school to become state school?

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch is outraged to find that an independent Muslim school in Nottingham may be accepted into the state sector.

This would make fully four – yes, that’s four – state-funded Muslim primary schools in the whole of Britain, compared with over six thousand state-funded Christian primary schools.

And how does Spencer interpret this? He thinks it’s an example of the “Islamization of Europe”.

Dhimmi Watch, 12 May 2005

US Muslims seek probe of Gitmo Quran ‘desecration’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called on the Bush administration to launch a public probe of allegations that interrogators at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay flushed a Quran, Islam’s revealed text, down a toilet. At least four people were killed today in Afghanistan during protests over the alleged desecration.

CAIR news release, 11 May 2005