Friday, May 27, 2005

A Little Mitigation for Newsweek

This is the latest information concerning the Newsweek story about Guantanamo guards flushing or otherwise mistreating the Muslim holy book, from the Associated Press:
WASHINGTON - Investigators have confirmed five cases in which military personnel mishandled the Qurans of Muslim prisoners at Guantanamo Bay since 2002, but they have found no "credible evidence" that a holy book was flushed in a toilet.
Deliberately desecrating any religion's holy books lacks class, and even the rumor of it, as we've seen, can result in frenzied violence. But then there's this, also from the Associated Press:
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A suicide bomber set off explosives Friday in the midst of Shiite Muslims reciting the Quran, killing at least 20 and wounding dozens gathered for a religious festival at a shrine near the capital.
I'd say blowing Qurans to smithereens, along with their owners, qualifies as "mishandling", at the very least. So far, there are no reports of rioters protesting this latest Quran desecration.