Muslims don't believe Qur'an story retraction
Kabul - Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan were sceptical on Monday about an apparent retraction by Newsweek magazine of a report that US interrogators had desecrated the Qur'an in Guantanamo Bay.
The report in Newsweek's May 9 issue sparked protests across the Muslim world, from Afghanistan, where 16 people were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Gaza.
Newsweek said on Sunday that the report might not be true.
"We will not be deceived by this," Islamic cleric Mullah Sadullah Abu Aman said in the northern Afghan province of Badakhshan, referring to the retraction. "This is a decision by America to save itself."
'This is a decision by America to save itself'
Aman was the leader of a group of clerics who on Sunday vowed to call for a holy war against the United States in three days unless it handed over the interrogators responsible for desecrating the holy book.
The call for a jihad, or holy war, still stood, he said.
Pakistan reiterated its demand for a probe into the alleged desecration of the Qur'an, despite an apology by the magazine.
"We have asked for a thorough investigation to be conducted by the US administration and we expect the results to be shared," foreign ministry spokesperson Jalil Abbas Jilani said.
Last week's bloody anti-US protests across Afghanistan were the worst since US forces invaded to oust the Taliban for sheltering Osama bin Laden in 2001.
'We have asked for a thorough investigation to be conducted by the US administration'
Pakistan, a key ally in the US-led war on terrorism, had said earlier that it was "deeply dismayed" about the report.
On Saturday, President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz demanded "exemplary punishment" for those behind the desecration.
Newsweek had said that investigators probing abuses at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay had found that interrogators "had placed Qur'ans on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet".
Muslims consider the Qur'an the literal word of God and treat each book with deep reverence.
Newsweek said its information had come from a "knowledgeable government source" who told the magazine that a military report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay said interrogators had flushed at least one copy of the Qur'an down a toilet in a bid to make detainees talk.
But, according to Newsweek, the source later said that he could not be certain that he had seen an account of the incident in the military report. It might have been in other investigative documents or drafts, he said.
Afghans were unconvinced.
"It's not acceptable now that the magazine says it's made a mistake," said Hafizullah Torab, 42, a writer in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, where the protests began last Tuesday.
"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 Pakistan, a religious party said it was going ahead with a call for protests on May 27.
"Newsweek is backtracking, but it's not just their report," said Ghaffar Aziz, a top official of the Jamaat-e-Islami party.
"All innocent people released from US custody have said on the record that there was desecration of the Qur'an," he said.
In Kabul, a US military spokesperson told a news briefing the Newsweek retraction had no bearing on the US position.
"Any disrespect to the Qur'an and any other religion is not tolerated by our culture," said Colonel Jim Yonts. - Reuters-Sapa-AP
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To je jedno, a druga stvar je u tome sto ovdje ima poprilicno glupih ljudi koji i dalje vjeruju u ono sto im Amerikanci serviraju...Amerikanci znaju sta bi se sve moglo poceti desavati, te povlace pricu u nadi da nece doci do daljeg hausa, te iz tog razloga Kur'an jeste bio oskrnavljen...Sami nacin kako tito punih usta i sa dragoscu ispisuje rijeci Kur'an i WC solja pokazuje njegovu mrznju prema muslimana, al o tom po tom...