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| Muslims Skeptical of Newsweek Retraction |
| Thursday, May 19, 2005 |
The now-retracted report that American interrogators flushed a Quran down a toilet did not spark violent protests in the Middle East as it did in Afghanistan and Pakistan - but it added another layer of bitterness among many Arabs who see the United States as anti-Muslim.
Across the Islamic world, many were unconvinced by Newsweek's retraction of the report. From Afghanistan to Egypt, some people believed the U.S. had pressured Newsweek to deny the story, using the magazine as a "scapegoat."
In many countries, politicians - skeptical of Newsweek's about-face - said the United States should make public the details of its investigation into the reported desecration.
"Although the magazine that published this piece of information has backed off it, we call on the American administration to investigate the incident, which we consider a major crime against more than 1.2 billion Muslims in the world," Jassem al-Kharafi, the parliament speaker in Kuwait - a top U.S. ally - said in the Al-Watan daily Wednesday.
U.S. officials have said they found nothing to substantiate the Newsweek report that interrogators at the prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, flushed a copy of the Quran down the toilet to unnerve an inmate.
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posted by J.R. @ 2:51:00 PM   |
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