Word: toilet
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...Newsweek magazine published an article with claims that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo Bay had flushed a Koran down the toilet to unnerve Muslim detainees. Riots and violence ensued; the deaths of 17 people were attributed to the publication of such an incendiary claim as the destruction of the holy book. A week later, Newsweek issued a retraction of the article stating that “Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Koran abuse at Guantánamo Bay.” Such negligence on Newsweek?...
...affect events the way Newsweek has in Afghanistan. The anti-American street protests that erupted there earlier this month--after the magazine reported that a Pentagon investigation would support claims that guards at the U.S. detention center at Guantnamo Bay flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet--left as many as 17 dead and scores injured...
Here's how the story unfolded. The inflammatory reference to the alleged toilet incident amounted to only a few words in an 11-sentence item in Newsweek's front-of-the-book "Periscope" section, in the issue that hit newsstands May 2. For more than two years, other news outlets had reported Guantnamo detainees' claims that U.S. guards had thrown the Koran to the floor and even tossed it into a latrine. But the Newsweek item went further by asserting that a Pentagon report would substantiate the alleged toilet incident as well as another in which a prisoner...
Whatever the spark, after the disturbances broke out, the Pentagon reviewed details of its Guantnamo probe and concluded that investigators were not even examining the toilet-flushing allegation. Defense Department spokesman Lawrence Di Rita called Newsweek on May 13 to say the story was wrong. Four days later, he told reporters there were no credible allegations of Koran abuse to look into...
Koranic defilement is a recurring Islamic concern. The first recorded prefiguring of the alleged insult at Gitmo may have been in the 1200s when Mongols invading Baghdad were said to have used Koran pages as toilet paper. But as early as the 700s, notes UCLA Islamic-law expert Khaled Abou El Fadl, jurists commenced a centuries-long debate over the just punishment for spitting on it, impaling it or feeding it to goats...