2005 Quran Desecration Controversy

The 2005 Quran desecration controversy began when Newsweek's April 30 issue contained a report asserting that United States prison guards or interrogators had deliberately damaged a copy of Islam's holiest book, the Quran. A week later, Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in The New Yorker, reporting the words of Pakistani politician Imran Khan: "This is what the U.S. is doing—desecrating the Koran." This incident caused upset in parts of the Muslim world.

'For five days, nothing. Then, on May 6th, Khan, in a press conference in Islamabad, waved a copy of the offending issue and thundered, “This is what the U.S. is doing—desecrating the Koran.” And, rhetorically addressing Musharraf: “This war on terrorism is self-defeating if, on the one hand, you are demanding that we help them”—that is, us—“and, on the other hand, they are desecrating the book on which our entire faith is based.” Khan’s remarks were broadcast repeatedly throughout the Muslim world. The riots began on May 10th; in Afghanistan, seventeen people died and more than a hundred were injured.'

The Newsweek article, part of which was subsequently retracted, stated that allegations that United States personnel at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp had deliberately damaged a copy of the book by flushing it in a toilet in order to torment the prison's Muslim captives had been confirmed by government sources.

The Newsweek article stated that an official had seen a preliminary copy of an unreleased U.S. government report confirming the deliberate damage. Later on, the magazine retracted this when the (still) unnamed official changed his story. A Pentagon investigation uncovered at least five cases of Quran mishandling by U.S. personnel at the base, but insisted that none of these were acts of desecration. The Pentagon's report also accused a prisoner of damaging a copy of the Quran by putting it in a toilet. In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union, suing under the Freedom of Information Act, secured the release of a 2002 FBI report containing a detainee's accusation of ill-treatment, including throwing a Quran into a toilet. This specific accusation had been made on several occasions by other Guantanamo detainees since 2002; Newsweek's initial account of a government report confirming it sparked protests throughout the Islamic world and riots in Afghanistan, where pre-planned demonstrations turned deadly. A worldwide controversy followed.

The Newsweek affair turned the spotlight on earlier media reports of such incidents. Accusations of Quran desecration as a part of U.S. interrogations at prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as Guantánamo Bay had been made by a number of sources going back to 2002.