2005 Quran Desecration Controversy - The Newsweek Report

The Newsweek Report

On April 30, 2005 Newsweek magazine published an article claiming that an unnamed United States official had seen a government report supporting a "previously unreported" charge. Among the previously unreported cases that sources reportedly told Newsweek: interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Quran down a toilet and led a detainee around with a collar and dog leash. The prospect that U.S. personnel may have deliberately defaced the Quran provoked massive anti-U.S. demonstrations throughout the Islamic world, with at least 17 deaths during riots in Afghanistan.

The Newsweek article, by reporter Michael Isikoff, was one of over a dozen such reports of similar incidents that had surfaced in prior months in the U.S. and UK media, but the first involving a U.S. government source acknowledging an inquiry into the event. The Isikoff article was later retracted by Newsweek, which nonetheless defended both its reporter and the story, stating "neither we nor the Pentagon had any idea it would lead to deadly riots." The case turned the spotlight on other reports of desecration of the Quran at Guantánamo.

The article went largely unnoticed for five days. On May 6, a popular member of the Pakistani parliament, Imran Khan, held a press conference. Khan, who is a sharp critic of both Islamist terrorism and of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, criticized his country's government, saying, "This war on terrorism is self-defeating if, on the one hand, you are demanding that we help them and on the other hand, they are desecrating the book on which our entire faith is based." Khan's press conference was rebroadcast throughout the Muslim world.

The Newsweek report cited an anonymous source, said to be a senior government official, who claimed to have seen a confidential investigative report documenting the alleged incident — in which interrogators, "in an attempt to rattle suspects, reportedly flushed a Quran down a toilet." However, on May 16, Newsweek retracted the statement that the abuse had been uncovered by an "internal military investigation." after the source of the story was later unable to confirm where he had seen the information. In its May 23 issue, Newsweek stated that:

Our original source later said he couldn't be certain about reading of the alleged Quran incident in the report we cited, and said it might have been in other investigative documents or drafts. Top administration officials have promised to continue looking into the charges, and so will we. But we regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.

The New York Times quoted Isikoff as saying:

Neither Newsweek nor the Pentagon foresaw that a reference to the desecration of the Quran was going to create the kind of response that it did. The Pentagon saw the item before it ran, and then they didn't move us off it for 11 days afterward. They were as caught off guard by the furor as we were. We obviously blame ourselves for not understanding the potential ramifications.