Monday, December 1, 2008

"The Main Story for the Muslim World"

Sullivan analyzes the "abuses of faith" that US interrogators and Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and elsewhere. He correctly points out that one must use a measure of skepticism with the accounts of abuse from these facilities, since disinformation is part of the training of any military operative in custody. But strung together, these accounts are a disturbing indictment of how the US tortured detainees without ever touching them, by using religious torture.

The Catholic magazine Commonweal has a definitive article on the subject of religious abuse. We have all heard accounts of soldiers desecrating the Korans of the detainees. But what this articles proposes is that this kind of torture is far worse than the physical kind, and has more far-reaching implications for the Muslim world in general. For when these stories get out -- and they will get out and be believed by Muslims around the world -- it will become clear to them that the US has waged a war against the religion itself, not just against its extremist practitioners who engage in terrorist acts. Money quote:
[H]owever U.S. officials justify these actions to themselves, the judgment of the Muslim detainees will be more important in the future. Even isolated instances of religious torture can have a profound effect on collective memory. Does it really matter how many soldiers used the Qur’an for target practice? Such events are iconic. What is important to the Muslim detainees themselves and the global audience that hears their reports is that a clear pattern of disrespect for Islam has emerged. The United States has desecrated what most Muslims consider God’s presence on earth (the Qur’an), drowned out the call to prayer with the American anthem and rock songs, used grotesque sexual assaults to undermine piety, mocked religious holidays, and engaged in freelance proselytism.
On the left, we have been saying that our invasion of Iraq, our abuses at Abu Ghraib, and our actions in Guantanamo and other black sites are doing a better job at recruiting terrorists than al Qaeda could do itself. What better way to recruit fighters for your cause if the message is that it's a fight to the death between Islam and western faiths which seek to destroy it?

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