MEDIA REACTION - GUANTANAMO, LILONGWE

UNCLAS LILONGWE 000421

SIPDIS

FOR AF/PD, AF/S, AF/RA

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: KISL KPAO MI
SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION - GUANTANAMO, LILONGWE


1. "Watch what you say: words can be deadly
weapons"


2. The independent daily, "The Times" of May
18, 2005, carried an opinion piece by one of
Malawi's prominent journalists, Jika Nkolokosa,
on his regular column "Take it or Leave it".
Nkolokosa chides Newsweek for the purported
desecration of the Qur'an story which was
retracted after a deadly retort. Excerpts
follow.


3. .So when I first heard that Newsweek had
published a story alleging that some American
servicemen at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the
Muslim holy book, the Qur'an, I was taken aback
by the servicemen's lack of sensitivity to a
people who already suspect that the West was out
to trample on their faith. I wondered to myself
what anyone stood to gain by flushing the Qur'an
down the toilet and worse still to tell the
world about it. Was it just an idle boast or
was it a taunt intended to demean Islam?

Somehow I have always expected the American to
defer to other people's religions considering
that most of them left their European homelands
to escape religious persecution and settled on
strange shores to exercise their religions
freely. How could such a people turn around and
make a mockery of another people's beliefs?

It all seemed completely reckless and
inconsiderate to me. I somehow expected greater
respect even for a religion that has not done
much to publicize itself in the West. After
all, the major religions of the world do not
differ much in their basic tenets, the most
common one being the appeal to man to do unto
his fellow as he would have others do unto him.
What is there to desecrate a book with such
wisdom?

.Whittaker retracted the story and apologized to
all those who may have been hurt by it. Sadly
that came a little too late; the damage had
already been done.

.Take it or leave it, we live in a world where
we may not share the same dogmas. We therefore
have to be extremely careful about what we say.
I am still trying to come to terms with why the
esteemed news magazine said what it said. Sure
it came in a moment of lapse of judgment, but
that batters the magazine's international
repute.