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“Military authorities should address the issue of Islamophobic attitudes in the ranks before the problem gets out of hand,” Awad said.
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WASHINGTON,
October 21, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – American
Muslims have called for a "top-to-bottom" review of policies
and training of military personnel deployed in Muslim countries,
following reports of burning bodies of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan
that caused a worldwide furor.
“Given
the growing number of such incidents involving American military
personnel worldwide, it is imperative that the Pentagon launch a
top-to-bottom review of policies and training to help prevent the war
on terror from being perceived as a war on Islam,” Nihad Awad,
Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in a
statement on its Web site Thursday, October 20.
Australia's
SBS television aired Wednesday a video footage showing US forces
burning two Taliban fighters in the hills above the village of Gondaz
north of Kandahar.
The
burning of the corpses, a practice offensive to Muslims who bury their
dead within 24 hours, was later used by a US military unit to threaten
locals to cooperate with US forces.
“Military
authorities should address the issue of Islamophobic attitudes in the
ranks before the problem gets out of hand,” Awad said, warning
against the "coarsening" of soldiers' attitude towards
ordinary Muslims, both home and overseas.
Worried
the incident could fuel anti-American feelings around the world, US
State Department instructed US embassies around the world to explain
that the reported abuse did not reflect "American values".
"I
saw the news reports and the video myself. These are very difficult
images to see," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.
He,
however, insisted that the burning should be seen as an isolated
incident, according to Reuters.
The
US military has said it launched an inquiry into the incident and that
if wrongdoing was identified, the perpetrators would be prosecuted
under US military law.
Image
Tarnished
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Hughes faced strong criticism from Indonesian Muslim students. (AP).
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The
airing of the latest videotape coincided with a trip this week to the
predominantly Muslim states of Indonesia and Malaysia by US
Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes, tasked with
improving the badly battered US image in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
During
a meeting with a group of female Muslim students in Indonesia Friday,
Hughes faced strong criticism, accusing Washington's foreign policies
of creating hostilities among the Muslims worldwide, Reuters said.
"Your
country's foreign policy has created hostilities among Muslims,"
an Indonesian student told Hughes.
Another
student added: "It's Bush in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and
maybe it's going to be in Indonesia, I don't know. Who's the
terrorist? Bush or us?"
Her
fellow student echoed a similar stance.
"Why
does America always act as if they were the police of the
world?," Barikatul Hikmah, a 20-year-old student asked the US
envoy.
The
US invasion-turned-occupation of Iraq dominated discussion between the
US envoy and the Muslim students.
Hughes,
who was largely composed during the session, defended the invasion of
Iraq as necessary to protect the United States in the wake of the 9/11
attacks because the administration saw Saddam Hussein as a security
threat.
"After
all, he had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people,
like he murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people using poison
gas against them," she said.
Hughes
told reporters later she was not surprised the tone of most questions
was strongly critical, despite Indonesia's reputation as a moderate
Muslim country.
On
the latest videotape of burning Taliban fighters by US forces, Hughes
said that the incident was "abhorrent".
"It's
a matter that's being investigated. If true, it is a complete
violation of our policies which require that remains be treated with
respect and in compliance with the Geneva Convention."
"...
if people committed violations of our laws and policies they will be
brought to justice and punished," said Hughes, who is due to
visit Malaysia after her current trip to Indonesia.
On
a five-day visit to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey last month -- her
first trip in the new job – Hughes was harshly criticized over the
US Middle East policies.
The
US image abroad has been badly battered by a series of human rights
scandals, from the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to
detention without trial of foreign terror suspects at a US naval base
in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The
abuse of Iraqi prisoners exploded onto the world stage April 29, 2004,
after the CBS news network published several graphic photos of Iraqi
detainees tortured and sexually abused by American soldiers at the
Baghdad-based prison.
Several
photographs taken in late 2003 at the prison showed detainees wearing
women's underwear on their heads, detainees shackled to their cell
doors or beds in awkward positions, and naked detainees standing
before female soldiers.
Detainees
at Abu Ghraib were also posed in mock homosexual positions and
photographed.
In
another scandal of US forces in Iraq, reports showed that US military
personnel used photographs of Iraqi corpses as "currency" to
gain access to porn Web sites.
Worse
still, the US military last June detailed five incidents in which US
jailers at Guantanamo Bay "mishandled" the Noble Qur'an.
It
said that in one case a US guard's urine splashed through a vent onto
the Muslims' holy book and in others the Qur'an was kicked, stepped on
and soaked by water.
