A Disgrace for Newsweek, and for Islam

Michael Medved | Beyond The News Commentary | Published: May 19, 2005

A Disgrace for Newsweek, and for Islam

May 20, 2005

Disgraceful reporting by Newsweek on the retracted story about Koran desecration at Guantanamo shouldn't detract attention from the horrifying reaction in the Islamic world.

Millions participated in deadly protests because of dubious accounts that American investigators flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet.

But what should religion count sacred, the life of a human being or a bound collection of mass-produced pages?

When the Taliban utterly destroyed 1,600 year-old statues of Buddha in the Bamayan Valley, Buddhists didn't riot; and when Palestinian mobs bulldozed the ancient tomb of the patriarch Joseph, Jews didn't call for bloody revenge.


Too many Muslims today revel in their right to desecrate holy artifacts of others, while reacting with violence at the slightest hint of insult to their faith.

In America, by the way, trashing holy symbols is more likely to lead to a government grant from the National Endowment for the Arts than to calls for punishment.

I'm Michael Medved.


Beyond The News Commentaries, produced daily by Salem Communications, bring concise and penetrating insight to everything from the current headlines to challenges facing the church, from our culture wars to the Middle East conflict and from Hollywood to Washington, D.C. These daily features cover politics, culture, religion and science with perspective from the sharpest minds in the Christian and conservative world today: David Aikman, Terry Eastland, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved, Albert Mohler, Dennis Prager and Janet Parshall.

A Disgrace for Newsweek, and for Islam