JEDDAH, 16 May 2005 — The 150-member Shoura Council yesterday strongly condemned the reported desecration of the Holy Qur’an at the hands of US officials at Guantanamo Bay and asked the United States, if the incident was true, to apologize in order to avoid hatred and violence.

The Shoura urged the US authorities to launch a prompt investigation into a May 9 Newsweek magazine report that investigators probing abuses at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay found that interrogators had desecrated the Qur’an to rattle Muslim prisoners.

“If the report proved true, it would become important that an apology be issued and addressed to Muslims all over the world to avoid increasing the hatred between nations and followers of religious faiths as well,” the Shoura said in a statement.

The Shoura said it considered the incident an attack on Muslims all over the world. “The council considers it as an attack on the feelings of Muslims and their sanctity... and a violation of international law and human customs,” said the statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency.

The statement was issued after a regular session of the council in Riyadh, chaired by its President Saleh Bin-Humaid. The council warned against hurting the feelings of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims and emphasized the importance of respecting the religious faiths and beliefs of other people to avoid conflicts. “Islam is a great religion with a large number of followers all over the world and is known for its long history and humane and just teachings,” the statement said.

Yesterday, Newsweek magazine said its original report might have been wrong.

The magazine reported how the Pentagon had angrily protested that the story was wrong and Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker said in an editorial: “We regret that we got any part of our story wrong and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the US soldiers caught in its midst.”

Newsweek said that on checking with the senior US official who had remembered seeing details of the Qur’an incident in a report, the official could no longer be sure.

In Afghanistan, a group of clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States in three days unless it handed over military interrogators who are reported to have desecrated the Qur’an.

The warning came after 16 Afghans were killed and more than 100 hurt last week in the worst anti-US protests across the country since US forces invaded in 2001 to oust the Taleban for sheltering Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network.

The clerics in the northeastern province of Badakhshan said they wanted US President George W. Bush to handle the matter honestly “and hand the culprits over to an Islamic country for punishment”.

“If that does not happen within three days, we will launch a jihad against America,” said a statement issued by about 300 clerics after meeting in the main mosque in the provincial capital, Faizabad.

The statement was read out by Abdul Fatah Fayeq, the top judicial official in the mountainous province near the borders of Tajikistan and China.

Another group of clerics in the north demanded punishment for those responsible for the desecration but did not call for holy war, the governor of Kunduz province said.

Chief of Al-Azhar, Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, branded the alleged defilement a “great crime”. “The Qur’an’s desecration is a great crime and should be dealt with at once,” Tantawi told the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm.