US embassy cable - 05LILONGWE421

UNCLAS LILONGWE 000421 
 
SIPDIS 
 
FOR AF/PD, AF/S, AF/RA 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: KISL, KPAO, MI, Political, Media 
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desecration of the Qur'an story which was 
retracted after a deadly retort.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.