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Indonesians protest Koran abuses

Thousands of Indonesian Muslim activists staged a rally outside the US-embassy in Jakarta yesterday, condemning the alleged desecration of Islam's holy book, the Koran, by interrogators at the US detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Despite the US-based Newsweek magazine's retraction of its report and apology, it failed to mollify outraged Muslim activists in Indonesia.

Witnesses estimated that around 10,000 activists from dozens of Muslim groups, including hardliner organizations and Islamic-based political parties, including the Islamic Defender Front and the Indonesian Mujahidin Council, and several Islamic-based political parties, demonstrated at outside the US embassy in Jakarta.

It was the biggest anti-US protest in Indonesia, home to the world's most populous Muslim country, in recent months.

The protestors unfurled banners denouncing what they called US arrogance.

One read: "Chase the US imperialism out of Muslim countries."

Newsweek said in its initial report two weeks ago that US interrogators at Guantanamo detention center committed desecration of the Koran by placing copies of the Islam holy book on toilets, and in at least one instance, a US servicemen had put a copy of Koran in a toilet.

The protestors demanded that President George W. Bush stop insulting Muslims and immediately close down the Guantanamo detention center as well as other prisons, including Abu Ghraib in Baghdad.

They also called on the US to immediately pull out from Iraq, Afghanistan and other Muslim countries.

The demonstrators warned that Muslims worldwide would take revenge for what the US servicemen had done.

"We will continue to press the US government to stop desecrating the Holy Koran and Muslims," said Syaifullah of Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, one of the Islamic hardliner groups.

A number of leaders in the Indonesian Muslim community have previously condemned the reports, arguing that any such desecration would be intolerable and abominable.

Nearly 88 percent of Indonesia's 215 million people are Muslim, making it the worlds most populous Islamic nation.
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