U.S. & NATO Troops Accused of Burning the Koran

www.cbsnews.com...

More than 2,000 angry Afghans protested outside an American air base on Tuesday after they learned that copies of the Quran (Koran), the Muslim holy book, were burned in a pile of garbage at a sprawling U.S. military base north of Kabul. "Die, die, foreigners!" the demonstrators shouted. Some fired rifles into the air. Others threw rocks at the gate of the base.

The burning of the Quran and other religious books was unintentional, said U.S. Gen. John Allen, the top commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. The incident stoked anti-foreign sentiment that already is on the rise after a decade of war in Afghanistan and fueled the arguments of Afghans who claim foreign troops are not respectful of their culture or Islamic religion.

There seems to be a lot of anti-American and NATO force news recently. Is this on purpose? Why all of a sudden are these stories happening now? Have they always been happening and the MSM is just picking up on them now?

www.washingtonpost.com...=1

An Afghan demonstrator holds a copy of a half-burnt Koran, allegedly set on fire by U.S. soldiers, at the gate of Bagram airbase during a protest against Koran desecration at Bagram, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of Kabul. Afghan protestors firing slingshots and petrol bombs besieged one of the largest U.S.-run military bases in Afghanistan, furious over reports that NATO had set fire to copies of the Koran.

www.ketv.com...

Appearantly it's just a misunderstanding.

Some Qurans and other Islamic religious materials gathered for disposal from a detention facility at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan were improperly burned, the commander of the International Security Assistance Force said Tuesday. "This was not a decision that was made because they were religious materials," Gen. John Allen said. "It was not a decision that was made with respect to the faith of Islam. It was a mistake. It was an error. The moment we found out about it, we immediately stopped and we intervened."

EDIT: not an accident

www.google.com...

A military official says Muslim holy books that were burned in a pile of garbage at a U.S. military base in Afghanistan had been removed from a library at a nearby detention center because they contained extremist messages or inscriptions.

reply to post by UFO1414


Well, I guess now they can be considered equal opportunity religious text burners.

(CNN) -- Military personnel threw away, and ultimately burned, confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two most common Afghan languages amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.

Afghan workers enter a walkway on March 3, 2009, at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan. The unsolicited Bibles sent by a church in the United States were confiscated about a year ago at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan because military rules forbid troops of any religion from proselytizing while deployed there, Lt. Col. Mark Wright said. Such religious outreach can endanger American troops and civilians in the devoutly Muslim nation, Wright said. "The decision was made that it was a 'force protection' measure to throw them away, because, if they did get out, it could be perceived by Afghans that the U.S. government or the U.S. military was trying to convert Muslims," Wright told CNN on Tuesday. Troops at posts in war zones are required to burn their trash, Wright said.

edition.cnn.com...

just a bunch of whack jobs who hate the US anyway, now they have a reason to jump around in the streets and act like idiots. what if we went crazy every time someone defaced a bible. get real, they are nuts, crazies and have nothing better to do. they are mad about burning a damn book, and that's all it is a damn book printed with ink and paper like all other books, nothing more nothing less, just gives them an excuse to show their stupidity to the rest of the world.

what the US should do, is stop showing all those freaks in the middle east on the nightly/daily news, just stop reporting anything about them and what ever they are doing. the media is to blame for helping blow this up, if there weren't a hundred reporters there with cameras there wouldn't be half as many people there acting stupid...

when the trade center was blown up, we didn't go nuts about the Palestinians cheering in the streets, maybe we should have reacted like them and dropped a few thousand bombs on the Palestinians because they weren't sensitive, it would be the same thing... morons and fools live in the middle east and none of them have jobs or they wouldn't have time to wander the streets all day.