Catherine Philp, Times UK: "At least ten people had died by last night as a wave of anti-American demonstrations swept the Islamic world from the Gaza Strip to the Java Sea, sparked by a single paragraph in a magazine alleging that US military interrogators had desecrated the Koran. [...] The unrest began this week after Newsweek published an allegation that American military interrogators had deliberately desecrated the Islamic holy book in an effort to rattle detainees at the Guantanamo Bay centre in Cuba. The report said that they had several times placed the Koran on the lavatory inside inmates' cells and had 'in at least one case, flushed a holy book down the toilet.'"

Here are ten people who either killed themselves or were killed because of something that may not have even happened (do you trust Newsweek?). While alleged hidden disrespect for the Koran is apparently not okay, it was okay to burn US flags in public: some symbols are to be respected, others are not. Even if the desecration did happen - sorry to not honor your diversity and everything, but the Koran is after all just a book and this was a rock-stupid reason for these people to die. Islam, like all religions, empowers and encourages people to do stupid, brutal things to themselves and to others.

I am not comforted by the idea that a paragraph in a magazine about a book can spark what Philip calls "the worst displays of anti-American sentiment since the fall of the Taleban in 2002." The US has done much, much worse, and yet this is what people get all worked up about? The victims of US government kidnapping currently held in Cuba as well as those held in the occupied nation of Iraq deserve immediate and unconditional release, period. Those are my priorities. The priorities of religion are humans last, invisible monsters that live in the sky first. I am also not comforted by the statements in response to these death by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Dr. Condoleezza Rice, US Department of State: "I want to speak directly to Muslims in America and throughout the world. Disrespect for the Holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be, tolerated by the United States. We honor the sacred books of all the world's great religions. Disrespect for the Holy Koran is abhorrent to us all. There have been recent allegations about disrespect for the Holy Koran by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay and that has deeply offended many people. Our military authorities are investigating these allegations fully. If they are proven true, we will take appropriate action."

Here is the trap that Dr. Rice has laid for herself. By saying that the Koran will always be respected, it is not possible to respect the magic book of the Christian cult, the Bible. Because the Bible says that the property of those who follow other religions is to be destroyed. You get one or you get the other: you get to honor the Koran and not the Bible, or the Bible and not the Koran, but you can't have it both ways. This is the kind of problem that gets neatly solved when the US government really gets out of the business of legislating religion, and the kind of problem it gets into when it promised "appropriate action" when someone is not religious in the right way.

But here I am, getting all worked up over a couple of paragraphs on a Web page. I think my response of ranting about it on a blog is healthier than rioting in the streets, but maybe that's the Western imperialism talking. Thanks to Naomi Klein of the Guardian for reminding me why torture happens, and why some reports of torture are released and others withheld.

Naomi Klein, Guardian: "The people being intimidated need to know enough to be afraid but not so much that they demand justice. This helps explain why the defence department will release certain kinds of seemingly incriminating information about Guantánamo - pictures of men in cages, for instance - at the same time that it acts to suppress photographs on a par with what escaped from Abu Ghraib. And it might also explain why the Pentagon approved a new book by a former military translator, including the passages about prisoners being sexually humiliated, but prevented him from writing about the widespread use of attack dogs. This strategic leaking of information, combined with official denials, induces a state of mind that Argentinians describe as 'knowing/not knowing,' a vestige of their 'dirty war.' [...] This is torture's true purpose: to terrorise - not only the people in Guantánamo's cages and Syria's isolation cells but also, and more importantly, the broader community that hears about these abuses. Torture is a machine designed to break the will to resist - the individual prisoner's will and the collective will."

Religion and torture belong in the history books but not in the news. To make these two blights disappear, I brought a small amount of information to a small number of people today: what did you do?