Thought for the Day, 5 May 2004

Abdal Hakim Murad

Good morning.

We are still puzzling over the authenticity of the pictures published recently in the Daily Mirror, which seem to show British troops tormenting Iraqi detainees. It?s a disturbing claim. But it should not distract us from the larger story which is breaking. A US Army internal report, cited by some of this morning?s papers, suggests that Iraqi prisoners have actually been killed while in American custody.

Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, who was commandant of the Baghdad prison until she was relieved of her command, is fighting back. Many more people were involved in the abuse, she says, than are currently facing reprimands. And she has implied that the supreme commander of American forces in Iraq should share some of the blame for outrages that happened, ultimately, within his jurisdiction.

Is this unedifying self-justification, hurling the blame at others? Or is General Karpinski entirely blameless, having known nothing of the abuses in her command? Of course, until investigations are complete, we presume her innocence. What is clear, however, is that some coalition troops have been sent to Iraq without a clear sense of how to deal properly with detainees. Some of the accused have said, in their defence, that the ground rules were unclear.

One cannot help thinking of another case of the tragic abuse of military power. On March 16, 1968, American troops executed four hundred villagers in the Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai. As in the Iraqi jail, someone took photographs, and the resulting scandal contributed to the eventual American withdrawal from Vietnam.

One of the soldiers present at the My Lai massacre had had a deeply religious upbringing. But as he commented afterwards: ?We believed this behavior was pretty commonplace. I didn?t think we were doing anything different from any other unit. You really do lose your sense ? not of right and wrong ? but your degree of wrong changes ? A different set of rules, and I don?t think that any of us quite knew what those rules were?

This seems to get to the heart of what happened in the Baghdad prison. ?Your degree of wrong changes?. The intoxication of power, and the enemy?s frustrating tenacity, combine to lure us into moral shortcuts.

What Iraq now needs is a spiritual agenda. Not some miserable fundamentalism, of the kind which has done so much harm on both sides, and particularly in the Muslim world. But a sense that religion must chasten us when we are in positions of great power. God is greater, so we should be humble.

Muslims should remember the following verse of the Holy Koran. ?You will surely find the closest in affection to the Muslims to be those who say, We are Christians. That is because there are among them priests and monks, and because they are not arrogant.?