High & Right .... and Wrong

As described at BLACKFIVE;

Now, unless your military dog tags identify you as of the Muslim faith, you cannot obtain a copy of the Quran from the military chaplain. The exception is if your commander stops fighting the war long enough to write up a memo requesting one for you including the reason why you want a Quran.

And, if you are a Muslim and obtain a Quran, it will be accounted for like any other sensitive item.

I can understand the desire to do something; but now and then it is better to just sit there. Why is this is a classic case of overreaction and digging a hole deeper?

The books were used by Afghan detainees being held at the base to propagate extremist messages and were considered to be sensitive material.
...
... there are two methods of disposing an unusable Qur’an and Islamic literature:

(1) Wrapping them in a piece of cloth or something pure and burying them respectfully in a place where people normally do not walk upon.

(2) Fastening the items to something heavy such as a stone and placing it respectfully in flowing river.

If the above-mentioned two methods are not possible to implement, only then will it be permitted to burn the Holy Scriptures and then bury the resulting ash or drop the ash in a flowing river.

If Muslim prisoners were using them as a method of sending messages, then (1) & (2) are not an option. As with many things in all religions, opinions differ - but burning is/was the only option.

The only mistake was that the Korans should have been given to a Chaplain to dispose of with the ashes being given to an appropriate official.

What happened was an innocent mistake/oversight. This all sane people agree on. That should be our message - and for awhile it was. This memo however, throws all that away. It gives the impression that the Koran issue resulted by misuse by our military personnel by a conscience act, and in order to prevent more conscience acts - we must do all we can to keep Korans out of the hands of American because .... don'tchaknow ... even we don't trust our own people.

Whoever made this decision is tone deaf, never "war-gamed" the second and third order effects ---- and has poor skills in crisis management. When the other side is over-reacting and basing their over-reaction on false information, and you have the truth ---- always stick by the truth. When you attempt to embellish, obscure, or distract from the truth - the truth gets lost.

We are losing the one thing on our side here, the truth.

What a shame. Throwing gasoline on a fire - no pun intended.