Newsweek author Michael Isikoff’s unsourced (and apparently false) allegation that US interrogators “desecrated” a Quran in Guantanamo Bay continues to provoke Islamic rage and insanity around the world; now Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi of Cairo’s Al-Azhar University (previously on record calling for suicide bombings against Jews and US soldiers) gets into the act: Koran desecration amounts to ‘great crime’: top Sunni authority.

Perhaps even more disgusting than this display of violent irrationality from the RoP is our own government’s rush to appease, even before any facts are discovered. The Newsweek article isn’t the only reason this madness is continuing to spiral out of control; when the US’s first reaction is to apologize and abase ourselves in the face of thuggish Dark Ages behavior, what else should we expect? Weakness invites attack.

CAIRO (AFP) - Sunni Islam’s top authority, Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, branded the alleged defilement of the holy Koran at a US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba a “great crime”.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, meanwhile, said her country would move faster to counter such damaging reports in the Muslim world that have sparked deadly protests in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“The Koran’s desecration is a great crime and should be dealt with at once,” Tantawi told the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Youm.

But he held back from issuing an official condemnation “so as not to stoop to the level of the presumed authors”.

“It’s a bunch of kids, criminals that should be punished and I will not publish a statement to answer such people,” said the sheikh of the revered Al-Azhar institution in Cairo.

The mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, however, opted for a straight condemnation.

“It’s an unforgivable crime toward the monotheistic religions which call on the faithful to respect the sacred values of other religions,” said the country’s religious leader, quoted by the official news agency MENA.

“The Muslims will not remain silent in the face of an aggression on their sacred values.”

UPDATE at 5/15/05 8:13:54 am:

Meanwhile, our government has no reaction to scenes like this: