BIG NEWS WEEK.(scandal over Newsweek reports on alleged desecration of Koran by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay )

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 30-MAY-05

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COPYRIGHT 2005 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

The one person most directly responsible for touching off the current frenzy over alleged Koran abuse by American interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, more than anybody at Newsweek, was a Pakistani politician named Imran Khan. Khan is an Islamic populist, not exactly a rarity in that part of the world, but with a difference. Several differences, in fact. He is, first of all, a wealthy sports celebrity--a global cricket star for two decades--and a national hero not only for that but also because he built his country's first cancer hospital. He is a graduate of Oxford, and so thoroughly Westernized that his private life is fodder for the tabloids. After he laid down his cricket bat, he became increasingly devout, and in 1996 he founded his own political party. He is its only member of parliament, but his voice is listened to in Pakistan and beyond. Initially a supporter of General Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's President, he now attacks him as an "American puppet." Khan says he wants Pakistanis to be America's "friends, but not lackeys." He has no sympathy with terrorism or dictatorship. He has even suggested that only democratically elected governments should be allowed to vote at the United Nations. In other words, he is...

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