Sensationalism
I was shocked by the emerging story of the book that alleges use of women in a highly questionable manner to force out confessions from some Guantanamo Bay prisoners, as discussed by Dr. Fakhruddin Ahmed in 'Point-Counterpoint' of February 17. However, I am also appalled by the heading of his article, 'America uses women to torture Muslim prisoners'. What an over-the-top cheap shot! Shouldn't you have used a more relevant, true-to-the-fact title like, 'America uses women to torture Guantanamo Bay prisoners'? Words like 'Muslim' or 'Christian' are heavily loaded words and should be used with caution. To a non-discriminating reader or someone who only glances over the headlines of The Daily Star, your title may give the impression that the US government has taken a policy of using sexual lures and invectives of women to torture all Muslim prisoners, possibly including the ones that are in jails in the US. We should also think that however bad these questioning techniques at Guantanamo Bay are, it is very likely that similar means would be used even if these prisoners were non-Muslims. One should not give religious colour to something that is not necessarily so.
None of us are happy about the activities of the Bush government, but publishing articles with titles that are half-truths and which portray Muslims once again as victims, especially in a newspaper of Bangladesh where our traditional society is reeling under attacks by the Islamic fundamentalists almost every day (please see The Daily Star of the same day for several examples), is short-sighted .
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