SHORTLY after 9/11, I was flooded with e-mails from Americans who suddenly wanted to learn more about foreign perceptions of their country.

The question “Why do they hate us?” kept cropping up in letter after letter. I explained that over the years, successive US administrations had acted in ways that would have shocked the average American had he known what was being done in his name. But Americans tend to be largely insular, and ignore international events.

Now, in these lawless post-9/11 days, the Bush administration can literally get away with murder. The recent revelations from Bagram in Afghanistan are part of the overall picture of a latter-day Gulag stretching from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib to Afghanistan.

Predictably, these horror stories have evoked protests from across the Muslim world. The alleged desecration of the Holy Quran caused violent demonstrations and a number of deaths. Indeed, other newspapers had reported such incidents before, but it took the Newsweek story to fuel popular rage. Its half-hearted retraction is less than convincing.

Whenever the Americans have conducted an internal inquiry into prisoner abuse, we have been told those responsible were untrained in interrogation techniques. How much training does it need for decent people to know they are inflicting agony on their prisoners?

A recent Amnesty International report on human rights abuses in American detention centres is devastating in its forthright criticism. Irene Khan, the director of the organization, has lambasted the American military for running what she calls the ‘gulag for our times’. Her American colleague points out that the use of torture has lowered Washington’s moral authority in dealing with other violators of human rights around the world.

But there is a note of hypocrisy in some of the criticism emanating from the Muslim world. For instance, the Gulf News in its leader of May 22 thunders: “All prisoners must have rights, wherever they are held, for whatever reason...” This forthright demand will come as scant comfort for the thousands of prisoners routinely beaten and tortured from Turkey to Indonesia.

Of course American abuse of prisoners must be condemned by all of us. But at the same time, we need to take a hard look at what’s happening in our prisons. In its annual report for 2004, this is what Amnesty International says about Pakistan’s track record: “Torture and ill-treatment by the police and prison officers remained routine and the perpetrators were rarely held to account. Several people died in custody.”

The report does not mention the role of our intelligence agencies in torturing suspects. However, from time to time, their hand is exposed. Recently, two Americans of Pakistani origin were released after eight months of illegal detention, and accused the Pakistani authorities of subjecting them to torture with FBI complicity. Commenting on this case, the Asia director of Human Rights Watch, spoke of “Pakistan’s dreadful record on illegal detentions and torture...”

Indeed, over the years, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other similar organizations have been compiling a woeful record of abuses in Pakistan as well as in other Muslim countries. It is precisely for this reason that Americans have been flying suspected terrorists to various Muslim nations in a process known as ‘rendering’. In order to avoid breaking their own laws, US agencies ‘outsource’ torture to friendly Muslim states where prisoners, contrary to the Gulf News’ editorial quoted earlier, have no rights.

A few months ago, a British TV channel ran an investigative documentary in which a mysterious American executive jet was shown taking off from American and European airports and flying prisoners to remote destinations in the Middle East. The programme interviewed a Canadian Muslim who had been flown from the United States to his native Syria and tortured for months.

This is not to suggest that the Muslim world has a monopoly on torture. Far from it. But human rights abuses flourish most brutally in the absence of democracy, and unfortunately, the record of Muslim countries in political freedom is pretty dismal. Many of them have the trappings of democracy with parliaments and (highly suspect) elections. But in reality, power vests with despots and tyrants of various kinds. The press is usually gagged, and the courts are handmaidens of the ruling elite.

In this climate of lawless tyranny, physical torture is the norm rather than the exception. When we read the words “intensive interrogation” to describe what a suspect is going through, we know immediately that this is code for brutal torture.

So why this outrage over the excesses committed by Americans in Gitmo, Abu Ghraib and Bagram? Because the Americans have set themselves higher standards, and their entire legal system prohibits the abuse of prisoners. Indeed, for years they have been preaching to the rest of the world, and liberals have drawn strength from their campaign to halt human right abuses everywhere. Although there has been an element of political expediency in Washington’s words and actions, it has generally acted as a deterrent against the worst abuses. America has often been criticized for double standards, but never has the chasm between words and actions been as wide. Now when the US government chides some dictator for mistreating his citizens, he will turn around and quote Amnesty on American treatment of prisoners.

And yet, despite the widespread use of torture, there is little evidence to show that it works as an instrument to extract accurate information from a suspect. To avoid pain, most people will confess to any crime and say whatever he thinks his tormentor wants to hear. One argument frequently heard in support of torture is that it can be condoned to force a suspect to reveal an imminent terrorist threat. But this extreme scenario has never occurred in reality, so it is difficult to assess its relevance.

One suspects the routine use of torture we see has more to do with a need to punish than to seek the truth. For many Americans, the very fact that somebody has an obviously Muslim appearance is enough to establish his guilt. From this point on, moral restraints are loosened to a point where the victim is seen as somehow less human. Subconsciously, the torturer justifies his actions by seeing himself as an avenger for 9/11, or as preventing future attacks on his country.

In Abu Ghraib, those responsible for the abuse of prisoners defended themselves by saying they were “only having fun”, and claimed they were acting under orders. Clearly, if America wishes to win back its moral authority, it will have to look into the actions of senior civilian and military officers in the chain of command. But the fact that Rumsfeld has been retained as defence secretary in Bush’s second administration is an indication that it is business as usual in Washington.