“It won’t do any good if the State Department (eventually) apologizes or if it rejects this act, or if its authors are tried,”  they said in a statement obtained by AFP.

“That would amount to throwing dust in the eyes as was the case in the trials of those who committed the crimes (of abusing prisoners at Iraq’s) Abu Ghraib jail ... The Islamic nation will not settle for less than the trial (of the Guantanamo culprits) by an Islamic court,” said the mostly Salafi signatories.

Riots have broken out across the Muslim world following a report in Newsweek magazine that US investigators had found that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay threw a Quran in a toilet to rattle Muslim inmates.

The magazine this week retracted the story after its source developed doubts, and the Pentagon has said its own investigation has found no evidence to support the allegation that Qurans were defiled at the offshore US prison.

“All Muslims are required to strive seriously and consistently to expose the intentions of the aggressor through various media and to revive the boycott of US products,” said the Saudi scholars, who also demanded the release of the Guantanamo detainees.

The imam of the grand mosque of Makkah, Abderrahman al-Sudais, told the faithful during Friday prayers that the United States should apologize swiftly to prevent a mounting wave of anger from growing any further.