Posted on 04/04/2003 5:27:06 AM PST by knighthawk
KUWAIT CITY - Like their counterparts who went to Afghanistan a generation ago to battle Soviet Communists, Muslim volunteers are said to be flocking to Baghdad to wage jihad against the United States and Britain.
Wearing headbands that read: "We are coming, God is Great," or wielding ceremonial swords, Afghans are reported to be arriving from Afghanistan and Iran, while Lebanese Arabs, Palestinians and Algerians are flooding in from Syria and Jordan.
The war in Iraq has ignited a passionate anger in the Middle East, one that is being fed by a daily diet of gruesome television clips of civilian carnage caused by the war. As a result, a new Arab nationalism may be emerging, one that combines religious zeal with links of language, race, religion, culture and a shared animosity toward the United States.
Iraq, a secular, socialist state that was reviled by Muslim fundamentalists, has become the focus of a new pan-Arab and pan-Islamic anger.
Protests from Rabat in Morocco to Peshawar in Pakistan and the streets of Jakarta in Indonesia have rattled the Islamic world as most of its 1.3 billion Muslims reject U.S. and British claims they have invaded Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people.
Last month, the most powerful moral voice of the world's Sunni Muslims, the Islamic scholars of Al Azhar University in Cairo, proclaimed the U.S.-led invasion a "new crusade."
"According to Islamic law, if the enemy steps on Muslim land, jihad becomes a duty of every male and female Muslim," reads a statement released by the university's Islamic Research Academy.
It went on to call upon Arabs and Muslims to be ready to defend themselves and their faith.
"Our Arab and Islamic nation, and even our faith, are a main target of all these military buildups," the statement said.
Calls for jihad in Iraq have transcended most divisions within the Muslim world. Shiite imams as well as Sunni sheiks are calling for a holy war at prayer services every Friday throughout the Middle East.
On Monday, Islamic Jihad, the Damascus-based, Palestinian terrorist group, said it was sending a wave of suicide bombers to Iraq to attack U.S. and British targets and to "fulfill the holy duty of defending Arab and Muslim land."
In almost the same breath, the group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on Sunday in the Israeli seaside town of Netanya that injured at least 30 people. That attack was a "gift to the people of Iraq," it said.
Syria's leading Muslim religious authority, Sheik Ahmad Kaftaro, has also encouraged suicide bombings in Iraq, saying: "I call on Muslims everywhere to use all means possible to thwart the aggression, including martyr operations against the belligerent American, British and Zionist invaders."
In Afghanistan, Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, has taken the war in Iraq as a cue to reissue his own fatwa, calling once again for a holy war against the United States.
In Saudi Arabia, the state-controlled religious establishment has issued televised warnings advising the Muslim faithful not to spill their blood in support of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Still, militant Muslim scholars have urged followers to volunteer to defend Iraq. A Saudi youth who claims to have made the journey to Baghdad to wage jihad has begun posting his diary on the Internet as an example for others.
While U.S. military planners may have made a strategic miscalculation by underestimating the will of Iraqis to resist their war of liberation and to wage a protracted guerrilla-style war, Washington's political leaders may also have underestimated the amount of militant opposition the war has ignited throughout the Muslim world.
Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's President, warned on Monday if the war in Iraq drags on, it will fuel Islamic militancy worldwide.
"If there is one [Osama] bin Laden now, there will be 100 bin Ladens afterward," Mr. Mubarak said in a speech to his army commanders.
If the war is prolonged, it could unite a wide variety of militant Muslim groups, including bin Laden's terrorist network, al-Qaeda, rallying them to a single cause: To stop what they see as U.S. aggression in a Muslim nation.
Last weekend's suicide bombing attack in Iraq, which killed four U.S. soldiers, may open the door to a much wider, religiously fuelled conflict, in which members of either a U.S.-led invasion force or an occupation army find themselves under constant threat.
Suicide attacks rob U.S. troops of one of their main motivations for being in Iraq. How can you be regarded as a "liberator" when you have to be suspicious of a country's entire civilian population?
Saddam, as despised as he was in the Arab world before the war, has managed to wrap himself and his regime in the robes of a new will to resist the West, while personifying a persistent Arab wish to stand up to the United States.
Now, he is offering the young men of the Middle East "the chance to achieve immortality and unmatched honour" by becoming religious martyrs.
The options frighten many here in the Middle East.
"One cannot foretell all the likely regional repercussions of the invasion of Iraq," Dia Rashwan wrote recently in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. "But the one thing about which there is no doubt is that the Anglo-American campaign will not leave 'Iraqi Freedom' in its wake, but 'shock and awe' throughout the Middle East and the Gulf."
Islam-list
If people want on or off this list, please let me know.
Yadda yadda yadda. These creatures stumble around in a permanent state of rage. That can't be any good for their blood pressure. Let's ramp it up until they start to drop dead from strokes and heart attacks.
"According to Islamic law, if the enemy steps on Muslim land, jihad becomes a duty of every male and female Muslim," reads a statement released by the university's Islamic Research Academy.
Religion o' Peace™ bump.
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