Protests, horror greet US assault

CAIRO - The gulf between Arab and Muslim leaders and the people they rule emerged yesterday as popular sentiment in the region pointedly denounced the start of the US assault on Osama bin Laden's network in retaliation for the attacks on New York and Washington.

The question has never been whether the U.S. desires war on the Muslim world. We don't. A typical Muslim has more freedom of religion here than in countries where we have adversaries.

However, there is a question of whether much of the Muslim world desires war on the U.S. I am not an expert, but it strikes me that this is a possibility. If so, I don't think we should try appeasement or psycho-analysis. We should insist that they respect our way of life, and we have to be prepared to do whatever is necessary to preserve it.

Taking names - target-rich environment:

''It is the duty of every Muslim to support their brothers in this critical hour,'' said Riaz Durana, leader of the Afghan Defense Council, a group based in Lahore, Pakistan, that sympathizes with the Taliban rulers of neighboring Afghanistan. ''We will support the Taliban physically and morally against the aggression of America.''

The council comprises more than 30 religious and militant groups.

''The war against Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden is a war on Islam,'' said Suleiman Abu Gheith, described by Al-Jazeera as a spokesman for bin Laden's organization, known in Arabic as Al Qaeda.

''I do not understand this as a war against terrorism. This war will lead to more wars and more instability and more insecurity,'' said Ahmad Ghneim, a leader of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. ''America is committing a mistake.''

Sheikh Hasan Yousef, spokesman for the militant Hamas organization, which has undertaken a string of suicide bombings against Israelis, called the attacks ''terrorism against Islam and Muslims.''

''It is a crusaders' war, using non-conventional weapons against innocents under the pretext of striking at terrorism,'' he said.

Iraqi TV denounced the US-British assault as ''treacherous aggression.'' In Iran, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Assefi called the attacks ''unacceptable,'' saying they were launched ''regardless of the world public opinion, especially the Muslim nations, and will damage the innocent and oppressed Afghans.''

You're either with us or against us - there is no middle ground - sleep tight.

It seems we're not dealing with a lot of reasonable, informed people in Islamic-dominated countries. Can you imagine during WWII if most Americans protested fighting Germany and Italy because they were Christian nations? If the cabdriver in Cairo or the housewife in Islamabad supports OBL, they are our enemies also. We won't kill them, but we don't have to love them either. My response to these backwards jerks comments is to tell them to cram them up their keisters. Suspend all aid to unfriendly countries and see if they like us more. From what I've seen and read about most Islamic-dominated countries, they are incapable of progressing along Western-style avenues. A pox on the lot of them.

I try to look at the give and take of any disagreement. First of all, this is a clash of religions, regardless of denials by all sides. In most of the Muslim countries there is persecution of Christian and Jew by forbidding missionary work. In Israel, there is not prison, but discouragement of missionary work in other ways. This can be explained in part because of the state-religious connection of all these countries.

My conclusion is that we are fortunate that our founders made a very wise decision when they set up a system of religious freedom for all denominations.

We are attacked for this neutrality by all sides of the religion controversy. To try to walk the fine line of trying to accommodate the hostilities of all sides in this religious war is almost impossible. Religious freedom is the answer to most of the problems the world is having now, but how to achieve it is the big question.

Sheikh Hasan Yousef, spokesman for the militant Hamas organization, which has undertaken a string of suicide bombings against Israelis, called the attacks ''terrorism against Islam and Muslims.''

''It is a crusaders' war, using non-conventional weapons against innocents under the pretext of striking at terrorism,'' he said.

Even during the late, desperate stages of WWII, the Japanese officers who ordered kamikaze attacks by warriors in uniform were disquieted by doing so. Someone representing no government, eschewing identification with his confederates, and undertaking to murder as many civilians as possible as a means of ~~waging war~~ causing WWIII is a different thing entirely. As muslims would themselves emphasize if they caught someone trying to do that to them.

The only moral boundaries bin Laden have hasn't crossed is the use of CBN--and we are not sure his henchmen won't attempt, even succeed, at that. The moslem-on-the-street who may enjoy some shadenfreude about 9/11 and indulge in self-righteous indignation now, must consider what the issue could be then. Would a credible threat to employ a biological agent which merely gives thousands of people the flu focus these peoples' minds?

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