Debate on jihad intensifies across the Muslim world

Debate on jihad intensifies across the Muslim world

By Terry Friel

JAKARTA (Reuters): The United States vow that war against
terrorism is not war against Islam may have fallen on deaf ears
as cries of jihad, or holy war, resound across the Muslim world.

The accompanying threat to strike Afghanistan in the hunt for
Osama bin Laden, the chief suspect in the devastating Sept. 11
attacks on New York and Washington, risks triggering a violent
backlash among the world's billion Muslims.

"If they act without clear evidence and outside the U.N., then
the danger is that this will be seen as a war against Islam,"
said Emad Gad, a political analyst at the Cairo-based al-Ahram
Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

"It's a kind of arrogance of power. They say you are either
with us or against us..."

Some Islamic leaders say the planned U.S. retaliation over the
attacks which may have killed about 7,000 people is nothing more
than an undisguised crusade against Muslims. President George W.
Bush's call for a crusade against evildoers revived for some
images of Christian crusades against Islam.

"They've created an atmosphere of hatred towards Muslims
because they need to search for a victim, any victim...," said
Lebanon-based Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah.

"We find that the Muslims are exposed to an American attack in
the name of a coalition 'war on terrorism' that has no credible
basis," said the former Hizbollah spiritual adviser, regarded as
an authority for Shi'ite Muslims around the world and who has
forbidden Muslims from joining any U.S. reprisals.

Support

Islamic support is important to American success for several
reasons: Afghanistan is surrounded mainly by Islamic countries;
it broadens the coalition behind the United States and it brings
with it some of the world's biggest countries.

"The United States should know that without Islamic support,
the obstacles will be dangerous," said Saudi Arabia's Arabic
language al-Riyadh newspaper in an editorial. "The United States
should be aware of how entwined its position and interests are
with the Islamic world in times of war and peace."

As moderates seek to reassure their followers Washington is
not on an anti-Muslim crusade, hardliners from Europe to the
Middle East to Asia are readying for a fight.

"There have been attacks and violence for years in the Arab
and Muslim world as a result of the U.S., so there was a reason
that this happened," said an angry young Sudanese at the central
mosque in Paris. "If there is a war, I'm ready."

In the world's largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, young men
denouncing U.S. aggression are signing up to go to Afghanistan to
fight a jihad while others hunt for American citizens.

The country's main Muslim clerics' organization, the Council
of Ulemas (MUI), has condemned both the attacks on the United
States and any retaliation against a Muslim country.

"So, we call on Muslims in the world for a jihad fii
sabilillah (holy war for truth) should aggression by the U.S. and
its allies against Afghanistan and the Islamic world occur," said
MUI secretary-general Din Syamsuddin.

Calls for jihad if the United States strikes are echoing
around the Islamic world, including the Middle East, Malaysia and
Pakistan, where four people died in weekend anti-U.S. protests.

Bin Laden has described the dead Pakistani protesters as "the
first martyrs in the battle of Islam of this age".

However, Indian Islamic scholar and head of the powerful
Muslim Personal Law Board Kalbe Sadiq said Muslims could not
support Afghanistan's ruling Taliban if they were proved guilty.

"But we can't support the United States because their previous
record isn't good, either," he told Reuters. "So this is a battle
between two thugs." India's Muslim minority of about 120 million
approaches the population of Pakistan.

Analysts say while extremists are a tiny fraction of the
Islamic world, a long and bloody U.S. campaign with heavy
civilian casualties, and any failure by Washington to reassess
its own foreign policies, may swing some moderates behind them.

"If there is a war in Afghanistan and the powers of the West
are pitted against the Taliban, and if that war goes on for a few
years, the Taliban would be seen by a lot of Muslims as defenders
of Islam," said Malaysian opposition politician Chandra Muzaffar.

Saudi social anthropologist Mai Yamani said she was worried
about the fallout from any American military reprisals.

"That could strengthen the radical trend that we have here in
the Arab Muslim world and crush the moderate trend," she said.

German-born Indonesian Catholic priest Franz Magnis-Suseno
said: "It's safe for us now here... but these small groups can
change everything."

Resentment at U.S. actions in the Middle East, especially its
support for Israel and the sanctions against Iraq, is the common
thread linking the most moderate Muslims to the most radical.

"America helps Israel in attacking Palestinians," said Ubaid-
ul-Haq, a 32-year-old painter in the Indian capital, New Delhi.
"America must understand why people want to attack it."

Prof. Amin Saikal, from the Australian National University's
Arab and Islamic studies center, told Reuters a military campaign
with clear objectives and a marked foreign policy shift were
vital to easing Islamic suspicions.

But he also believes ethnic, cultural and political divisions
mean the Islamic world cannot sustain a united opposition.

"If they could, they would have done so by now over Israel,"
he said. "But there are groups in the Muslim world that in the
short term may act against the U.S."

Islam varies dramatically in geography and interpretation,
from its softer face in the vast Southeast Asian archipelago of
Indonesia, to the Taliban's own ultra-strict interpretation in
Afghanistan.

But as the world waits for any U.S. strike, Afghani-American
writer Mir Tamim Ansary warns a devastating conflict between
Islam and the West is, in fact, bin Laden's ultimate aim.

"We're flirting with a world war between Islam and the West,"
he wrote in a widely-circulated email. "And guess what: that's
bin Laden's program. That's why he did this.

"Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?"