Muslim preachers across Middle East urge their countries not to join anti-terror coalition

By MARIAM FAM
Associated Press Writer

CAIRO, Egypt – Across the Middle East, Muslim preachers urged their countries on Friday to be careful in joining a U.S.-led coalition against terrorism, and accused Washington of "threatening innocent people" in its effort to get terror suspect Osama bin Laden.

In Lebanon, Sheik Maher Hammoud, a hard-line Sunni Muslim cleric, called on Muslim countries to "oppose the U.S. war against Afghanistan."

"It is not permissible for any (Muslim) side to cooperate with the Americans to strike Afghanistan on the pretext that the Taliban are distorting the image of Islam," he told worshippers at Jerusalem Mosque in the southern city of Sidon.

Sheik Abdul Amir Qabalan, deputy president of the highest religious authority for Lebanon's 1.2 million Shiite Muslims, said that accusing Arabs and Muslims of being behind the attacks was a "Zionist-led media campaign in an attempt to cover (Israel's) organized crimes ... against Arabs and the Muslim people."

In the minds of many Arabs, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is inseparable from the attacks in the United States. Some say the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington were fueled by Arab hatred of America and its backing of Israel.

In the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Sheik Saleh bin Hamid called Israel "a living example of terrorism in practice."

At Islam's most sacred mosque, the Grand Mosque, he gave his support for an international coalition to fight terrorism, but warned that the problem should be carefully considered.

Otherwise, it could create "more problems that will be irrational, vengeful, deadly and destructive, and that will lead to a clash of cultures, religions and races and leave the world in a state of endless war," Sheik Saleh said.

At one of Jordan's university mosques, preacher Abdul-Wahab Kassasbeh said Americans "should calculate their move in order to get the perpetrators and not innocent people."

On Friday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld left Cairo at the end of a Mideast tour to rally support for the U.S. campaign against Afghanistan, whose Taliban rulers have refused to hand over bin Laden, the chief suspect in the attacks.

But many Arab countries have shown reluctance in joining the coalition, fearing that Arab nations like Iraq may themselves become targets, and wary of popular anger if they participate in attacks against Islamic Afghanistan.

In Egypt, Khamis Jindi, a Palestinian merchant attending Friday prayers, said the anticipated U.S. attacks on Afghanistan were "an operation against Islam, not against bin Laden. It's an ideological war between the crusaders and the Muslims."

"We as Arabs are supposed to take a united stance and not participate in such an act of terrorism against Muslims," said Khalid Ahmed, an engineer.

In Iraq, Sheik Abdel-Ghafur al-Qaissi, preacher at al-Imam al-A'adham Mosque in Baghdad, said the Bush administration is "acting at random in accusing and threatening innocent people," apparently a reference to Afghanistan and possibly Iraq. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has warned that the United States may use the attacks as an excuse to hit his country.

In Iran, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, the hard-line head of the powerful Guardian Council, denounced the way the United States responded to the attacks as "illogical," saying Washington has made itself the investigator, judge and executioner in its campaign against terrorism.

AP-WS-10-05-01 1641EDT