Sunday, May 18, 2003

Suicide Bombings Are Condemned in Saudi Mosques
As they arrived in the torrid heat at Abu Bakr Mosque for the first Friday Prayers since this week's bombings, most worshipers seemed to expect that today's sermon would condemn the attacks as contrary to Islamic tenets. They were not disappointed, or in disagreement.

"I totally reject these attacks, and I don't think anyone in Saudi Arabia would approve them," said Khalid Ibrahim, 32, an elementary school teacher.

But Mr. Ibrahim added that the killing of 34 Americans, Saudis and others in the explosions at three residential compounds here in the Saudi capital on Monday night had to be placed in context.

"I see hundreds of our Muslim brothers dying in Iraq and Palestine," he said. "Part of the reason for these attacks in our country is retaliation against that injustice."

Such comments were echoed by a dozen other worshipers in an upper-class suburb in eastern Riyadh. Many cited the Koran as teaching that the killing of innocents, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, is not simply forbidden, but certain to lead to punishment in hell. They cited recent headlines to make the point of suffering by fellow Muslims.

In the holy city of Mecca, the imam of the Grand Mosque, Sheik Saleh bin Abdullah bin Humaid, condemned the bombings today as "criminal acts" and "an aggression, an act of killing, terrorizing others and destruction," as well as "bloodshed of protected souls."

In Medina, the imam of the Prophet Mosque, Ali bin Abdel Rahman al-Hudhaify, said that while Muslims were "required to punish any fellow Muslims who violate Islamic teachings," they should also ask the West "to punish those who commit terrorist acts against the Palestinians and to guarantee their right to live in peace and dignity in their homeland."

The imam at Abu Bakr Mosque here, Mazin al-Raji, said the attacks posed a test that separated believers from nonbelievers. Believers, he said, understood that the bombers were "mentally twisted and unstable" people whose conduct was also an act of treason against the state and against human nature.

But the imam also cited conditions in Chechnya, the Palestinian territories and Iraq, and warned that arresting people and suppressing their opinions could "create another reason for terrorism."

Taken together, these comments seem to suggest that while the bombings may have stirred a new resolve among Saudis to fight terrorism, there is a wide gulf between Riyadh and Washington on policy issues like postwar Iraq and the Middle East peace talks.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/17/international/middleeast/17SAUD.html

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