In the Mosques, Sermons Critical of the U.S., Israel

The Bush Administration carte blanche to Israel is having it's expected effect. Most notably, we discover why the Bush Administration has backed off of it's mission to bring democracy to the world. Not only was it an expression of it's ignorance, the world is voting against Bush. For example, Egypt is in the midst of a crack-down. But even the most authoritarian regimes have recognized that their credibility is on the line, and have allowed dissent to state opinions about Lebanon, even from the usually controlled pulpits in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Arab leaders are truly afraid of losing control to the Islamic fundamentalists.
New York Times

In mosques from Mecca to Marrakesh, sermons at Friday Prayer services underscored both the David-versus-Goliath glamour many Arabs associate with Hezbollah’s fight against Israel and their antipathy toward the United States and its allies in the region for doing so little to stop yet another Arab country from collapsing into bloodshed.


“Our brothers are being killed in Lebanon and no one is responding to their cries for help,” said Sheik Hazzaa al-Maswari, an Islamist member of Yemen’s Parliament, in his Friday sermon at the Mujahid Mosque in Sana, the country’s capital. “Where are the Arab leaders?” he said. “Do they have any skill other than begging for a fake peace outside the White House? We don’t want leaders who bow to the White House.”


The tone of the sermons suggests that the fighting in Lebanon is further tarnishing the image of the United States in the Arab world as being solely concerned with Israel’s welfare and making its allied governments look increasingly like puppets.


“What is creating radicalism in the region is not authoritarian regimes,” said Mustafa Hamarneh, director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan. “Mainly it is American policy in the region — survey after survey shows that.”


The attacks against Arab leaders from the pulpit were all the more surprising because so many governments have exerted some manner of control over sermons in recent years. Dictating the content of the weekly themes is one means of preventing prayer leaders from launching into the kind of political discussions that could inspire extremists.