MB Civic

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

DAMASCUS, Syria, July 21 — 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.

Here in Damascus, where the Syrian government has been trying to keep a low profile as the fighting in Lebanon surges, prominent prayer leaders focused on the need to donate generously to help tens of thousands of Lebanese refugees pouring over the border. But they also took other Arab countries to task — although without mentioning by name such critics of Hezbollah as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.

“What gives us pain is the Arab position,” said Mohamed al-Habash, a cleric who serves in Syria’s Parliament, speaking from the pulpit of Al Zahra Mosque. “They are entering a conspiracy against the Arabs, their brothers.”

In an interview, the cleric said the United States was helping religious extremists by encouraging the Israelis to continue their onslaught. By not working harder to stop the deaths of scores of Lebanese women and children, he said, the United States is abetting the recruiting efforts of the likes of Osama bin Laden and the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“The United States is creating more Zarqawis, more bin Ladens in the Mideast every day,” Mr. Habash said.

The United States, for its part, blames Syrian support for groups like Hezbollah and Hamas as being among the root causes of such extremism.

The Saudi government has taken a strong public position against Hezbollah’s having brought on the crisis by capturing two Israeli soldiers, last week condemning the organization’s “uncalculated adventures.” Washington has leaned heavily on that and similar statements in explaining its own position.

Yet the senior Saudi imam delivering the sermon from Islam’s holiest mosque in Mecca, broadcast live, presented a rare if discreet criticism of Saudi royal policy.

The Muslim world should be proud of the bravery shown by the Palestinians and the Lebanese confronting Israel, said Sheik Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, who pointedly urged Muslim leaders to return to “sound reason and unify their ranks.”

He took an indirect swipe at the United States for claiming to promote human rights while leaving the mounting deaths of civilians all but unmentioned. “Where are those who filled the world with slogans of freedom and democracy?” he asked. “Don’t they fear that history will condemn them for their double standards?”

In Egypt, Sheik Khalid Saoudi at the Sayyida Hafsa Mosque in the well-to-do Cairo suburb of Heliopolis, criticized the Saudis and the Arab League for trying to rely on international intervention.

“Every time we rely on the ‘big guys,’ we get slapped,” he told the gathered worshipers, suggesting that Islam was under assault around the world, with conflicts raging in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories.

In downtown Cairo, police officers in riot gear prevented several thousand chanting worshipers at sprawling Al Azhar Mosque near the city’s main bazaar from taking their protest out into the streets, while thousands marched after sermons in other capitals including Amman, Jordan.

The Iranian government — whose support of Hezbollah and Hamas as a means of widening the reach of its Islamic revolution is causing worry in some other Middle Eastern capitals — also took the opportunity to condemn Arab leaders.

Former president Hashemi Rafsanjani of Iran, speaking at the main Friday Prayer sermon in downtown Tehran, said Arab and Islamic countries “do not even bother to condemn the fact that Muslims are being butchered by nonbelievers.”

“This is a historic catastrophe,” said Mr. Rafsanjani, who is a Shiite cleric.

He went on to say that all Hezbollah fighters should be considered heroes, according to Reuters. The most radical Shiite cleric in neighboring Iraq, Moktada al-Sadr, also spoke out in support of Hezbollah.

In mosques across the region, virtually every prayer leader used the traditional call-and-response period after the main sermon to ask God to grant a victory to the Muslims. “Amen,” responded the congregations in one voice.