Angry Jordan Arabs Demonstrate Against Bush as Another Crusader : Mideast: Worshipers respond ‘Death to America!’ as an Islamic clergyman recalls Richard the Lion-Hearted.

In some circumstances, President Bush might be pleased to be compared to Richard the Lion-Hearted, but when a Muslim religious leader made the comparison here Friday at weekly prayers, it was meant as anything but a compliment.

In the leader’s view, and that of several hundred of the faithful who chanted anti-American slogans, Bush and the English Crusader king represent misguided Western efforts to invade and conquer Islam and the Arab world.

And as chanting masses made clear, Bush, like the king, should be driven away.

“Everybody knows that America wants to destroy Islam,” one of the demonstrators, Abdul Rahman Khalifi, told the crowd. “Say no to America! Support Iraq!”

Khalifi thus seconded Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s call for a holy war on the United States for sending troops to Saudi Arabia.

“Death to America!” the worshipers responded.

It was a display of passion that might give Arab leaders pause if it is repeated across the Arab world. Such pro-Western leaders as President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Hassan II of Morocco have so far hesitated to join in the U.S. show of force in Saudi Arabia, and this is due in part to fear of popular reaction against helping an outsider against a fellow Arab.

Muslim fundamentalists have demonstrated growing strength in several Arab countries, including Jordan. The emotions released by the Iraqi-American conflict feed on traditional Arab mistrust of foreigners on Arab soil.

Just how unified the Arab world is, and not only on the Kuwaiti takeover, is open to question. Even in Friday’s demonstration, where flags of the United States, Britain and Israel were burned, contending crosscurrents rippled through the crowd.

It was largely a religious gathering, sponsored by the Muslim Brotherhood, a pan-Arab group that favors unity under the flag of Islam, and the religious aspect of the crisis over Kuwait was emphasized: The presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia must be regarded as an affront to Islam because it means that infidels are involved on holy soil, the land of Mohammed and his followers.

A need to repel Western-Christian incursions was the point of the reference made to the Crusades, in which European kings tried to take control of Jerusalem from the Muslims.

Mohammed Sherif, editor of the newspaper Dustour in Amman, said: “Arabia carried the torch of Islam to the unbelievers. Think of how the average Muslim will view the coming of this army to invade an Arab nation. It evokes deep feelings.”

Several who were present at the prayer meeting and the demonstration suggested that the legitimacy of King Fahd and the ruling House of Saud in Saudi Arabia would be forever stained. The Saud family is regarded as the guardian of the holy sites at Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two most sacred cities, but what pilgrim, a youth at the rally asked, “can come to a place defiled by the new Crusaders?”

Another demonstrator, Alden Ali Mohammed, said: “King Fahd only cares about his throne and oil. After this, he will not be able to rule.”

The recurrent emphasis on Islam seems to favor Iraq’s Hussein in his quest for the support of other Arab countries. But in some ways, it is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Hussein is admired as a leader who might be able to restore the Arab-Islamic glory of a long-past golden age. On the other hand, as the head of a thoroughly secular socialist party in Iraq, Hussein is not considered to be as good a Muslim as he might be.

Worshipers shouted down some demonstrators who unfurled a portrait of Hussein while the prayer meeting was in progress. “When the Koran is being read, you cannot talk politics,” one of the worshipers scolded. “You have to listen.”

Still, the faithful seem to view Hussein’s irreligious nature as secondary.

“He is not religious, it is true,” 20-year-old Mutaz Zaidan said. “But at least he is saying ‘no’ to America and to Europe.”

The pro-Hussein people feel that unity under the Iraqi leader would revive the strength the Arabs knew when they held sway from Spain to Turkey; science and education would flourish, and so would power, based on the wealth of oil now that Kuwait has been “reclaimed” from a backward monarchy that served the United States.

“When we get all the oil out of the hands of kings, who are really American agents, then we can have unity,” said Aiman Maythalmi, 22, an art student. “We can be a great power. Just like America.”

A companion said, “We are kept weak by the agents of America and Israel,” and he ticked off the names of Arab leaders he considered lackeys of the West: President Mubarak of Egypt, King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, the deposed Sabah family of Kuwait, the rulers of the United Arab Emirates.

As shadows lengthened under a cloudless sky, the demonstrators’ dreams of glory gave way to more parochial concerns and some second thoughts. Perhaps it would not be so good to be ruled by Iraq’s Hussein, one young man whispered.

“We want Arab unity, yes,” he said, “but not under one man. We want Arab leaders to act for the good of Arabs, that’s the way we want to be unified.”

Someone else suggested that Hussein, too, is interested only in oil.

“It is all oil,” he said. “America wants oil. Saddam (Hussein) wants oil.”

Several Palestinian students--the majority of Jordan’s population is of Palestinian origin--suggested that Hussein should withdraw from Kuwait in return for the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians in the occupied territories have been fighting the Israelis for more than 2 1/2 years.

Ahmed Sulayleh, a Jordanian student whose family lives in Kuwait, worried out loud that his parents would now be unable to send him money to continue his studies.

“Saddam has made his point,” he said. “The price of oil has gone up, and he should go home.”

Almost everyone present said he wanted to join a volunteer force to fight the Americans, but none said he had actually signed up.

“I just came from Canada,” Mutaz Zaidan, a medical engineering student, said, “and I think I am going to go back in a few days.”

Not everyone was convinced by the call for a holy war, despite the Muslim belief that to die a martyr’s death means sure entrance to heaven.

“I do not believe it is official,” the art student Maythalmi said.

The gathering broke up when it was announced that a planned “peace march” would not take place. At that point, a contingent of riot police arrived in blue vans and looked on impassively as the worshipers and demonstrators quietly dispersed.