Mosques Are Closed, and Anger Is Out in the Open : Mideast: Arabs in the occupied territories, charging that Israel is trying to curtail Islam, pray outdoors in protest.

The mosque had been closed, its imam exiled by Israeli authorities and the muezzin ordered not to call the town’s Muslims to prayer.

Yet, 10 minutes before noon, the men of Bir Nabala began to arrive for the midday Friday prayers, lining up quickly across the front lawn and spreading burlap bags and nylon sacks to serve as small prayer rugs.

“We have come to pray,” Ayoub abu Nada, a pensioner in a brown tweed jacket, said as he took his place with his grandsons.

“We are commanded by God to do so, and even the Israelis cannot change the commandments of God. . . . The Israelis can lock the mosque, but they cannot lock our hearts.”

Some of the 120 men were there out of devotion and habit--for them the noon prayers on Friday were not to be missed, like Sunday Mass for Roman Catholics or Sabbath services for observant Jews.

But others, many of them in their 20s and 30s, had come to reaffirm their adherence to Islam precisely because of what they see as a concerted Israeli attack upon their religion.

“Nothing is more oppressive than closing the house of God,” said Mansour Shamasneh, a theological student from nearby Beit Hanina, who led the prayers outside the mosque and delivered the 15-minute sermon. “And nothing is more oppressive than trying to halt the advance of Islam, to stamp out our faith.”

But Israeli military authorities assert that in closing the Bir Nabala mosque and half a dozen others on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, they were not persecuting Muslims or trying to curtail Islam, the religion of most Palestinians. These mosques were closed, they say, because they were used to advocate violent resistance to the Israeli occupation, which is now in its 26th year.

“Palestinian Arabs enjoy full freedom of religion,” a spokesman for the Israeli military government said. “But we cannot tolerate violation of this freedom by those who advocate violence and terrorism in the name of religion. That is why these few mosques were closed for periods of up to six months; many others remain open, and more are being built.”

Israeli officials also point to their country’s acceptance this week of 84 Muslim refugees fleeing the fighting in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Brought at the request of Israeli Arabs, the Bosnians have been promised shelter, jobs and residence as long as they wish.

Israel’s humanitarian action drew no praise, however, from Palestinians, who instead renewed their demand for the repatriation of the 396 men whom Israel exiled to southern Lebanon two months ago as supporters of militant Islamic groups. Among them is Imam Jamal Farah of the Bir Nabala mosque.

“Our imam was hard on the Israelis, it is true, but do they really expect him to be soft and accepting and approving of their occupation?” said Bir Nabala Mayor Tawfiq Hajjeh, a local businessman and landowner, who built the mosque in 1986 as a gift to the community.

“And even were our imam somehow at fault, why punish all believers? Why punish those who wish to pray? Were a synagogue closed somewhere in the world and its rabbi deported, you can imagine what an outcry there would be, and it would be right. So, too, with the closure of our mosques.”

In his sermon, Shamasneh gave no quarter to the Israelis, repeatedly denouncing their “oppression” of the Palestinians. But he urged moral resistance, starting with true adherence to Islam and its strict ethical code. Ultimate victory was certain, he said, but only through Islam.

“To those who have closed this house of God, I say that they should know that our religion will never be defeated because it comes from God,” Shamasneh said. “No matter how great the conspiracy against our nation, Islam will be victorious. . . .

“My message to those who are oppressed, who are tortured by this occupation, is to thank God for this misery. If God loves someone, he will test him by putting him into misery. Hold on to the rope of God--it is the only rope no one can cut. God is with the patient ones. Against eternity, the state of oppression lasts but an hour.”

The sermon, however, was political only in passing; most of it was devoted to preparations for Ramadan, the Muslim month of penitence and fasting, which begins Tuesday.

Using “oppression” as a theme, Shamasneh told the men: “The real source of oppression is vice. . . . A person can oppress himself by giving in to his desires, his vices, by doing things against Islam and the Muslim nation, and a whole people can do the same.”

That “Muslim blood had become the cheapest blood, spilled everywhere in world” results first, he said, from “the Muslim loss in their devotion to God, in their adherence to Islam and the Koran.”

For Muslims to fail in keeping the Ramadan fast, for Muslim women to “exhibit their flesh,” for Muslim parents to fail to raise their children according to Islamic beliefs--”all this brings oppression,” Shamasneh said. “We must bring ourselves back to Islam.”