Rallying in Defense of Islam

By bus, car and foot, thousands of Muslims converged on this northern Israeli town Friday night to rally in defense of Islam and urge the world not to hold their faith responsible for the atrocities visited on the United States.

The rally, which packed the local soccer stadium with men on one side, women on the other and children all over, was sponsored by the Islamic Movement, a fundamentalist faction that has grown dramatically in the last five years in the Galilee region of Israel.

Israeli security officials regard the Islamic Movement as an emerging front for potential terrorist attacks against Jews, and about a dozen members have been arrested in recent weeks. But Friday night’s rally took on a relatively festive air, with music, food and prayer, and organizers tried to project an unusually conciliatory tone in several of the speeches.

Sheik Raed Salah, the hard-line leader of the Islamic Movement, condemned terrorism and violence--but in a way that reminded listeners of those killed by U.S. forces as well as those killed by suspected Arab terrorists. He lamented the “killing of innocent civilians--in Palestine, Iraq, America, anywhere in the world.” Palestinians and Israeli Arabs, who “feel the pain of the families of our martyrs,” can readily feel the pain of Americans, Salah said.

Salah also accused Israel of exploiting the blood and suffering of Americans to stoke the flames of a war against Islam.

That very fear--that the world’s major powers are about to launch retaliatory attacks on Islamic targets--was on the minds of many in the crowd.

“The world does not know what correct Islam is,” said Dr. Mohammed Simri, a family physician who brought his two sons, ages 5 and 6, to the rally. “The Jewish propaganda puts Islam as the enemy of all the world. The world will head toward the abyss if it continues this way. If the Western world continues to be against Islam . . . there will not be peace.”

Although governments and officials throughout the Arab and Muslim world have issued proclamations against Tuesday’s attacks in New York and Washington, many ordinary Palestinians and Muslims have reacted out of the anger they harbor toward the U.S. government and its staunch support for Israel. American policy essentially brought this disaster on the U.S., they say.

The theme of Friday’s rally--which was the sixth such annual event--was “Al Aqsa Is in Danger,” a reference to Muslims’ most important place of worship in Jerusalem and the third-holiest site in Islam. Muslims here are convinced that Jewish authorities want to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque and replace it with a synagogue. Al Aqsa is part of a compound that sits on the ruins of the biblical temples, Judaism’s holiest site.

The current Palestinian uprising against Israel erupted nearly a year ago after Ariel Sharon, then an opposition politician who is now prime minister, led a small army of police onto the compound.

Youths at the rally chanted, “With our blood we will redeem you, Al Aqsa!” An enormous banner portrayed the mosque along with a figure representing Saladin, the Muslim warrior who defeated the Crusaders. Women in head scarves and robes gave out copies of the Islamic sermon delivered when Saladin captured Jerusalem in 1187.

Some youths broke out with chants invoking an ancient battle when Muslims slaughtered Jews, and declared: “Muhammad’s army will return!” They were hushed by rally organizers.

Also on display were new T-shirts emblazoned with the pictures of three young Umm al Fahm residents killed by Israeli police in riots last fall. Those killings, on top of years of educational and employment discrimination, have greatly alienated Israel’s Arab citizenry. Israeli Arabs are Palestinians who remained in their villages after the founding of Israel in 1948, along with their descendants. They are Israeli citizens and make up about 18% of the nation’s population.

The Islamic Movement is a more radical faction of the Israeli Arab Islamic community; it split with more moderate elements in 1996. Israeli security officials claim that the Islamic Movement has harbored and inspired youths implicated in terrorist attacks in 1999 as well as incidents this year.

A man with off-and-on ties to the Islamic Movement was the first Israeli Arab to become a suicide bomber, killing himself and three Israeli Jews on Sunday in the northern town of Nahariya.

Salah said in an interview Friday that his group acts “within the law,” but he defended sympathies for the militant Islamic movement Hamas. And in an interview with a local Arabic-language newspaper, Salah refused to condemn the Nahariya suicide bomber, though he said such tactics were “not our way.”

In Gaza City, meanwhile, a Hamas official Friday also urged Muslims to unite against any U.S. retaliation for this week’s attacks.

“It is impossible for Muslims to stand handcuffed and blindfolded while other Muslims, their brothers, are being attacked,” Abdulaziz Rantisi told reporters. “I join the cause for Muslims to be united in order to deter the United States from launching war against Muslims in Afghanistan.”

Western news agencies reported that hundreds of Hamas supporters rallied in the Gaza Strip to demand more attacks on Israel. At the rally, pictures were brandished of Islamic militant Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Shaker Habashi, the Nahariya bomber. Palestinian police questioned Western journalists covering the rally and seized their videotapes and photos, Reuters and the Associated Press reported.