CAIRO, 22 March 2003 — Thousands of protesters spilled onto the streets of Arab capitals after Friday prayers at which preachers across the Middle East had condemned the United States for attacking Iraq. For a second day, demonstrations swept the Arab world against the US-led invasion intent on ousting Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
The biggest protests were in the Yemeni capital, where three demonstrators and a policeman were killed in clashes. Equally fiery rallies in support of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein were held in Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and in the West Bank.
In Cairo, the biggest city in the Arab world with almost 17 million people, at least 5,000 angry protesters clashed with police using water cannon outside the historic Al-Azhar Mosque. “With our heart and our soul, we sacrifice ourselves for Iraq,” chanted demonstrators outside Al-Azhar, and in the Palestinian cities of Gaza and Nablus.
Protesters set a truck alight which they said was spraying them with water as others called for “jihad” (holy struggle) against the US and British “infidels” and in support of the Iraqi people. In a rare statement, Egypt’s Interior Ministry appealed to citizens to vent their frustration in an orderly manner through previously authorized demonstrations.
In Jordan, thousands of protesters fought baton-wielding riot police after the authorities sealed off parts of the capital, Amman, to foil Islamist organized pro-Iraq protests. Scores of young people were injured and several arrested as police used tear gas to disperse worshippers after prayers in the teeming Wihdat area of the city, a predominately Palestinian refugee neighborhood.
Hundreds of people also took to the streets of the Jordanian capital, Amman, and the northern city of Irbid, after the weekly Friday prayers despite a government ban on unauthorized street rallies. The protests were relatively peaceful but minor scuffles broke out when club-toting riot police fired tear gas grenades to push back more than 1,000 demonstrators who tried to march on the Israeli embassy in the capital.
Police in the Lebanese capital Beirut used tear gas and water cannon to hold back hundreds of stone-throwing youths who tried to march toward the US mission. Hundreds of protesters in Bahrain, the headquarters of the US Fifth Fleet, also took to the streets to show their fury.
In many Middle Eastern cities, Muslim preachers fired up their congregations with powerful sermons denouncing the war. “Let God be with us (Muslims) against the infidels,” said one in Cairo’s downtown Gamaia El-Sharaia, asking God to punish the Americans. From non-Arab Iran in the east to Morocco in the West, preachers accused Washington of stealing the region’s resources and seeking global hegemony.
In Iran, which fought an eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s, Tehran’s Friday prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said the US “aim is to dominate Iraq’s oil wells and also to dominate the region, and give Israel the security and guarantee that nobody could harm it.” Worshipers at Tehran University cheered his sermon with ritual chants of “Death to America!”
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei denounced the US-led attack on neighboring Iraq as “Satanic” and called on Iranians to get ready for an economic and cultural war. Khamenei called for an “immediate” halt to the day-old war, in a message for the Iranian New Year.
At Gaza’s central Al-Omari mosque, Imam Mohammed Nijen said “Arab leaders should open the borders so that fighters and volunteers can reach Iraq and defend Iraqi soil. Today jihad and the fight are a religious duty.” The Grand Sheikh of Cairo’s Al-Azhar, Muhammad Saied Al-Tantawi said in his sermon: “Whoever defends the Iraqi people and himself and dies, will be considered a martyr... Islamic Shariah law says we must defend the Iraqi people and stand by them. If we fail, we have wasted the trust that God has placed in us.”
Thousands protested in the West Bank towns of Nablus, Tulkarm and Jenin. Some 200 people also demonstrated in Bethlehem. In occupied east Jerusalem Israeli police used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse some 300 Palestinians shouting their willingness to die for Saddam.
Palestinians also rallied in the refugee camps of Ain Hilweh in southern Lebanon, Yarmouk near Damascus and Wihdat in Amman. In Ain Hilweh, around 2,000 vented their anger on US President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. In Beirut, police used water cannon to stop students.
