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Makkah Imam Takes US to Task on Iraq

JEDDAH, 10 April 2004 — The imam at the Grand Mosque in Makkah yesterday lambasted the United States and its allies in Iraq for double-speak.

“Although they claim they are the advocates of reform and freedom, they are in fact the forces of destruction and devastation,” Sheikh Saud Al-Shuraim said in an apparent reference to the US-led occupation forces in Iraq.

Delivering his Friday sermon to thousands of faithful who packed the large mosque complex, the imam asked how missiles and machine guns could bring peace and freedom to the people of Palestine and Iraq. “They promise them a comfortable life built on torn bodies...They want us to believe that destruction is reform, killing is life, disorder is order and injustice is justice,” he added.

The imam slammed the United States also for using its veto against UN Security Council resolutions condemning Israel’s occupation of Palestine, contrasting the international outcry over the killing of four security contractors in Fallujah with the relative silence meeting Israeli actions in the occupied territories.

“How can they consider the killing of four individuals a major crime and ignore the killing of a whole nation?” Shuraim, one of the imams at the Grand Mosque, asked.

The imam said the Islamic world was passing through a difficult phase. “The Muslim nation finds no refuge from the injustice of the tyrant and international terrorism,” he said.

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