JAKARTA (Reuters) - The U.S. vow that war against terrorism is not war against Islam may have fallen on deaf ears as cries of jihad, or holy war, resound across the Muslim world. (Read photo caption below)
The accompanying threat to strike Afghanistan in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, risks triggering a violent backlash among the world's billion Muslims.
``If they act without clear evidence and outside the U.N., then the danger is that this will be seen as a war against Islam,'' said Emad Gad, a political analyst at the Cairo-based al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
``It's a kind of arrogance of power. They say you are either with us or against us...''
Some Islamic leaders say the planned U.S. retaliation over the attacks is nothing more than an undisguised crusade against Muslims. President Bush's call for a crusade against evildoers revived for some images of Christian crusades against Islam.
``They've created an atmosphere of hatred toward Muslims because they need to search for a victim, any victim...,'' said respected Lebanon-based Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah.
``We find that the Muslims are exposed to an American attack in the name of a coalition 'war on terrorism' that has no credible basis,'' said the leading Shi'ite and former Hizbollah spiritual adviser.
ISLAMIC SUPPORT CRUCIAL
Islamic support is important to American success for several reasons: Afghanistan is surrounded mainly by Islamic countries; it broadens the coalition behind the United States and it brings with it some of the world's biggest countries.
``The United States should know that without Islamic support, the obstacles will be dangerous,'' said Saudi Arabia's Arabic language al-Riyadh newspaper in an editorial. ``The United States should be aware of how entwined its position and interests are with the Islamic world in times of war and peace.''
As moderates seek to reassure their followers Washington is not on an anti-Muslim crusade, hard-liners from Europe to the Middle East to Asia are readying for a fight.
In the world's largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, young men denouncing U.S. aggression are signing up to go to Afghanistan to fight a jihad while others hunt for American citizens.
Calls for jihad if the United States strikes are echoing around the Islamic world, including the Middle East, Malaysia and Pakistan, where four people died in anti-U.S. protests over the weekend.
Bin Laden has described the dead Pakistani protesters as ''the first martyrs in the battle of Islam of this age.''
MODERATES MAY JOIN RADICALS
However, Indian Islamic scholar and head of the powerful Muslim Personal Law Board Kalbe Sadiq said Muslims could not support Afghanistan's ruling Taliban if they were proved guilty.
Analysts say while extremists are a tiny fraction of the Islamic world, a long and bloody U.S. campaign with heavy civilian casualties, and any failure by Washington to reassess its own foreign policies, may swing some moderates behind them.
Saudi social anthropologist Mai Yamani said she was worried about the fallout from any American military reprisals.
Resentment at U.S. actions in the Middle East, especially its support for Israel and the sanctions against Iraq, is the common thread linking the most moderate Muslims to the most radical.
Islam varies dramatically in geography and teaching, from its softer face in the vast Southeast Asian archipelago of Indonesia, built on animist and even Hindu beginnings, to the Taliban's own ultra-strict interpretation in Afghanistan.
But as the world waits for any U.S. strike, Afghani-American writer Mir Tamim Ansary warns a devastating conflict between Islam and the West is, in fact, bin Laden's ultimate aim.
PHOTO CAPTION:
The European Commission, seeking to blunt criticism of its support for U.S. military action against Islamic terrorists, told Asian nations Monday that any retaliation would be directed at ``fanatical terrorists'' _ not against Islam or Muslim nations. European Union delegates, from left, Spain's Javier Solana, the EU's security and foreign policy chief, Foreign Minister Louis Michel of Belgium, which holds the rotating EU presidency, and Spain's Foreign Minister Josep Pique, listen to Pakistan's Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz, unseen, during a meeting at the Finance Ministry in Islamabad, Pakistan, Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2001. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong)