KENYAN MUSLIM YOUTH CLAIM US DECLARED WAR ON ISLAM

NAIROBI, (CWNews.com) - As Church leaders in Kenya continued to plead with the government to take a careful stand on the world war against terrorism, some Muslim youths in the country, calling themselves Friends of Al-aqsa, vowed on Sunday to back the Taliban.

The resolution came after an open discussion called by the youths in Nairobi on the US declaration of war against terrorism. Inviting all Muslims, the youths said they wanted to seek views whether the US declaration of war will in response lead to the Muslim world's first jihad of modern times. They also wanted to know whether Muslims, and in particular the Muslim youth, should react if war has been declared upon them.

The officials of the Muslim body, Hassan Omar and Alimin Kimathi, accused the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Pakistan of betraying Muslims by supporting the US. "The US might be using this opportunity to wage war on Muslims and Islam. This must be resisted," said Hassan.

They said that many Muslims in Kenya, as in other parts of the world, are interpreting the US declaration of war on terrorism as a camouflaged war against Islam. "It is a fact that the US and the Western nations have portrayed Islam as synonymous with terrorism. Indeed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Islam remains the only threat to the West," they claimed. "Islam remains the only ideological buffer to western domination, exploitation, all forms of injustices, and cultural decadence and perversion. It is for this reason that the US will take any opportunity to fight the religion of Allah."

Their claim is contravened by public statements from the Bush administration and other US officials that the terrorists guilty of the attacks in New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania on September 11 should be viewed separately from the religion they professed. The US government has repeatedly decried any attempt to lump terrorism in with the practice of the Islamic faith.

The group claimed that since the American ego had been punctured, the US government was under pressure to retaliate. "It is then logical to conclude that the US war on terrorism might as well be a camouflaged war on Muslims and Islam. An opportunity seized to weaken the capacity and instill suffering on selected Muslims nations, which are viewed as an opposition to the West and the US in specific," claimed the group.

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