Anti-Western messages grow among Afghanistan’s imams

KABUL, (Reuters) – Enayatullah Balegh is a  professor at Kabul University and preaches on Fridays in the  largest mosque in central Kabul, where he advocates jihad, or  holy war, against foreigners who desecrate Islam.

After a fundamentalist U.S. pastor presided over the burning  of a copy of the Koran last month, there has been a growing  perception among ordinary people that many of the foreigners in  Afghanistan belong in just one category: the infidels.

“The international community and the American government is  responsible for this gravest insult to Muslims,” Balegh told  Reuters in the blue-and-white tiled Hazrat Ali mosque.

“I tell my students to wage jihad against all foreigners who  desecrate our religious values. We have had enough.”

Protests in Kabul against the Koran-burning have not become  violent but there are many other mullahs in the overcrowded  capital whose sermons are filled with criticism of the  foreigners fighting and working in Afghanistan.

In Kabul’s northwest, firebrand Habibullah Asaam warns his  congregation that all contact with non-Muslims is dangerous.

“The Jews and crusaders can never be friends of Muslims,  they are the despoilers of our society and culture,” he said  during Friday sermons. Worshippers cried “Allahu Akbar” — God  is greatest — in response.

“Those who want them here are cowardly Muslims. Women avoid  wearing veils, men chase fashion and show off, it’s all because  of the foreigners,” he said.

With few Dari or Pashto-speaking foreigners in the country,  the messages broadcast from mosques by loudspeakers often pass  unnoticed by the people they are condemning.

But the extent and impact of anti-Western sentiment was  brought into stark relief last week when a protest in normally  peaceful Mazar-i-Sharif city in the north ended with the  frenzied killing of seven foreign U.N. workers.