Nearly 100 Muslim leaders issued a statement encouraging resistance to the U.S. stranglehold on the Shi’ite mosque in A-Najaf, Iraq as hundreds protested the siege on Monday, according to news reports.
The statement, issued in Cairo on Sunday by Egypt’s radical Muslim Brotherhood group, also referred to Palestinian resistance to Israeli violence. The leaders, originating in close to 30 countries including Germany, Bosnia, Indonesia and Pakistan, also called for democracy in the Muslim world through free elections.
Heavy fighting has taken place for several weeks at the Imam Ali shrine in A-Najaf between U.S. forces in Iraq and the Shi’ite militia of radical cleric Muqtada A-‘Sadr, who have been taking refuge in the mosque.
Malaysia’s prime minister, the head of the Organization of Islamic Conference, reportedly called on the U.N. to stop the fighting in A-Najaf on Monday. In Pakistan, several hundred people protested the U.S. takeover of Muslim oil and lands under the pretext of the war on terrorism and called for an end to U.S. attacks in A-Najaf, according to Al-Jazeera.
Malaysia and Pakistan are both staunch allies in the U.S.’s war on terrorism.