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Riyadh: A prominent Saudi cleric said on Friday US policies in the Arab world fuelled terrorism and expressed unease at remarks by President George W Bush.
In rare criticism of the kingdom's chief ally, Shaikh Saleh Bin Humaid told worshippers at a holy shrine in Makkah: "The [Muslim] nation hopes... the 'war on terrorism' motto has not paved the way for a rise in terrorism and acceptance of it."
"The violence and terrorism in the region is the outcome of wrong policies by some superpowers which have a wrong view about Islam, deliberately or otherwise, and craft wrong plans and programmes that lead to deeper hatred and injustice and rising violence and give ammunition to extremists and terrorists."
In a sermon carried by the official Saudi Press Agency, Bin Humaid also said Islam should not be associated with fascism.
Bush said on August 11 that a militants' plot foiled by Britain to blow up US-bound aircraft was a stark reminder the United States was "at war with fascists".
Detention centres
Bush and other administration officials have used variations of the term 'Islamo-fascism' on several occasions to describe groups, including Al Qaida and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The Saudi government has said fascism is a product of Western culture and has nothing to do with Islam.
"If the religion... of anyone who carries out an act of terrorism is to be labelled fascism then what should be the case with Zionist occupiers [of Arab land]... and what would be the case of prisons and detention centres, secret and overt, in several parts of he world...," Bin Humaid said.
A United Nations body has said it has credible reports that the United States has secret detention centres for terrorism suspects and has asked Washington to close them.
Bin Humaid said the resistance of Hezbollah and the Palestinians to Israel showed the Arab world was moving away from a 'culture of defeat' to a mood of greater self-confidence.
"We are now, with God's will, witnessing a new dawn that implants self-confidence in the [Muslim] nation ... so that it relies on its unity, its people and wise policies rather than on international organisations and resolutions," he said.
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