Associated Press  -- Arab News

POMONA, Calif., 11 April 2004 — Muslim Americans are growing increasingly alarmed by the escalating violence in Iraq, and said the bloody fighting has overshadowed the happiness they felt on the first anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

Disappointment and outrage at the violence in Iraq was matched at the Ahlul Beyt Mosque in Pomona on Friday by anger at the Bush administration’s policies.

The US military “did a good job occupying Iraq. They did a poor job occupying the heart of the Iraqi people,” said Basam Al-Hussaini, who came to the United States from Iraq in 1982.

Widespread fighting across Iraq raised the toll of US troops killed there this week to 46. The fighting has killed more than 460 Iraqis. At least 647 US soldiers have died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003.

Al-Hussaini and others gathered at the mosque — which caters to Iraqi-Americans, most of them Shiite Muslims — blamed the United States for the rise of Shiite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, a young, anti-US cleric.

“This guy gained power for no reason,” said Al-Hussaini, a mechanical engineer from San Dimas.

“What we see today — the bloodshed, the war, the clashes — this is a result of the mismanagement of this administration,” said Sayed Moustafa Al-Qazwini, an imam at the Islamic Educational Center of Orange County. He said Al-Sadr should have been incorporated into the Iraqi governing council, not declared an outlaw. “What gave prominence to him was not his personal merits...but the way Americans dealt with him,” he said.

During Friday prayers in Pomona, imam Ridha Hajjar criticized the violence in Iraq and the American response to it.

“Bombing, planes, rockets — it’s not the right way,” he said. “You don’t face wrong with massive use of force. And look what happened — the people turned on them.”

Abbas Al-Jidui, a dentist from Corona, returned Tuesday from a 10-day vacation in Iraq. It was the first time he had been back in the country since he left in 1992, and he said he was devastated to see the ruined neighborhoods and lack of infrastructure.

“It’s a disaster. It’s like an earthquake hit,” Al-Jidui said. “I had a picture in my mind from when I left. The picture now is completely different. I forgot where I am.”

He said he was worried about the safety of his wife and five children, who range in age from 3 months to 13 years, and who are in the country for another few weeks.

“You can smell death everywhere. There’s no security, there’s gunfire.”

Worshippers at a Long Island mosque signed a petition to President Bush condemning military actions at mosques and urging the president to “bring home our boys and girls.”

A mosque compound in Fallujah was hit with a US missile and bomb during heavy fighting this week. US military officials have said resistance fighters were using the mosque as a base of operations, making it a legitimate target under international rules of armed engagement.

Copies of the petition — written Thursday by Ghazi Khankan, regional director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations — will be circulated at 150 other mosques in the New York City area.

At the Islamic Center of America in northwest Detroit, Imam Hassan Qazwini said millions in Iraq and around the world were happy to see the collapse of the regime of Saddam Hussein. But he added that the situation there hasn’t improved and “the coalition forces are moving from one mistake to another.”

“There’s no justification for killing women and innocent children, there is no justification for attacking mosques,” he said.