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Rateb Rabie, director of the Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation in Silver Springs, Maryland, a group that raises support from American churches, says that assessment matches his experience. "We are getting messages of sadness and condolences from our people in the Holy Land," he says.

But monitors of Palestinian media point out that Muslim clerics have published fatwas, or edicts, ordering suicide bombings and declaring bombers to be martyrs. On Wednesday, Israeli Sephardi Chief Rabbi Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron called on "leaders of the Arab world who are condemning this terrible tragedy" in the U.S. to cancel the edict. "Whoever calls a suicide bomber a martyr is an accessory to the horrible crime, because that is the spiritual infrastructure for the perpetrators of these crimes," the rabbi said in a statement.

Greg Livingstone, an adjunct professor at Fuller Seminary in California and former general director of Frontiers, an evangelical mission to Muslims, fears that Tuesday's attacks are only the beginning. "The offense [that Muslims perceive] is so deep that I think this is going to just grow," he says. "I think there will be a constant wave of Islamic martyrs. And it isn't about converting us to Islam; it's about, in their minds, justice."

Bob Klamser of Crisis Consulting International in Ventura, California, quickly issued an advisory Tuesday morning to the global Christian community he serves. He believes the New York and Washington attacks may inspire copycats from other terrorist groups. "One of the favorite targets of terrorism has been struck a real hard blow and has been wounded, and other groups will want to exploit that situation," he says.

Awad says he met with Christian leaders in the Bethlehem area on Wednesday to discuss the possible fallout from the attacks on the U.S. "The major fear is that the U.S. might go into a mode of isolationism and there would be less concern and interest in the Middle East, especially if it is found out that Islamic groups were behind these attacks," he says.

Authorities in Massachusetts have identified five Arab men as suspects in the attack on New York City, the Boston Herald newspaper reported Wednesday morning. News reports Tuesday cited Pentagon officials who pointed to Osama bin Ladin, a Saudi millionaire blamed by the U.S. for the deadly 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In 1998, a group launched by Bin Ladin called the International Islamic Front to Fight Jews and Christians issued a fatwa calling on Muslims to attack U.S. facilities.

Awad says the Bethlehem-area Christian leaders don't have a plan of action yet in response to this week's events. "But we want to show that the Palestinian people are very upset about what happened and regret the fact that loss of life and destruction of that scale has taken place," he says. "And we are hoping that the American public will realize that the Palestinians do not want to hurt Americans, but it has been the policy of the United States that has caused people to react in such a way."

U.S. groups such as the Muslim Public Affairs Council (mpac) have been criticized by Jewish organizations and others for similar statements that seem to justify Palestinian terrorism. In 1999, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt withdrew his nomination of mpac Director Salam Al-Marayati to the National Commission on Terrorism, a congressional advisory body, after complaints from Jewish groups. Al-Marayati has said Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has caused some Palestinians to commit violence to express their suffering. He insists, however, that he has condemned terrorism "any time it has shown its ugly intent."

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September (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45