Arab reaction: Slaying linked to abuses

By Paul Wood BBC correspondent in Cairo

The Arab media and the "Arab street" are forthcoming with condemnation of the beheading of American captive Nick Berg in Iraq - but usually with equal stress for the view that this was a natural and expected reaction to US abuses in Iraqi jails.

In the United States, public and political opinion is now demanding that the Arab world should condemn the murder of Nick Berg just as strongly as it did the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American troops.

The video of Berg's killing was placed on an Arabic-language website

So when we asked people in Cairo about the gruesome beheading, one woman told us: "It is painful. This is not our culture. This is not our religion. This is not us. We shouldn't have done this."

But her friend quickly chimed in: "The Iraqis are frustrated people. They have been through hell. What about what we saw done to Arabs? We didn't start this. The Americans started this."

In Iraq itself, there was a similar mix of sentiments.

"I don't agree to this mutilation. This is forbidden in Islam. This is not Islam," one man in Baghdad told Reuters TV.

Another man disagreed: "This shows that the Iraqi's hate occupation and occupiers should leave Iraq as soon as possible."

'Revenge killing'

Headlines in Arab newspapers emphasise that this was a revenge killing.

And an opinion piece in the Saudi-owned al-Hayat newspaper asks: "What are foreigners doing in Iraq now? They have in every way taken part in the occupation."

[Berg's killers] are still a minority in Iraq. But the risk for the coalition is of a general uprising should their message win more followers US media eschews horror video

Presumably talking about western civilian workers, not just soldiers, the paper's columnist concludes: "As a result, they have become targets of the legal resistance operations."

That may have been written before the video's release last night, but most Arab newspapers certainly speak of "legal resistance" in Iraq.

Egypt's largest circulation broadsheet, al-Ahram, calls for a "united Arab stand to end the occupation".

Message to Muslims

That is what the men who killed Nick Berg are trying to achieve.

The most important part of their statement they read on the video tape is not the warning to "Bush, Dog of the West" that "we will send you coffin after coffin of men slaughtered in this way".

It is the appeal to Islamic scholars to stop wasting time in empty rhetoric and attending conferences, but instead to join the path of jihad and carry the sword.

"The dignity of the Muslims at Abu-Ghraib prison is worth the sacrifice of blood and souls."

These men - possibly linked to al-Qaeda - are still a minority in Iraq. But the risk for the coalition is of a general uprising should their message win more followers.

That will be the most important "Arab reaction" to this video - and we are still waiting to know its strength.