Kuwaiti Islamic groups go on defensive

Liberal groups say government leniency is to blame for rise of extremism in oil-rich emirate.

By Omar Hasan - KUWAIT CITY

Islamic groups in Kuwait have gone on the defensive as liberals step up calls for a clampdown on fundamentalists in the wake of deadly gunbattles between security forces and Islamist militants.

Mainstream Sunni Muslim groups moved swiftly to distance themselves from the violence that has rocked the normally peaceful oil-rich emirate after the first gunfights broke out on January 10, killing two police officers.

Leading Islamic figures, groups, organizations and charities have since issued statements condemning the militants and declaring their total backing to the government's iron-fist policy to stamp terror.

They also held public rallies and lectures focused on the need for "national unity" in order to confront fundamentalism which they said was "alien" to Kuwait and its people.

"We meet today to prove on the ground that we all stand united against all terrorists and those who believe in violence," Islamist MP Nasser al-Sane told a public rally late Tuesday.

"The group that carried out those incidents has no roots in Kuwait. They are alien to the Kuwaiti people," Khaled Sultan al-Issa, head of the fundamentalist Islamic Salaf Alliance, said during the rally.

Security forces over the past month fought four bloody gunbattles in three weeks with Islamist gunmen linked to Al-Qaeda network and Saudi militants, killing eight of them and capturing 14 others.

Islamic groups, which form the largest single bloc in the 50-seat parliament with 13 MPs, have however been directly accused by liberals of breeding extremism and creating an environment conducive to the spread of terrorism.

Liberal groups, reduced to a small minority in parliament after the 2003 elections, have also accused government of turning a blind eye and failing to curb extremism.

The liberals have accused the government of forming an alleged alliance with Islamist groups directed against them.

In a statement on Wednesday, the three main liberal groups - the Democratic Forum, National Democratic Movement and National Democratic Alliance - said government leniency was to blame for the rise of extremism in Kuwait.

"A lenient policy by successive governments and its educational, security and religious agencies has helped the growth of an extremist tide and a cancerous spread of religious groups and societies," said the statement.

Former oil minister Ali al-Baghli, a liberal, wrote in Al-Qabas on Wednesday that "it is not enough to cut the tail of the snake because it will grow another."

"What is needed is to cut off the snake's head, namely the masters of terror and all those who propagate for terror in mosques and the media," he said.

In an open letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah, former education minister and leading liberal activist Ahmed al-Rubei called for the questioning of political groups which harbour hardline ideology.

"We want to know which political group is harbouring this ideology ... We want to know from where they raised all these funds that helped them to arm," Rubei said in the letter published in Al-Qabas.

The head of a Kuwaiti women's association, Sheikha al-Nisef, warned at a public rally earlier this week that the emirate could "slide into civil war", if the government fails to take action against Islamic groups.

Islamists however charge that liberals are trying to capitalise on the bloodshed. "Liberal writers are instigating and pouring fuel on the fire rather than cooling things down," Islamist MP Daifallah Buramia said