SEATTLE – A group of about 50 Iraqis who live in Everett gathered Tuesday in downtown Seattle’s Westlake Center to protest the U.S. government’s alliance with Saudi Arabia.
Holding signs accusing Saudi Arabia’s leaders of crimes against humanity, they urged voters to pressure legislators to hold the Middle Eastern kingdom accountable for the number of Saudi terrorists killing people in Iraq.
“We know the U.S. is a friend to Saudi Arabia, and something must be done about it,” said Adil al Rikabi, a man considered by many of the region’s Iraqis as their leader. “As Americans, as people who have their citizenship, we’re asking the government to make a decision about its alliance with Saudi Arabia.”
On a flier they handed out to passersby, they called Saudi Arabia “the essential supporter of terror.”
As men shouted slogans into a megaphone – “Stop killing the children! Stop Saudi Arabia!” – al Rikabi held up a cell phone to capture the words.
Everything was being broadcast live on a Baghdad radio station, he said.
U.S. military leaders recently released information about the number of Saudis involved in the insurgency in Iraq. Nearly half of all foreign fighters targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians are Saudis, according to those reports.
Last month, Saudi cleric Sheikh Saleh al Fozan said liberal Muslims are not real Muslims – an edict that jihadists can use as a call to kill all non-Muslims and Muslims who don’t adhere to strict Islamic teachings.
Saudi Arabia’s official religion is Wahhabism, a strict form of Islam that ostracizes all other faiths, including more mainstream Muslim sects.
Wahhabi clerics teach that anyone who does not follow their fundamentalist beliefs is an enemy of Islam.
Osama bin Laden is the scion of a wealthy Saudi family. And Saudi Arabians made up 15 of the 19 hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.
Thousands more civilians and soldiers have died in other al-Qaida-affiliated attacks, and in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Many Iraqis consider themselves to be “liberal Muslims,” and thus targets of Saudi Wahhabism, said Amer Maliki, one of the few Iraqis at the protest who were not from Everett. Maliki lives in Kent.
Local Iraqis say between 500 and 1,000 Iraqi refugees live in Snohomish County.
Most of those refugees came to the U.S. 10 or more years ago. They feared for their lives because of their opposition to Saddam Hussein’s regime, and settled temporarily in Saudi refugee camps.
It was there that Lafta al Ali said he experienced Saudi Arabia’s strict Islamic government. He said he was arrested for performing in a play, and would have been sent back to Iraq had the United States not given him asylum.
“They don’t have respect for humans there,” al Ali said.
On the drive to Tuesday’s protest, al Ali’s three teenage daughters used makeup pencils to write “I am Iraqi” on their 3-year-old brother Muhammed’s forehead. Al Ali tied an Iraqi flag to the front of his family’s Chevrolet van and secured an American flag to the back.
The family piled into the van and headed south on I-5 toward Seattle.
They’ve danced in downtown Everett’s streets to celebrate the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and had a barbecue when ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was executed.
But they never protested anything about the U.S. government, which they credit for saving their lives.
On Tuesday, that changed.
“Call your lawmakers and tell them to stop Saudi Arabia,” Iraqi men shouted into a megaphone.
Many pedestrians walked by the protesters without even glancing at them. A few stopped and applauded.
“I’m proud to help this country,” said Maliki, who has worked to train U.S. soldiers about Iraqi culture at Fort Lewis. “But I also want to help my own country. We had to do this.”
Reporter Krista J. Kapralos: 425-339-3422 or kkapralos@heraldnet.com.
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