DUBAI, July 24: The world’s Muslims were urged on Sunday to unite against terrorists after the bombings in Egypt’s top tourist resort, roundly condemned in the Arab press as barbaric attacks that do nothing to serve their cause.

Most of the 88 people killed when bombers unleashed carnage in the popular Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh were Egyptian Muslims, with some nine foreigners reported among the dead.

“The deadly bomb blasts in Sharm el-Sheikh are another despicable act of faithless and cowardly people,” charged the English-language Jordan Times.

The attacks were claimed in an Internet statement by an Al Qaeda-linked group which said it was a response to “the global evil powers which are spilling the blood of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Chechnya.”

But Jordan’s independent newspaper Al Ghad said: “Killing innocent people in Sharm el-Sheikh will not contribute to the liberation of Palestine, and the killing of innocent Iraqis will not accelerate the American withdrawal.”

Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, a Lebanese authority in Shia Islam, published a fatwa, saying: “We forbid barbaric acts against innocents who have nothing to do with the political demands of terrorists.”

“These are not martyr operations but barbaric suicide attacks and the culprits deserve only God’s punishment,” he said, urging the world’s Muslims to take a united stand against terrorism.

Egypt’s independent daily Al-Masri Al Yom called for a war against “Islamist Salafist ideas,” referring to the conservative school of Sunni Islam prevalent in Saudi Arabia more commonly known as Wahhabism.

“It is impossible to face down the globalisation of terrorism without eradicating the ideology on which it rests,” said a front-page editorial.

Under the provocative headline “Don’t wage war against terrorists”, the article argued that “the perpetrators of the heinous Sharm el-Sheikh bombings, just like all of us, are victims of the Salafi ideology.”

“We all deserve what happened in Sharm el-Sheikh because we remained silent when the Wahhabi school of thought started creeping into Egypt,” it said.

Thousands of Egyptians went to the Gulf during the oil boom years of the 1970s, many returning as wealthy citizens and with Saudi’s conservative way of thinking.

The Gulf press also denounced the attacks, which added to global terror fears after the strikes on London’s underground system and buses on July 7 that left 56 people dead including the bombers.

“This is terrorism and we are the victims. The murderer is one. He carries a black passport and a black ideology, and victims carry one nationality — peaceful innocent people who suddenly found themselves a fuel for evil plots,” Kuwait’s Al-Rai Al-Aam wrote.

The Al-Ittihad newspaper in the United Arab Emirates challenged those who sought to find excuses for such attacks.

“More than half of the victims were Egyptian Muslims, with some Arabs and very few foreigners, so who was specifically targeted and what issues are they (the bombers) defending?” the Abu Dhabi-based daily said.

“Religious institutions in the Islamic world should move swiftly to rebut the lies and dispel the darkness and ignorance that control the mentality of the culprits.”

The Saudi Gazette said the bombers were aiming to disrupt Egypt’s first contested presidential election in September and wreak havoc in the economy of the most populous country in the Arab world.

“The purpose of these terrorist attacks is fairly evident. Egypt is preparing to hold its first multi-candidate presidential elections in September,” the English-language daily said.

“Disrupting the Egyptian economy is obviously one way of fomenting unrest among those already on the financial margins,” it added.

Jordan’s independent Al-Arab Al-Yom said the attacks reflected a war pitting US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair against top terrorist Osama bin Laden and his top Iraq front man Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

“It is a war between mad people and ghosts,” it said.—AFP