JEDDAH, 7 February 2003 — Western expatriates have welcomed an edict issued by the Kingdom’s Council of Muslim Scholars forbidding attacks anywhere in the world on non-Muslims, who the edict said should not be randomly judged as “infidels”.

The edict comes in the wake of advice given to Westerners by many embassies here to prepare for a swift exit should the US go to war against Iraq in the next few months, as is widely predicted.

Although there have been no reports of expatriates preparing to leave, dinner parties in residential compounds are buzzing with rumors about how Westerners may be vulnerable to random attacks by disgruntled radicals who are against the war.

“The council declares that... what is happening in some countries from the shedding of innocent blood and the bombing of buildings and ships and the destruction of public and private installations is a criminal act and against Islam,” Al-Riyadh daily said, quoting the statement by the council, which interprets Islamic laws in the Kingdom.

“Those who carry out such acts have deviant beliefs and misleading ideologies and are responsible for their crime... Islam and Muslims should not be held accountable for their actions,” the statement added.

There are more than 100,000 Western expatriates in the Kingdom, including an estimated 30,000 Britons and 40,000 Americans. Those numbers are much smaller than was the case during the 1991 Gulf War.

While attacks against Westerners here are rare, and a recent bombing campaign has been blamed by the authorities on alcohol smuggling gangs, there have been a number of isolated incidents since Sept. 11 clearly related to anti-Western sentiment.

More recently, attacks against American citizens have taken place in neighboring Kuwait, which announced this week that its northern territories will become a military zone as of Feb. 15.

According to expatriates in Saudi Arabia who spoke to Arab News yesterday, the prospect of living here during a US-led war against Iraq is not causing them to panic.

However, there is clear evidence that American expatriates in particular are changing their social routine.

“I feel safe, but I no longer go out except to do shopping in the Diplomatic Quarter where I live,” said Dr. Stephen Shroeder, the American director of the Prince Salman Social Disability Research Center in Riyadh. “Many of my American friends were surprised to see that some of their Arab colleagues viewed the crash of the Columbia with the Israeli astronaut on board as punishment from God.”

“The edict is good because it informs expatriates about the real nature of Islam,” said David Conrad, a sales manager in Jeddah. “I hope that its contents are discussed and accepted by Muslims everywhere in the world, especially where expats may be vulnerable if war breaks out with Iraq.”

The Eastern Province has witnessed periodic attacks against Westerners. A parcel bomb exploded in 2000 in a hospital in Alkhobar, killing a British doctor. An American was injured in an explosion in a compound in 2001. And in the same year, an explosion in King Khaled Street killed an American.

Expats there say that they hope the new edict will help make such attacks a thing of the past.

American Dick Wasner, who works at a petrochemical company in Jubail, said that “suicide attacks elsewhere, and attacks on Westerners here, will hopefully decrease as a result of the edict. We feel safer on hearing this news.”

German Werner Grehardt, a consultant in a national company in Alkhobar, said that the edict should go some way to “closing the gap between Muslims and non-Muslims.”