KUALA LUMPUR, April 22 (IslamOnline.net) - Arabs, Asians and African Muslims living in Malaysia are feeling growing uneasiness at the U.S. occupation of Iraq coupled with its plans to set up a “puppet” regime there.

More than two weeks after the fall of Baghdad, which took many Muslims in South East Asia by surprise, there is a growing sense of despair and outrage at what has finally happened in Iraq.

Foreign students studying at the University Islam Antarabangsa (UIA) share the same fears that the U.S. is now too powerful and could bully any nations on earth.

"If it is a Christian country, it will hide its anti-Islamic agenda behind slogans and policies that will betray the Muslims in the end,” says Amin Josapov from Kazakhstan, a student at the UIA said on Tuesday, April 22.

The Malaysian Newspaper Malay Mail was the first in this region to give credence to reports that U.S. President George W. Bush administration has prepared groups of Christian misisionaries under the cover of aid agencies to attempt to Christianize the Muslims in Southern Iraq.

On Thursday, April 10, a day after the invasion of Baghdad by the U.S. marines, it carried a headline article saying the U.S. administration had an evil hidden agenda to convert Muslims in Iraq to Christianity.

“This showed that the U.S. is not really fighting for the liberation of Iraq or for the freedom of the Arab world from its oppressors, but is pushing for a “Christian” agenda in the Middle East,” said Abdullai, who is from Nigeria and is also enrolled at the UIA.

Another Arab student said she was dismayed by the appointment of retired U.S. general Jay Garner as the man who will run post-war Iraq, adding that it is rather a lengthy occupation of the Muslim country by the United States.

Others said that the U.S. is a big bully that kills civilians in order to outs a regime that did “nothing wrong” according to the United Nations.

A Malaysian woman said it was appalling how the local newspapers in Kuala Lumpur started to vilipend the Iraqi former President Saddam Hussein after the fall of Baghdad.

“Even our newspapers are dirty; they just publish anything and everything the U.S. media has to say against Saddam without even thinking of the impact this has on Malaysians,” said a teacher at a private school in Kuala Lumpur.

She added that the U.S. forces "must go home, as they had destroyed Iraq and it is pure hypocrisy that the Bush administration now wants to reconstruct Iraq."

“Its all about making money, its all about controlling the Arabs and the Muslims, it is purely anti-Islam and capitalistic,” adds another woman, who only gave her name as Kak Tun and who works in a beauty saloon in Ampang city.

In Jakarta, a non-governmental organization on environmental management maintained that the aggression of the U.S. and its allies against Iraq has damaged the International Law.

Third world countries are now forced to obey the law imposed by the superpower leading to double standards, the group said on Monday, April 21.

"The U.S. invasion of Iraq must be taken as a lesson for all third world countries to prepare themselves by increasing their national defense and establishing regional defense pacts, such as the East Asia Pact, ASEAN Pact and Arab Pact," Ilhamy Elias, chairman of the Center for the Indonesian Environmental Information and Management (PIPLI), said to Antara.

In the statement, Ilhamy said the U.S. was an aggressor as shown by what it had done to Vietnam, Afghanistan, Kosovo and now Iraq. And, "it will continue, Indonesia could be the next target," he said.

Therefore, "Indonesia must be aware, united, and alert," he added.