| ABC News | - |
The
immolation of a Jordanian pilot by the Islamic State group has brought a
unified outcry Friday from top religious clerics across the Muslim
world - including a prominent jihadi preacher - who insisted the
militants have gone too far.
In Unison, Muslim Clerics Lash out Against Islamic State
The immolation of a Jordanian pilot by the Islamic State group has
brought a unified outcry Friday from top religious clerics across the
Muslim world — including a prominent jihadi preacher — who insisted the
militants have gone too far.
Abu Mohammed al-Maqdesi, considered a spiritual mentor for many al-Qaida
militants, said the killing of Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh is "not
acceptable in any religion." He spoke in an interview with Jordan's Roya
TV a day after being released from more than three months in detention.
At Friday prayers in neighboring Iraq,
where the militant group has seized territory in a third of the
country, top Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani declared in a sermon
that the "savage" act demonstrates the extremists know no boundaries
and violate "Islamic values and humanity."
Religious groups, often at odds with one another over ideologies or
politics, are increasingly speaking out in unison against the militants,
who continue to enforce their rule in Iraq and Syria through massacres,
kidnapping, forced marriages, stonings and other acts of brutality.
Iranian Shiite cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Emami Kashani claimed in his
sermon that militant groups like the Islamic State are created by
Western nations as a means for promoting "an ugly picture of Islam."
Earlier this week, Islamic State militants released a video of
al-Kaseasbeh, a Muslim, being burned to death in a cage. While the
beheading of hostages from the U.S., Britain and Japan brought
condemnation from most religious sects within Islam, the gruesome images
of the airman's slaying served as a unifying battle-cry for Muslims
across the world.
Jordan joined a U.S.-led military coalition against the militants in
September, but said it would intensify its airstrikes in response to the
killing of its air force pilot. On Thursday, dozens of fighter jets
struck Islamic State weapons depots and training sites, Jordan's
military said.
Outrage escalated in the capital of Amman following Friday prayers, with
demonstrators unfurling a large Jordanian flag and holding up banners
supporting King Abdullah II's pledge for a tough military response to
avenge al-Kaseasbeh's death.
"We all stand united with the Hashemite leadership in facing terrorism," one banner read.
It is unusual to see such a unified response from religious
institutions, because moderate camps often represent drastically
different views to those of hard-line minority groups. The recent
attacks on journalists at the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo,
for instance, brought a range of responses in the Muslim world, with
many condemning the death of innocent people but disagreeing on whether
the publication crossed the line in its caricatures of the Prophet
Muhammad.
The Sept. 11 attacks in the United States spurred a hint of celebration
and praise from anti-American radical groups, including al-Qaida, the
group behind the hijackings, but condemnation from moderate Islamic
factions. Now, even al-Qaida has grown more outspoken against the
Islamic State group, which originally was an al-Qaida offshoot in Iraq.
That criticism has left the IS extremists in an increasingly isolated
position.
Even clerics aligned with the Islamic State group are said to be
speaking out against the pilot's killing. Rami Abdurrahman, who heads
the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said extremists
dismissed one of its religious officials in Aleppo province after he
objected to how the Jordanian pilot was put to death.
The religious official, a Saudi cleric known as Abu Musab al-Jazrawi,
said during a meeting that such killings contradict the teachings of the
Prophet Muhammad, Abdurrahman said. Other clerics in the meeting in the
northern town of Bab began a verbal attack against the Saudi cleric,
who was later sacked and referred to a religious court, he said. The
incident could not be confirmed independently.
Many Facebook users in Bosnia posted pictures Friday of the Jordanian
king in his military uniform, hailing his pledge to take a "severe
response" for the pilot's death. The head of Bosnia's Islamic community,
Husein Kavazovic, denounced the militant group, saying "there is no
'but' in condemning those crimes." At least 150 Bosnians have reportedly
joined the Islamic State group, and Kavazovic called on his government
to strip them of their citizenship.
Al-Maqdesi criticized the militants for declaring a caliphate, or an
Islamic state, last year in the areas under their control. Al-Maqdesi
said such a state run according to Islamic law is meant to unite
Muslims, but the extremists have been divisive.
Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayeb, head of the world's most prestigious seat of
Sunni Islam learning, Cairo's Al-Azhar Mosque, said earlier this week
that the IS militants deserve the Quranic punishment of death,
crucifixion or chopping off their arms for being enemies of God and the
Prophet Muhammad.
"Islam prohibits the taking of an innocent life," al-Tayeb said. By
burning the pilot to death, he added, the militants violated Islam's
prohibition on the immolation or mutilation of bodies — even during
wartime.
Iraq's top Sunni mufti, Sheik Mahdi al-Sumaidaie, said the crime against
al-Kaseasbeh is "unprecedented," adding that "the Prophet Muhammad said
that only God can punish with fire."
Pakistani Sunni cleric Munir Ahmed, in his sermon in Islamabad, also
dismissed any theological basis for the crime, saying the "gruesome"
death of the Jordanian pilot "is the most horrible act of cruelty." It's
a punishment that "Allah has kept for its own authority and no human is
authorized to do it," Ahmed said.
———
Associated Press writers Mohammed Daraghmeh and Karin Laub in Amman, Jordan; Bassem Mroue in Beirut; Ahmed Sami in Baghdad;
Nasser Karimi in Tehran; Aida Cerkez in Sarajevo; Zarar Khan in
Islamabad; and Maggie Michael and Hamza Hendawi in Cairo contributed to
this report.
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