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Zarqawi backs killing civilians
IRAQ'S al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi says militants are justified under Islam in killing civilians as long as they are infidels, according to an audio tape attributed to him today."Islam does not differentiate between civilians and military (targets) but rather distinguishes between Muslims and infidels," said the man on the tape posted on the internet, who sounded like Zarqawi. "Muslim blood must be spared ... but it is permissible to spill infidel blood," the speaker said. The comments appeared a day after the Pentagon said it had obtained a letter to Zarqawi from al-Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, saying tactics being used such as bombing mosques and killing hostages might alienate the Muslim masses. "In this letter, he talks about believing that the eventual governance of Iraq must include the Muslim masses, and that they are at risk of alienating those," Pentagon spokesman Brian Whitman told reporters in Washington yesterday. Zarqawi's group has been fighting US forces and their Shi'ite allies who gained power after the 2003 US-led war ousted Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim. Osama bin Laden's Iraq-based ally has declared all-out war against the Shi'ites, saying they were heretics who allied themselves with the enemies of Islam to seize control of Iraq. Today's tape was posted on a website which usually carries statements and video tapes from al-Qaeda's wing in Iraq. The speaker said the concept of Jihad (holy struggle) was coming under distorting attacks by "the enemies of Islam" trying to portray it as a tool "for spreading bloodshed and destruction". "Many Muslims have been affected by this campaign and they began shying away from using this term (jihad) for fear of being accused of terrorism. They instead replaced it with the term resistance. "This has tarnished Jihad and its supporters and led to the inclusion of factions that have nothing to do with Jihad such as the rejectionist (Shi'ite) Hizbollah, Fatah movement and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine," he said, referring to the Lebanese and Palestinian guerrilla groups. "All this has been done under the pretext that whoever defends his country against the enemy and fights an occupier is involved in resistance. But Jihad is much deeper than that." Zarqawi's group has claimed responsibility for a series of killings, hostage beheadings and most major suicide bombings in Iraq, including the bombings of the UN headquarters in Baghdad and the Shi'ite Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf in 2003. Posted by: Floling Glurt6011 2005-10-07 |
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