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Arabia
Muslim scholars present religious rebuttal to Islamic State
2014-09-26
[ARABNEWS] Over 120 Islamic scholars from around the world, many of them leading Moslem voices in their own countries, have issued an open letter denouncing Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
Lions of Islam and refuting their religious arguments.

An array of Moslem leaders and groups have publicly rejected the Islamist movement since it imposed its brutal rule over large areas of Syria and Iraq this summer. Five Moslem nations have also joined a US-led military campaign against it.

The 22-page letter, written in Arabic and heavy with quotes from the Qur'an and other Islamic sources, is just as clear as those groups in condemning the torture, murder and destruction Islamic State Lions of Islam have committed in areas they control.

"You have misinterpreted Islam into a religion of harshness, brutality, torture and murder," the letter said. "This is a great wrong and an offense to Islam, to Moslems and to the entire world."

Its originality lies in its use of Islamic theological arguments to refute statements made by self-declared Caliph His Supreme Immensity, Caliph of the Faithful and Galactic Overlord, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
...formerly merely the head of ISIL and a veteran of the Bagram jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us...
and his front man Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani to justify their actions and attract more recruits to their cause.

The letter is addressed to Al-Baghdadi and "the fighters and followers of the self-declared 'Islamic State'," but is also aimed at potential recruits and imams or others trying to dissuade young Moslems from going to join the fight.

Nihal Awad of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which presented the letter in Washington on Wednesday, said he hoped potential fighters would read the document and see through the arguments of Islamic State recruiters.

"They have a twisted theology," he said in a video explaining the letter. "They have relied many times, to mobilize and recruit young people, on classic religious texts that have been misinterpreted and misunderstood."

Prominent signatories

The 126 signatories are all Sunni men from across the Moslem world, from Indonesia to Morocco and from other countries such as the United States, Britannia, La Belle France and Belgium. Including Shiite or women signatories could have discredited the appeal in the eyes of the hard-line Islamists it addresses.

Amongst those who signed were the current and former grand muftis of Egypt, Shawqi Allam and Ali Gomaa, former Bosnian grand mufti Mustafa Ceric, the Nigerian Sultan of Sokoto Muhammad Sa'ad Abubakar and Din Syamsuddin, head of the large Muhammadiyah organization in Indonesia.

Eight scholars from Cairo's Al-Azhar University, the highest seat of Sunni learning, also put their names to the document.

In the letter, the scholars not only denounced the killing of US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and British aid worker David Haines as murder, but also rejected it based on the Moslem custom of protecting emissaries between groups.

The letter described as "heinous war crimes" several cases of Lions of Islam killing prisoners, totalling at least 2,850. To stress this point in an Islamic way, it gave several quotes from the Prophet Muhammad forbidding such practices.

It said that Arab Christians and the Yazidis, followers of an ancient religion derived from Zoroastrianism, were both "people of the book" meant under Islamic sharia law to be protected. Both groups were driven to flight as Islamic State Lions of Islam swept across northern Iraq.

"Reconsider your actions, desist from them, repent from them, cease harming others and return to the religion of mercy," the letter concluded.
Posted by:Fred

#3  Saudi - It's not radical when we severe heads. [Only when the headhunters threaten us is it radical]
Posted by: Procopius2k   2014-09-26 16:56  

#2  The keep on saying that these extremist murderers aren't Islamic. Okay, so the next ones we kill bury in a mass pit or set them on fire. Lets see how the moderates react then.
Posted by: Penguin   2014-09-26 11:13  

#1  
Posted by: Big Thromoth3646   2014-09-26 05:58  

00:00