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'Terrorism is not Islam'
08/07/2005 14:14 - (SA)
Riyadh - Saudi Arabia's grand mufti on Friday strongly condemned the deadly blasts that rocked London and are believed to be the work of al-Qaeda, saying Islam strictly prohibits the slaughter of innocent people.
The explosions that ripped through central London's transport system on Thursday, "targeting peaceable people, are not condoned by Islam, and are indeed prohibited by our religion," Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency.
"Attributing to Islam acts of individual or collective killings, bombings, destruction of properties and the terrorising of peaceable people is unfair, because they are alien to the religion," said Sheikh, who heads the Council of Senior Ulema, Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority.
At least 50 people were killed and more than 700 injured in the string of rush-hour explosions, which British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said bore the hallmarks of the al-Qaeda terror network of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Thursday also blamed the bombings on Islamic radicals, giving credence to an unverified claim of responsibility by a previously unknown group claiming links with al-Qaeda, but said the attackers represented a minority.
The group, calling itself the Organisation of al-Qaeda Jihad in Europe, claimed the attacks and threatened similar strikes on Italy and other US allies with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It said the attacks were "in response to the massacres carried out by Britain in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Blair said: "We know that these people act in the name of Islam. But we also know that the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims here and abroad are decent and law-abiding people who abhor those who do this every bit as much as we do."
Sheikh said "respectable Muslim scholars" had stated that such outrages bear no relation to Islam. He urged fellow clerics to "repeat this and make it clear so that those who strayed from God's right path heed (their directives) and the world realises that these crimes bear no relation to God's religion."
Saudi Arabia itself has been hit by a wave of violence attributed to suspected al-Qaeda militants since May 2003.
The kingdom has joined the global chorus of condemnation of the London carnage, urging the world community to step up the fight against terror.
In a separate statement, Sheikh similarly condemned the abduction and murder of Egypt's top diplomat in Iraq, which was also claimed on Thursday by the group of al-Qaeda's frontman in that country, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
- AFP
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