Muslim leader hails killings
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Muslim leader hails killings
| Wed, 09-08-2004 - 5:53pm |
A UK-based Islamic extremist movement said that last week's abduction of Russian children by Chechen terrorists should be repeated in Britain and US. Al-Muhajiroun spiritual leader Omar Bakri hailed last week's attack on a school in southern Russia in which close to 400 people, including many children, were killed (slaughtered), and said that holding women and children hostages would be reasonable for a Muslim who has suffered under British or American rule. Omar supports John Kerry for President. Source: Al JAZERA
Source Article: WorldNetDaily

From my email..
In the Name of God, the Compassionate the Merciful
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CAIR CONDEMNS SCHOOL KILLINGS IN RUSSIA
(WASHINGTON, D.C., 9/7/04) - The Council on American-Islamic Relations
(CAIR) today condemned the recent killing of more than 300 people,
including many children, at a school seized by terrorists in Beslan,
southern Russia.
In its statement, the Washington-based Islamic civil rights and
advocacy
group said:
"No words can describe the horror and grief generated by the deaths of
so
many innocent people at the hands of those who dishonor the cause they
espouse. We offer sincere condolences to the families of the victims
and
call for a swift resolution to the conflict in that troubled region
that
will let all people live in peace and freedom."
CAIR recently launched an online petition drive, called "Not in the
Name of
Islam," designed to disassociate Islam from the violent acts of a few
Muslims.
SEE: http://www.cair-net.org/asp/article.asp?id=169&page=AA
The "Not in the Name of Islam" petition states:
"We, the undersigned Muslims, wish to state clearly that those who
commit
acts of terror, murder and cruelty in the name of Islam are not only
destroying innocent lives, but are also betraying the values of the
faith
they claim to represent. No injustice done to Muslims can ever justify
the
massacre of innocent people, and no act of terror will ever serve the
cause
of Islam. We repudiate and dissociate ourselves from any Muslim group
or
individual who commits such brutal and un-Islamic acts. We refuse to
allow
our faith to be held hostage by the criminal actions of a tiny minority
acting outside the teachings of both the Quran and the Prophet
Muhammad,
peace be upon him."
CAIR, America's largest Islamic civil liberties group, has 28 regional
offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada.
- END -
CONTACT: Ibrahim Hooper, 202-488-8787 or 202-744-7726, E-Mail:
cair@cair-net.org; Rabiah Ahmed, 202-488-8787 or 202-439-1441, E-Mail:
rahmed@cair-net.org
NOTE: CAIR offers an e-mail list designed to be a window to the
American
Muslim community. Subscribers to the list, called CAIR-NET, receive
news
releases and other materials dealing with American Muslim positions on
issues of importance to our society.
To SUBSCRIBE to CAIR-NET, go to: http://cair.biglist.com/cair-net/
------------------------------------------------
CAIR
Council on American-Islamic Relations
453 New Jersey Avenue, S.E.
Washington, D.C. 20003
Tel: 202-488-8787, 202-744-7726
Fax: 202-488-0833
E-mail: cair@cair-net.org
URL: http://www.cair-net.org
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http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1297664,00.html
Muslim leaders condemn killers
David Smith
Sunday September 5, 2004
The Observer
Islamic leaders in the Middle East yesterday denounced the slaughter of children in Russia as 'unIslamic', as commentators asked unusually soul-searching questions about the region and terrorism.
Even the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's biggest Islamic group, condemned the bloody siege in Beslan. Its leader, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, said that kidnappings may be justified but killings are not. He added: 'What happened is not jihad because Islam obligates us to respect the souls of human beings; it is not about taking them away.'
While some Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East have long supported fellow Muslims fighting in Chechnya, such was the barbarity of the hostage takers that few voices spoke in support of the actions in Ossetia. Egypt's leading Muslim cleric, Grand Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, was quoted as saying during a Friday sermon: 'What is the guilt of those children? Why should they be responsible for your conflict with the government? You are taking Islam as a cover and it is a deceptive cover; those who carry out the kidnappings are criminals, not Muslims.'
Ali Abdullah, an Islamic scholar in Bahrain who follows the ultra-conservative Salafi stream of Islam, also condemned the school attack as 'unIslamic'. However, he insisted Muslims were not involved and revived an old conspiracy theory: 'I have no doubt that this is the work of the Israelis, who want to tarnish the image of Muslims.'
But the reaction was overwhelmingly filled with revulsion. Abdulrahman al-Rashed wrote an article in the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper under the headline: 'The Painful Truth: All World Terrorists are Muslims!'
Al-Rashed said that Muslims will not be able to cleanse their image unless 'we admit the scandalous facts... Our terrorist sons are an end-product of our corrupted culture. The picture is humiliating, painful and harsh for all of us.'
His extraordinary critique was echoed by Ahmed Bahgat, an Egyptian Islamist. Writing in the pro-government newspaper, Al-Ahram , he said hostage-takers in Russia and Iraq are only harming Islam. 'If all the enemies of Islam united and decided to harm it... they wouldn't have ruined and harmed its image as much as the sons of Islam have done by their stupidity, miscalculations and misunderstanding.' Horrifying images of the dead and wounded students 'showed Muslims as monsters who are fed by the blood of children and the pain of their families'.
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http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/terrorism/s_248166.html
Arabs condemn killings
By Los Angeles Times
Sunday, September 5, 2004
CAIRO, Egypt -- Expressions of shame and self-reproach swept the Arab world Saturday as Muslims mourned the deaths of Russian schoolchildren -- and voiced unusually critical condemnations of the social ills widely blamed here for breeding terrorism.
The Arab world has watched with mounting disgust in recent weeks as a wave of civilian hostages -- some of them Arabs and Muslims -- were slaughtered by masked insurgents in Iraq. Last week, newspapers and satellite channels were dominated by pictures of bloodied, naked children in southern Russia fleeing armed guerrillas suspected to be Islamic rebels. Many Arabs found themselves in an ever-more-common dilemma: struggling to reconcile their sympathy for a political cause with growing revulsion at the wrath leveled by self-described "holy warriors" against the innocent.
"What is the guilt of those children? Why should they be responsible for your conflict with the government?" Grand Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, Egypt's highest-ranking cleric, railed during Friday prayers in the Egyptian town of Benha. "You are taking Islam as a cover and it is a deceptive cover; those who carry out the kidnappings are criminals, not Muslims."
Tantawi's refrain was a familiar one among Muslims who've felt unfairly tarred by the swell of high-profile bloodbaths carried out by fellow believers: This wasn't Islam.
But yesterday, some prominent Arabs came forward with a more sobering interpretation: Corrupt, repressed Arab and Islamic societies have turned into breeding grounds for terrorism. It's a judgment often heard among Western critics, but rarely voiced in heavily censored Arab rhetoric.
"Most perpetrators of suicide operations in buses, schools and residential buildings around the world for the past 10 years have been Muslims," wrote Abdulrahman al Rashed, general manager of the popular Al-Arabiya television channel. In a blunt column in the pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, Rashed listed attacks carried out by Muslims in Iraq, Russia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
"Our terrorist sons are an end-product of our corrupted culture," he wrote. "The picture is humiliating, painful and harsh for all of us."
The guerrillas who seized the school in the town of Beslan on Wednesday and held more than 1,000 captives were believed to have been linked to Islamic rebels in the separatist republic of Chechnya. In the aftermath of Friday's shootout between troops and the militants, which left more than 300 people dead, Russian officials told reporters that 10 of the more than two dozen fighters were "Arabs," though the statement could not be immediately verified.
Chechnya has long figured prominently among the battles listed by radical Islamists of "jihads," or holy struggles. Like Palestinians, Iraqis and Kashmiris, the predominately Muslim Chechens are generally viewed sympathetically by the Arab world, and their plight is often pointed to as proof that Islam has come under fire around the world.
Virtually all Arab governments and Iran put aside any Chechen sympathies and condemned the hostage-taking and later carnage in Beslan. King Abdullah II of Jordan, who was visiting Putin in Russia last week, called the siege "criminal and cowardly."
The Saudi daily Arab News blasted Putin as "a servant of state dictatorship and control," a man who could not afford to lose his "tough-man image." But the editorial saved its harshest condemnation for the guerrillas, "who had put themselves in a position where no one would shed tears when the punishment came. They reached a new low when they chose toddlers as bargaining chips."
"The world sympathized with them. But no one believed that those deaths (of Chechens) in a war situation gave them the right to do what they did in Beslan," the editorial said. "If the Chechens had set out deliberately to shame and defeat a noble cause -- and there is no cause nobler than that of freedom -- they could not have done any better."
An editorial in Lebanon's Daily Star called for "better governance systems and socioeconomic opportunities in those countries and regions, including our Middle East, that seem to generate so many terrorists."
"Terror emanates largely from despair, hopelessness and humiliation," the editorial said. "And these are sentiments whose causes can be identified, tracked, grasped and addressed."