“You have misinterpreted Islam into a religion of harshness, brutality, torture and murder. This is a great wrong and an offense to Islam, to Muslims and to the entire world.”
These words were contained in a 22-page letter, signed by over 120 Islamic scholars across the world, denouncing the Islamic State Militants In Syria, Iraq.
The array of Muslim leaders and groups publicly rejected the Islamist movement since it imposed its brutal rule over large areas of Syria and Iraq. Five Muslim nations have also joined a US-led military campaign against it.
The 22-page letter, written in Arabic, quoting heavily from the Qur’an and other Islamic sources, is just as clear as those groups in condemning the torture, murder and destruction which Islamic State militants have committed in areas they control.
The 126 signatories to the letter are all Sunni men from across the Muslim world: Indonesia, Morocco and other countries such as the United States, Britain, France and Belgium.
Amongst those who signed the letter 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 Muslim custom of protecting emissaries between groups.
The letter described as “heinous war crimes” several cases of militants killing prisoners, totalling at least 2,850.
To stress this point in an Islamic way, it gave several quotes from Prophet Muhammad forbidding such practices and 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.
The scholars concluded in the letter by saying: “Reconsider your actions, desist from them, repent from them, cease harming others and return to the religion of mercy.”
You can download the letter here
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