Muslim scholars are outraged about the Islamic State’s brutality and perversion of Islam, calling it savagery, deviant and heretical. Sunni and Shiite alike have joined forces against this outrage. “ISIS fighters have exhibited repulsive savagery and cruelty. Even as they butcher Shiite Muslims and Christians in their effort to touch off a broader ethnic and sectarian conflict, they pursue a calculated strategy of killing fellow Sunni Muslims to gain and hold territory. The beheading of an American journalist, James Foley, has shocked the conscience of the world.”
John F. Kerry affirmed in his article, “What we are confronting is nothing less than a violent extremist enterprise. It has employed violence, intimidation, and genocidal brutality to impose its will across large swaths of Syria and Iraq. The Islamic State controls more territory than Al Qaeda ever has, which means it has access to money on an unprecedented scale to finance its mayhem.”
The three-day conference, organised by the Muslim World League group of non-government organisations, is being attended by senior clerics from across the Muslim world to discuss how Islam can combat extremism. The head of Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam’s most prestigious seat of learning, has called for education reform in Muslim countries in an effort to contain the spread of religious extremism. Speaking at counter-terrorism forum in the Saudi holy city of Mecca, Al-Azhar grand imam Ahmed al-Tayeb linked extremism to “bad interpretations of the Koran and the sunna”, the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH). “There has been a historical accumulation of excessive trends” that have led some people to embrace a misguided form of Islam, he told the gathering. “The only hope for the Muslim nation to recover unity is to tackle in our schools and universities this tendency to accuse Muslims of being unbelievers,” he continued.
Tayeb’s comments come days after he expressed outrage at the Islamic State group (IS) for burning to death a captured Jordanian pilot who took part in US-led air strikes against the jihadists in Syria. On 4 February, after ISIS released a video showing Maaz al-Kassasbeh dying in a cage engulfed in flames, Tayeb said the jihadists deserved to be killed or crucified.
Tayeb blamed unrest in the region on a conspiracy by what he called “new global colonialism allied to world Zionism”. He said that this plot has exploited “confessional tension” in conflict-hit Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Libya.
The opening day of the conference also heard a speech from Saudi King Salman who called for “an efficient strategy to combat terrorism”. The monarch’s speech, read by the governor of Mecca, said, “Terrorism is a scourge which is the product of extremist ideology … It is a threat to our Muslim nation and to the entire world.”
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria seek to impose their warped beliefs at the point of a gun. In other words, it rules at the barrel of a gun and the blade of a knife, and that’s the only language its adherents seem to understand. They murder innocent individuals into frenzy, without feeling an iota of mercy. Their religious stereotypes are anathema to sound reason and Islamic sharia. The Islamic State’s fundamental ideology and spurious claims are considered heresy by Islamic clergy.
After all, it is a great pleasure to see that the difference between real Muslims and the perverted ones are clear for the world. As a result, it is remembered vividly when U.S. President Barack Obama gave a speech in Cairo few years back asserting as, “I know, too, that Islam has always been a part of America’s story. The first nation to recognize my country was Morocco. In signing the Treaty of Tripoli in 1796, our second President John Adams wrote, “The United States has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Muslims.” And since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, served in government, stood for civil rights, started businesses, taught at our Universities, excelled in our sports arenas, won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch. And when the first Muslim-American was recently elected to Congress, he took the oath to defend our Constitution using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers - Thomas Jefferson - kept in his personal library.
So I have known Islam on three continents before coming to the region where it was first revealed. That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”
Obama’s statements are agreed upon strongly and there is no propinquity between Islamic preach and ISIS’s practices. The Islamic State has besmirched Islam via their oppression and barbarity. Terrorists, the ISIS in particular, are like cancer in Middle East and have to be liquidated so as to prevent the society from the pathetic state of moribund.
Obama’s words still stand and he said on Thursday, “Muslim communities, including scholars and clerics, therefore have a responsibility to push back, not just on twisted interpretations of Islam, but also on the lie that we are somehow engaged in a clash of civilization; that America and the West are somehow at war with Islam or seek to suppress Muslims.” He added, “The notion that the West is at war with Islam is an ugly lie…. We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with people who have perverted Islam.”