IMAN Chairman condemns destruction of Syrian shrine by Islamist militants
Miércoles, 26 Marzo 2014
The shrine was completely destroyed
Islamists bomb Shi'ite shrine in eastern Syria
REUTERS
Islamist fighters from an al Qaeda splinter group bombed a large Shi'ite Muslim shrine in the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa on Wednesday, activists said.
The mosque of Ammar bin Yassir and Oweis al-Qarni was once a destination for Shi'ite Muslim pilgrims from Iran, Lebanon and Iraq before it was taken over a year ago by Sunni rebels battling to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.
One photo posted on Twitter on Wednesday under the heading "the pagan Iranian shrine" showed extensive damage to the exterior walls and roof of the site, a turquoise and white complex of domes and minarets centred around a tiled courtyard.
Another picture showed concrete and twisted metal strewn on the street outside the mosque - built under Assad's rule with support from Shi'ite Iran - while another showed an interior wall that had collapsed inward.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said the al Qaeda splinter group Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) had set off two powerful explosions at the mosque early on Wednesday.
Many fighters from ISIL and other radical Sunni Islamist groups in Syria deem Shi'ites as infidels and consider their shrines idolatrous, and therefore legitimate targets.
Their attacks have stirred fears in neighbouring Turkey that the Islamists' next target will be the tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the Ottoman Empire, which lies on the Euphrates river inside Syria but is guarded by Turkish special forces.
Ankara regards the tomb as sovereign Turkish territory under a treaty signed with France in 1921, when Syria was under French rule, and threatened earlier this month to retaliate for any attack on the mausoleum.
President Abdullah Gul said on Sunday Turkey would defend the site in the same way it would defend any Turkish land. "However the motherland is protected, that place will be protected in the same way," he said.
Condemning the destruction, Ribal Al-Assad, Chairman of the IMAN Foundation said:
"I am very sorry to hear of this recent bombing by Islamist extremist rebels; these sectarian actions serve no one, the spectrum of cultural vandalism perpetrated during this conflict is heartbreaking.
These Islamist extremists have no regard for human life, places of worship or sites of historic significance - they will kill anyone and destroy anything which doesn't conform to their perverted ideology.
Their only aim is to establish an Islamic Caliphate State under Sharia law and this must not be allowed to happen.
The International Community has to come together, condemn these atrocities and the terrible destructions of Syria's cultural heritage. Together we must rid Syria, the region and the world of Islamic extremism.
Every day more of Syria's colourful history is lost to the conflict by heinous individuals satisfying their perverted extremist ideology.
All Muslims share the same holy book of Quran and division in Islam is a sin; there is simply no justification for sectarian conflict.
I call on all of Syria's different cultures, faiths, sects and ethnicities to unite against these acts before Syria's rich heritage is reduced to rubble."
