IMAN Chairman welcomes King Abdullah's statement on the message of 'True Islam'
Thursday, 7 August 2014
Saudi King Abdullah urges scholars to foil attempts to malign Islam
GULF NEWS
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz has urged all Muslim scholars to assume their duties and responsibilities towards God and foil attempts to malign Islam and present it as a religion of extremism, hatred and terrorism.
In an address to the Arab and Islamic nations and international community, King Abdullah said that scholars should be truthful in their statements and should not fear anyone in their drive to uphold the truth.
“Our nation is going through highly critical times, and history will be the witness against those who were the instruments and tools used by the enemy to disperse and tear up the nation and to distort the pure image of Islam,” King Abdullah said in his address, carried by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) on Friday.
The Saudi monarch, who has been ruling the kingdom since August 2005, said that fitnah — attempts to create schisms or exacerbate schisms within the community — had found a fertile ground in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
“Fitnah was facilitated by those who resent or hate our nation,” he said. “They believed that their attempts have been successful and they started to fill the world with terrorism and corruption. They kept on sliding further into wrongdoings. It is a real shame and a terrible disgrace that these terrorists are doing all these negative things in the name of Islam. They kill people whereas Islam has prohibited killing and they mutilate bodies. They proudly show off and diffuse their [horrible] actions in the name of Islam whereas Islam, the religion of purity, decency and humanity, has nothing whatsoever to do with that. Their actions, insolence and crimes have smeared Islam’s reputation,” he said.
Those who are not familiar with the genuine values of Islam today believe that the action of these “traitors” reflect the message of the Prophet of Mercy, Mohammad (PBUH), the Saudi monarch added.
“In addition to all this, we see the blood of our brothers in Palestine being spilled in mass massacres that did not spare anyone and in war crimes against humanity without any human or moral scruples,” he said.
Terrorism has now taken several forms at the level of states and organisations and has become more lethal, King Abdullah said.
“All this is happening under the eyes of the international community with all its institutions and organisations, including human rights groups. This international community has opted to lapse into silence and to merely observe the dramatic events unfolding in the region, without any compassion, as if the matter did not concern it. There is no excuse for such a silence and the international community does not seem to realise that the new generation, as a result, will believe only in violence and will reject peace. It will believe in the clash, and not the co-existence, of civilisations,” he said.
King Abdullah insisted on the significance of collective community action to fight terrorism.
“I do recall how ten years ago at a conference in Riyadh we called for establishing an international centre to fight terrorism. The proposal was endorsed by the international community at the time, but we were later disappointed by the lack of a serious response. The proposal upon which we had pinned high hopes never materialised the way we hoped it would be,” he said.
“Today, we say to all those who failed in the past or fail to shoulder their historical responsibilities against terrorism because of temporary interests or suspicious schemes, that they will be its first victims tomorrow. It will be as if they did not draw lessons from the recent events that did not spare anyone,” he said.
Chairman of IMAN, Ribal Al-Assad, welcomed King Abdullah's statement urging Muslim scholars to spread the message of 'True Islam'. He said:
"These are tumultuous times in the Middle East and beyond. Too much of today's violence carried out in the name of Islam has been incited by those in positions of trust and responsibility. The King's words are welcome, but they should only be the start. This is a time for action.
For a start, those who incite and encourage acts of extremism must be brought to justice.
Secondly, their means of communication must be cut - whether that may be websites or satellite TV stations committed to the dissemination of hatred and bile.
Thirdly, it is time to change the entire dialogue surrounding the catastrophic situation in the region.
We should all be worried about the serious problem of Islamic extremism, and the International Community must come together to tackle it. But we must also recognise that these extremists are only a minority and they do not represent Islam. So even as these extremists must be dealt with, the long-term future of the Middle East requires that the peaceful majority of Muslims are given a political voice. This currently persecuted majority, which believes in the true meaning of Islam as a religion of peace, and in liberal democratic values, is the key to a lasting peace not only in the MENA region but the whole free world.
These Muslims must be provided with a platform to express their own beliefs. King Abdullah's statement is a useful step in building such a platform, and the West has a major role to play in this process. It has far more resources than any of the states currently sponsoring extremism. It also has direct historical experience of gradually building democratic institutions, and the capacity to support Middle Eastern states to do the same.
Western countries should be investing in the grassroots of these societies to develop jobs and infrastructure, schools, universities, hospitals and factories and invest in ways that allow people to build a future for themselves.
This would cease the incessant flight from poverty, and wean young people away from the false promises of preachers of hate.
A better future for the people of the Middle East and North Africa will mean a better future for the rest of the world too, and we will all become measurably safer as a result.
I call on other influencers in the Middle East and beyond to condone the terrorist minority, promote the true essence of Islam in which it is a sin for one Muslim to kill another human, and, in the process, to help bring freedom, democracy and peace to the world."
