INTERESTING NEWS ON THE ZARQAWI FRONT
TKS
jim geraghty reporting
I was about to announce, "Attention, Muslims. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi doesn't care if he kills you or not, and claims it's justified by Islam anyway" — but it looks like the message has already been heard:
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Many Arab Muslims on Thursday dismissed the religious justification for killing innocents given by al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, saying it was not the Islam they knew and any resistance had rules to protect civilians.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi defended the killing of innocent Muslims in suicide bombings against U.S. forces in a message on a Web site. He said Muslim scholars permitted such conduct for the sake of jihad, or holy war.
"This is a deviant notion and Zarqawi, with all due respect, is not an expert on Islamic jurisprudence. His views are illegitimate," said Saudi Islamic researcher Youssef al-Dayni.
"These people killed in Iraq are innocent and his description of them as martyrs is of no benefit. He is only trying to find justifications for his terrorism," said Bahraini Shi'ite Muslim cleric Sheikh Ali Salman...
"It's his opinion not ours. How can he kill a Muslim and say his is protecting Islam? It's a sectarian fight or a civil war in Iraq. It is not jihad," said 40-year-old Khaled Mohsen, waiting at a barber shop in downtown Cairo.
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It's an odd time for a "my killing of innocents is morally justified" rant from Zarqawi. But maybe the pressure is getting to him:
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Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was injured and almost captured during a recent U.S. offensive near the Iraqi-Syrian border, according to Iraqi security officials.
Al-Zarqawi was not badly wounded, and he managed to escape during the weeklong U.S. siege of the town of Qaim, said two senior security officials who spoke by phone from Iraq and asked not to be named. The officials said their information is based on interrogations of insurgents captured in the area...
U.S. intelligence officials say they have heard reports about al-Zarqawi being injured, but they have been unable to confirm them.
"We don't rule it out," said a U.S. official familiar with the CIA's reporting on the issue. "The guy is racing around and is in harm's way, so you can't rule out the possibility ... It's hard to corroborate when the guy is a ghost running around out there somewhere. We try to track him as best we can."
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