So how come these prominent Muslims who support suicide bombings:
Message 17344914
In Interview, Arafat's Wife Praises Suicide Bombings
WASHINGTON, April 14 — Before Yasir Arafat condemned "terror against civilians" on Saturday, his wife, Suha al-Taweel Arafat, told an Arabic-language magazine that she endorsed suicide attacks as legitimate resistance against Israeli occupation.
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Two of Egypt's most senior government-appointed religious scholars have endorsed suicide attacks.
Sheik Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, the top scholar of Al Azhar University in Cairo, said on Friday that all Israelis — men, women and children — were "forces of occupation," according to a translation of the statement by the Middle East Media Research Institute, a translation service in Washington that opposes the militants. Therefore, the sheik said, "martyrdom operations" were the "highest form of jihad operations."
According to the institute's translation, the sheik added that suicide attacks were "an Islamic commandment until the people of Palestine regain their land and cause the cruel Israeli aggression to retreat."
Today he amended those remarks to advise that no Muslim blow himself up "in the midst of children or women, but among aggressors, among soldiers."
At an inter-faith conference in Alexandria only a few weeks ago he urged tolerance and cooperation among Muslims, Christians and Jews.
The sheik's comments on suicide attacks were seconded by another of Egypt's most senior Islamic voices — Dr. Ahmad Al Tayyeb, the newly appointed mufti, Egypt's highest religious jurist.
Sheik Tayyeb, who once avoided discussing suicide bombings, declared that, "the solution to the Israeli terror" lies in a proliferation of suicide attacks "that strike horror into the hearts of the enemies of Allah." according to the research institute. "The Islamic countries, peoples and rulers alike, must support these martyrdom attacks." |
