RIYADH, 5 December — A prominent Saudi scholar has condemned “attacks on innocent people,” the SPA news agency reported yesterday.
“Any attack on innocent people is unlawful and contrary to Shariah,” the agency quoted Muhammad ibn Abdullah Al-Subail, member of the Council of Senior Islamic Scholars, as saying.
“Muslims must safeguard the lives, honor and property of non-Muslims who are under their protection and with whom they have concluded peace agreements. Attacking them contradicts Shariah,” said Al-Subail, who is also an imam of the Grand Mosque of Makkah.
Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, head of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, has also condemned “all attacks on civilians.”
Both statements followed a string of bomb attacks by the Palestinians against the Israelis on Saturday and Sunday.
Tantawi said on Monday that Shariah “rejects all attempts on human life, and in the name of Shariah we condemn all attacks on civilians, whatever the community or state responsible for such an attack.”
This earned him a sharp rebuke from a leading Qatar-based scholar, Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradawi, who said yesterday that “Israeli society was completely military in its make-up and did not include any civilians”.
“How can the head of Al-Azhar incriminate mujahedeen who fight against aggressors? How can he consider these aggressors as innocent civilians?” asked Qaradawi.
“Has fighting colonizers become a criminal and terrorist act for some sheikhs?”
“I am astonished that some sheikhs deliver religious rulings that betray the mujahedeen, instead of supporting them and urging them to sacrifice and martyrdom,” the Egyptian-born Qaradawi said.
