Muslim clerics angry at pilot’s killing

Muslim clerics widely denounced Islamist militants in Syria over the burning to death of a Jordanian pilot, saying such a form of killing was considered an abomination under Islam, no matter the justification.

Islamic State militants released a video on Tuesday appearing to show captured pilot Mouath al-Kasaesbeh being burnt alive in a cage.

Egypt’s top Muslim authority, the 1,000-year-old Al-Azhar university revered by Sunni Muslims around the world, issued a statement expressing “deep anger over the lowly terrorist act” by what it called a “Satanic, terrorist” group.

The Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayeb, said the killers themselves deserved to be “killed, crucified or to have their limbs amputated”.

In Qatar, the International Association of Muslim Scholars, headed by prominent cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi and linked to the Muslim Brotherhood that has influence across the region, called the burning of Kasaesbeh a criminal act.

“The Association asserts that this extremist organisation does not represent Islam in any way and its actions always harm Islam,” it said.

Islamic State posted a religious edict on Twitter, which ruled it is permissible in Islam to burn an infidel to death. However, senior clerics across the Islamic world argued inflicting death by fire was always banned under Islam.

“The Prophet, peace be upon him, advised against burning people with fire,” Sheikh Hussein bin Shu’ayb, head of the religious affairs department in southern Yemen, told Reuters in Aden.

Saudi cleric Salman al-Odah wrote on Twitter: “Burning is an abominable crime rejected by Islamic law regardless of its causes.”

“It is rejected whether it falls on an individual or a group or a people. Only God tortures by fire,” he added.

Even clerics sympathetic to the jihadist cause said the act of burning a man alive and filming the killing would damage Islamic State.