Iraq Prime Minister expresses regret over Fatwas

Iraq Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki expressed some regrest over the issuance of fatwas – Islamic ruling – calling for Jihad in Syria.
In a speech given on Monday at an official ceremony in the capital, Baghdad, the Premiere keenly noted that recent demonstrations in Turkey only proved that the people sought to end any form of foreign political interventionism.

He attributed the unrest to a popular outcry to end all meddling into other countries’ affairs.

The PM strongly warned against any form of radicalization in the Syrian conflict, pointing out that clerics’ calls for Jihad against President Bashar al-Assad is deplorable in the sense that it calling Muslims to fight Muslims when all parties should be working at finding a political solution.

On Thursday, dozens of Islamic religious scholars, mostly from the Gulf, gathered in Cairo to study plans to call for an international appeal for jihad in Syria. On June 4, Al-Arabiya, a Saudi-financed television channel that is usually liberal, hosted conservative leader Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi, who is based in Doha, Qatar, to urge support for jihad against Hezbollah forces who are fighting alongside Assad’s forces in Syria.

On Friday, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Sheikh Saudi Al-Shoreym, issued a rare appeal to Muslims to provide help “by all means” to Syrian rebels and civilians trapped in the Syria conflict. Popular Saudi Sheikh Mohammed Al-Erify used his guest sermon in a central mosque in Cairo, Egypt to appeal to thousands of worshipers to back groups fighting the Assad regime and urged his audience to enlist in jihad.

PM al-Maliki insisted that a military radicalization in Syria would only lead to further instability in the region and would continue to spill well beyond its borders.