One of the world’s top Muslim clerics urged the United Nations to defeat Islamic State (ISIS), warning that they pose a threat to the whole world, not just the Middle East.
The Cairo-based Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Mohamed Ahmed el-Tayeb, was speaking at Lambeth Palace alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury on Wednesday.
The Muslim cleric described ISIS as “a major terrorist organisation” for which all Arabs are paying the price. “All Arabs as well as the free world have to work together to defeat this organisation. If they [ISIS] are here now, they will be elsewhere in the whole world [in future].” But he said he preferred a political solution to a military one. He said the UN should “do its duty” and “impose peace” on areas controlled by ISIS.
The two leaders spoke after a dialogue session in which they pledged to demonstrate that their respective faiths teach love and peace, and to counter “the narrative of extremism and terrorism”.
Yesterday the imam was widely quoted accusing the West of being partly to blame for ISIS, saying it had an interest in the fragmentation of the Middle East. He has previously blamed the insecurity in the Middle East on world Zionism and the “new colonialism”.
Asked this morning about his comments he replied: “We all agree Israel is there, and there are problems that people suffer.”
He and Mr Welby agreed that much suffering today was caused by a rise in materialism and people being remote from God.
Dialogue between Al-Azhar, the seat of Sunni learning, and the office of the archbishop of Canterbury was initiated in 2002 by Archbishop George Carey in the wake of 9/11 to encourage learning and dialogue between Christians and Muslims.
Photo: Lambeth Palace
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