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Top Muslim leader urges broader action against Islamist militants

A prominent Muslim cleric said on Wednesday the US-led coalition carrying out air strikes on Islamic State insurgents should widen its scope to include all other militant groups that were tarnishing Islam.

 

Islamic State, an offshoot of al Qaeda, has seized wide areas of Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate to try to revive theocratic rule that prevailed in the region more than 1,000 years ago.

 

"The international coalition must call on all its material and moral energies to eradicate this terrorism, in all its manifestations, doctrines and schools, and to confront the countries that support it," Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Sheikh of Al Azhar, told a conference on fighting extremism.

 

"If it does this, the coalition is defending its own people first, before the people of the east."

 


פרסום ראשון: 12.03.14, 15:10