The International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) has released a condemnation of the mass killings at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. . According to the statement:
June 15, 2016 Sheikh Ali Qara Daghi -General Secretary of IUMS -condemns the killing of 49 people and wounding 53 in the attack that targeted then in Orlando, Florida in the United States by an American citizen of Afghani origin, called Omar Matin, considering the attack a terrorist and a criminal, and telling that Islam and Muslims are innocent of such incidents, where Islamic law forbids the indiscriminate killing of innocent human beings.
Sheikh Qara Daghi also denounces Donald Trump’s announcements – the US presidential candidate from the Republican Party – against Muslims in general in an hostile and racist image that is not accepted by any person in the world, by accusing the followers of the religion fully and work to tighten on them in their lives, and travels because of the deviation of one of these religion followers, without missing that terrorism has no religion or homeland, no nationality and is found in the entire world and in the followers of different religions or sects or schools of thought.
Sheikh Qara Daghi also condemned the wave of terrorism that afflict the whole world in America, France, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, and other countries of the world, whether by individuals or organizations, or even despotic regimes, which emphasizes the importance of a global will to confront terrorism and its root causes and not to deal with the symptoms only, or unfortunately trying to employ political or settlement or expansionist purposes over the expense of the general human values.”
This IUMS “condemnation” sets a new bar for equivocations, justifications, rationalizations and the like; so much so that the GMBDW will this time refrain from from attempting to parse the statement, preferring to let readers decide for themselves how sincere the IUMS and its leaders are about the killings.
The International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) was launched on July 11, 2004 in conjunction with a visit by Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi to London for a meeting of the European Council for Fatwa and Research. Qaradawi is the IUMS President while many prominent individuals tied to the Global Muslim Brotherhood and/or Hamas serve as IUMS. In 2006, Qaradawi made his views on homosexuality clear during an interview on Al Jazeera TV:
Interviewer: How should a homosexual or a lesbian be punished? We mentioned the story of the people of Sodom and how Allah punished them, but how should someone who commits this abomination be punished today?
Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: The same punishment as any sexual pervert – the same as the fornicator.
[…]
The schools of thought disagree about the punishment. Some say they should be punished like fornicators, and then we distinguish between married and unmarried men, and between married and unmarried women. Some say both should be punished the same way. Some say we should throw them from a high place, like God did with the people of Sodom. Some say we should burn them, and so on. There is disagreement.
[…]
The important thing is to treat this act as a crime.