Hellfire awaits the bombers, says Saudi Arabia’s top Muslim cleric. Why? Because they killed Muslims. When he can say the same thing about the murder of non-Muslims, we’ll be getting somewhere. From AP:
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – Those responsible for Saudi Arabia’s latest suicide attack will be “burned in hell,” the kingdom’s top cleric said Thursday, as investigators searched for clues to the deadly bombing.
Five people, including two senior police officers and an 11-year-old girl, were killed along with the suicide bomber in Wednesday’s attack on the administrative building of the General Security, the Interior Ministry said. It said 148 people were injured.
A shadowy Islamic extremist group, the purportedly al-Qaida inspired al-Haramin Brigades, released a statement on at least two Islamic Web sites claiming responsibility for the attack. The authenticity of the statement could not be verified.
Grand Mufti Abdul-Aziz al-Sheik, the kingdom’s highest religious authority, condemned the attack “as one of the greatest sins.”
“God revealed the criminality of this wayward group, which harms Islam and the nation,” he said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.
“Whoever kills an (Islamic) believer on purpose will be punished by being burned in hell, punished by God’s anger and will be cursed and suffer great pain.”
He was probably quoting the Qur’an, Sura 4:93: “If a man kills a believer intentionally, his recompense is Hell.” The Qur’an contains no explicit statement to the effect that the same punishment awaits unbelievers, and in fact Islamic law mandates a less severe punishment for the killing of an unbeliever than for the killing of a believer.