Primarily because they kill Muslims. To his credit, however, al-Barqawi also condemns the abduction of relief workers, which would include non-Muslims. To this Zarqawi could respond from Islamic tradition: Mawardi in al-Akham as-Sultaniyyah (4.2) allows for the killing of women and children who are perceived as aiding the war effort against the Muslims (cf. ‘Umdat al-Salik o9.10) — in other words, non-combatants. This is the justification the abductors have at their disposal. From AFP, with thanks to the Constantinopolitan Irredentist:
AMMAN: The former mentor of Iraq’s most wanted man Abu Musab al-Zarqawi bitterly criticised the deadly attacks against civilians and other Muslims in Iraq claimed by his one-time protege.
“I warned in the past against actions which kill dozens of innocents from among the Iraqi people,” Abu Mohamad al-Maqdissi, a Jordanian of Palestinian origin, told Al-Ghad newspaper in an interview yesterday, adding he has “no links” with such acts.
Maqdissi, whose real name is Issam al-Barqawi, was released from Jordanian custody last week, six months after he was acquitted of plotting attacks against the US embassy and other targets due to a lack of evidence.
An Islamist ideologue who heads a Salafist Sunni Muslim conservative movement, the Palestinian-born Maqdissi initially met Zarqawi in Pakistan in 1991.
The pair were arrested in Jordan in 1994 for membership in an outlawed Islamic group, Al-Tawhid, jailed and then released as part of a general amnesty in 1999.
But during their detention the Jordanian-born Zarqawi became a champion of Maqdissi’s teachings about the jihad – a word that both means the struggle to improve oneself in the eyes of God and holy war.
Violence that fails “to differentiate between women and children, civilians, soldiers and American forces” and which targets “Shia mosques, churches and holy places in general” is wrong, Maqdissi told Al-Ghad.
“In our opinion such action, in Iraq or in any other Muslim country, distorts the image of the blessed jihad. Jihadists should not aim their wars and their explosives at Muslims,” he said.
“Operations such as the abductions and killings of relief workers and neutral journalists … have defaced the image of the jihad and are portraying its followers as killers who don’t care about bloodshed,” he added.