That would be siding with the occupier. But the Muslim Scholars’ Association doesn’t seem to have noticed all of Al-Qaeda’s Islamic heresies — you know, the ones that every Western non-Muslim TV talking head knows all about. “We reject their ideas,” says Al-Dhari, but that is not quite the same thing as saying that they’ve betrayed or “hijacked” Islam. Indeed, if he really thought they have done so, it’s doubtful he’d be urging cooperation with them. From AFP (thanks to Twostellas):
BAGHDAD (AFP) – Leading Iraqi Sunni cleric Harith al-Dhari has urged Iraqis not to join US forces in fighting al-Qaeda, arguing that by doing so they are siding with the occupier.
“A decision to stand beside the occupying enemy in order to achieve a wish to stay in Iraq under the pretext of destroying al-Qaeda is neither accepted legally nor on patriotic or rational grounds,” said Dhari, head of the influential Muslim Scholars’ Association.
“We do not accept the acts of al-Qaeda,” Dhari said in an interview with Qatari-based television channel al-Jazeera posted Tuesday on the website of the Muslim Scholars’ Association, Iraq’s main Sunni clerics’ organisation.
“We reject their ideas but al-Qaeda remains part of us and we are part of it. Ninety per cent of al-Qaeda members are now Iraqis,” he added. “We can talk to them. We can reform them.” Dhari is living in exile in Amman.