Metro Detroit Shia, Sunni Muslim Leaders Denounce ISIL
Members of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) are "crazy criminals who are abusing our religion," said Imam Mohammed Elahi of the Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights. "You're a bunch of gangsters ... you're not Islamic."
Organized by imams with the Michigan Muslim Community Council, the speakers included both Shia and Sunni leaders of different ethnicities and races, all united in saying ISIL doesn't speak for them.
"The beheading of James Foley ... is a clear violation of the holy Quran and the teachings of Prophet Mohammed [PBUH]," said Imam Mustapha Elturk, who cochairs along with Elahi the Imams Council of the Michigan Muslim Community Council. "ISIL neither represents Islam nor Muslims."
Monday's event was the third anti-ISIL rally in Dearborn this summer that was organized by local Muslims. Two rallies organized by Shia leaders were held in Dearborn in June that condemned ISIL. Hundreds attended both rallies.
About 50 attended Monday's rally, which included remarks by local imams, Osama Siblani, publisher of Arab American News in Dearborn, Dawud Walid, director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and Steve Spreitzer, president and CEO of the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion.
"They are the enemies of humanity," Siblani said of ISIL.
Siblani and Elahi asked the U.S. to stop supporting Syrian opposition groups such as ISIL. Elahi also criticized Israel's actions in Gaza.
"ISIL is a terrorist group," said Imam Ali Ali, religious leader of the Muslim Community of Western Suburbs, a Canton mosque. "They don't speak in the name of Islam, in the name of Muslims, in the name of humanity."
One cleric in Dearborn, Ahmad Jebril, has become the most popular religious leader online for ISIL fighters from the West, according to a British think-tank. But leaders at Monday's rally were squarely united against ISISL.
"They have an evil agenda not witnessed since Nazi Germany," Ahmad Nasser of Livonia said of ISIL. "They are repulsive."
Source: Lansing State Journal
