Brutality of pilot’s slaying saddens, enrages Muslims
CAIRO — The horrific fate of a captured Jordanian pilot, burned to death by the Islamic State extremist group, unleashed a wave of grief and rage on Wednesday across the Middle East, a region long riven by upheavals and violence.
Political and religious leaders united in anger and condemnation, saying the slaying of the airman goes against Islam’s teachings.
The militant video of the last moments in the life of 26-year-old Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, whose F-16 crashed in Syria in December during a U.S.-led coalition raid on the extremist group, crossed a line, some said — even beyond the beheadings of Western hostages at the hands of Islamic State extremists.
In Syria, the government denounced the group that has been fighting it for months, but so did al-Qaida fighters who oppose both the government and the Islamic State. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Egyptian government for once agreed on something: the barbarity of the militant group for the way it killed the Jordanian.
From the world’s most prestigious seat of Sunni Islam learning, Cairo’s AlAzhar Mosque, Grand Imam
Ahmed al-Tayeb said the militants deserve the Koranic punishment of death, crucifixion or the chopping off of hands and legs for being enemies of God and the Prophet Muhammad.
“Islam prohibits the taking of an innocent life,” al-Tayeb said. By burning the pilot to death, he added, the militants violated Islam’s prohibition on the immolation or mutilation of bodies — even during wartime.
In Saudi Arabia, prominent cleric Sheik Salman al-Oudah cited on Wednesday a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, which reserves for God alone the right to punish by fire.
In Qatar, cleric Youssef al-Qaradawi — respected by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists — issued a five-page statement listing Koranic verses and sayings, also attributed to the Prophet and telling Muslims to not mistreat prisoners of war.
But al-Qaradawi tempered his admonishment of the immolation death of the Jordanian pilot by criticizing the international community’s “laxity” toward Syrian President Bashar Assad, saying such an attitude “created these extremist groups and provided them with a fertile environment.”
In Algeria, cleric El-Hadi Shalaby noted that the majority of Islamic State group’s victims have been Muslims, both Sunnis and Shiites.
“What hurts me as a Muslim is that they do all this in the name of Islam,” he said. “The Muslim faith is utterly foreign to these practices.”
However, some sought to justify the Islamic State’s killing of the pilot.
Hussein Bin Mahmoud, an Islamic State-linked theologian, claimed on one of the group’s social media forums that two of the Prophet Muhammad’s revered successors ordered punishment by fire for renegades shortly after the Prophet’s death. Al-Azhar has long disputed this claim.
Bin Mahmoud also cited a Koranic verse that requires Muslims to punish their enemies in kind. Since U.S.-led airstrikes “burn” Muslims, he argued, the militants must burn those behind the raids.
But mainstream Muslims and U.S.-allied Gulf Arab nations united in condemnation of the killing Wednesday.
United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan reaffirmed his nation’s commitment to fighting terrorism and extremism. “This heinous and obscene act represents a brutal escalation by the terrorist group, whose evil objectives have become apparent,” he said.
The United Arab Emirates is one of the most visible Arab members in the U.S.-led coalition battling the Islamic State group, which also includes Jordan.
Bahrain, a Persian Gulf state that is home to the U.S. 5th Fleet, denounced the killing as “despicable,” while Kuwait’s emir, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, blasted the killing as “criminal” and “vicious.”
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry also condemned the “criminal act.” The tiny but very rich Persian Gulf nation hosts the regional command center coordinating coalition airstrikes.
Turkey, Iran and Tunisia also said the pilot’s killing violated the codes of Islam.
In his native Jordan, the killing of al-Kaseasbeh — who had been the subject of intense negotiations over a possible swap for an al-Qaida prisoner on death row — drew swift retribution.
The prisoner, Sajida al-Rishawi, an Iraqi woman convicted of involvement in a triple hotel bombing in Amman in 2005, was executed at dawn Wednesday. She was hanged alongside another prisoner on death row, Ziad al-Karbouly, a former top commander of al-Qaida in Iraq, the precursor group to the Islamic State.
Jordanian politician Mohammed al-Rousan wept openly on national television as he described watching al-Kaseasbeh’s death, saying even people accustomed to violence could not bear to see a man burned alive.
Then, his tears turned to rage.
“Let’s use the same methods as them!” he shouted during the interview with Lebanon’s al-Mayadeen TV. “Let’s kill their children! Let’s kill their women!”
DEATH UNITES JORDANIANS
While the militants’ video, with its vows to kill other pilots bombing Islamic State positions, was likely aimed at trying to scare Jordan out of the U.S.-led coalition fighting the extremists, it seems to have had the opposite effect.
Jordan is one of a half-dozen Arab countries actively participating in the coalition, in addition to Iraq. Jordan’s government spokesman said Wednesday that the kingdom would now step up its involvement.
“I guess in a way we lost a pilot, but at the same time I think the government gained a collective support for fighting them, in Jordan and from all around too,” said Adnan Abu-Odeh, a former head of Jordan’s intelligence service.
The militants “have made a big error,” he said. “When you are weakened as they have been, you try to make your supporters think you are strong by being more monstrous, but this time they went too far.”
The Islamic State, which controls large areas of Iraq and Syria, has killed captives in the past, posting videos of beheadings and sparking widespread condemnation. But the killing of al-Kaseasbeh also highlighted the vulnerability of Jordan, a key Western ally in the region, to threats from extremists.
Jordan was long considered an island of relative stability in a turbulent region, but in recent years had to absorb hundreds of thousands of war refugees, first from Iraq and then Syria, at a time of a sharp economic downturn.
Jordan receives hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid a year, but grinding social problems persist, including high unemployment among young men, creating a reservoir of potential Islamic State recruits.
Experts estimate the Islamic State and other jihadist groups have thousands of supporters in the kingdom, with an upswing last year after the militants declared a caliphate, or state ruled by Islamic law, in the areas they control.
The United States and Israel are particularly concerned about any signs of turmoil. Israel views Jordan as an important land buffer and the two countries share intelligence.
In Washington, congressional support built Wednesday for increased U.S. military assistance to the kingdom. Currently, the United States is providing Jordan with $1 billion annually in economic and military assistance.
Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Jordan’s King Abdullah II — who met with lawmakers and President Barack Obama on Tuesday — must be given “all of the military equipment” he needs to combat the group. He said Abdullah did not ask for ground troops.
At the White House, spokesman Josh Earnest said the administration would consider any aid package put forward by Congress, but that the White House would be looking for a specific request from Jordan’s government.
Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he expected his panel to swiftly approve legislation. He also repeated his criticism that the Obama administration has “no strategy” for dealing with the Islamic State group, and said he hoped the video of al-Kaseasbeh’s death will galvanize not only U.S. leadership but “the Arab world.”
Abdullah rushed home after his Washington meetings, cutting short his U.S. trip to rally domestic support for an even tougher line against the militants. The king got rave reviews at home for his tough talk in Washington, where in a meeting with congressional leaders he said his retribution would remind people of the Clint Eastwood movie Unforgiven.
Jordan in September joined the U.S.-led military coalition that began bombing Islamic State group targets in Syria and Iraq.
The decision was not popular in Jordan, with the bombing campaign widely seen as serving Western, not Jordanian interests. During weeks of uncertainty about the fate of al-Kaseasbeh, some of his relatives and supporters chanted against Jordan’s role in the coalition.
On Wednesday, Hammam Saeed, the leader of Jordan’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, visited relatives of the pilot in the southern tribal town of Karak, and called on Jordan to pull out of the coalition, saying, “we have no relations with this war.”
But public anger over the pilot’s death and calls for revenge against the Islamic State could help Abdullah broaden support for the coalition, said Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical analysis at Stratfor, a global intelligence and advisory firm in Austin, Texas.
“Sentiments are going to start changing across the Middle East after people see the video, especially the Jordanian people,” he said. Stewart said a similar shift occurred a decade ago in Iraq after Sunni Muslim tribes turned away from a local branch of al-Qaida, a precursor of the Islamic State, over its brutality.