06/29/2002
EDITORIAL NUMBER=0-09975

AL QAIDA TARGETS MUSLIMS

Despite their claims to be defending Muslims, al-Qaida terrorists indiscriminately murder men, women, and children of many nations and religious faiths, including Islam.

According to authorities in Morocco, three al-Qaida terrorists arrested lasted month planned to bomb a civilian bus and a café in Marrakech. One of those arrested, Hilal Jaber El Assiri, reportedly objected to the targets because Muslims would be killed. His associate, Abu Zubair al-Haili, identified by Moroccan authorities as Zouhair Hilal Mohamed Tabiti, insisted on carrying out the café bombing. He acknowledged that Muslims would be killed, but argued that the murders were "justified by the nobleness of the operation." Explosives were prepared. But the planned attack was prevented by Moroccan police.

Tens of thousands of Muslims have died at the hands of Islamic extremist terrorists in Algeria.

The Egyptian people have been the target of the Muslim extremist al-Gama'a al-Islamiyaa and al-Jihad, closely associated with al-Qaida. In Afghanistan, many Muslims were murdered, tortured, imprisoned, or made refugees by the extremist Taleban regime and their al-Qaida terrorist allies.

Muslims were among the thousands of victims of the al-Qaida bombings of the U-S embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. They were among more than three-thousand killed in al-Qaida attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon last September. The violence and intolerance of al-Qaida and other like-minded terrorists not only threatens the safety of Muslims, it violates Islam's most fundamental tenets. Sheikh Saleh bin Hameed, Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, expressed the convictions of millions of Muslims when he said: "All men of reason, regardless of their nationality or religion, must declare war on terrorism."