Saudi Arabia’s grand mufti, the top religious authority in the birthplace of Islam, has condemned Nigeria’s Boko Haram as a group “set up to smear the image of Islam” and condemned its kidnapping of over 200 schoolgirls.
Sheikh Abdulaziz al-Sheikh said the radical
movement, which says it wants to establish a “pure”
Islamic state in Nigeria, was “misguided” and should be “shown their wrong path and be made to reject it.”
His remarks came as religious leaders in the Muslim world, who often do not comment on militant violence, joined in denouncing Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau for saying Allah had told him to sell off the kidnapped girls as forced brides.
“This is a group that has been set up to smear the
image of Islam and must be offered advice, shown
their wrong path and be made to reject it,” he told
the Arabic-language newspaper al-Hayat in an interview published on Friday.
“These groups are not on the right path because
Islam is against kidnapping, killing and aggression,”
he said. “Marrying kidnapped girls is not permitted.”
Boko Haram militants kidnapped some 250 girls on
April 14 from a secondary school in Chibok village,
near the Cameroon border, while they took exams.
Fifty have since escaped.
Shekau’s video was released on Monday, sparking a
wave of revulsion in Nigeria and abroad and
prompting offers of help from countries such as the
United States, Britain and France to search for them.
Boko Haram has led a five-year-old insurgency with
the stated aim of reviving a medieval Islamic
caliphate in modern Nigeria, whose 170 million
people are split roughly evenly between Christians
and Muslims.
Its violent attacks have become by far the biggest
security threat to Africa’s top oil producer and it has
spread out to menace the neighboring countries of
Cameroon, Niger and Chad.
On Thursday, Islamic scholars and human rights
officials of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation,
the world’s largest Muslim body representing 57
countries, denounced the kidnapping as “a gross
misinterpretation of Islam.”
This week, al-Azhar, the prestigious Cairo-based seat
of Sunni learning, also said that the kidnapping “has
nothing to do with the tolerant and noble teachings
of Islam.”

Sources: http://muslimvillage.com/2014/05/13/53373/saudi-grand-mufti-condemns-boko-haram-kidnappings/