Manama: Bahrain’s Prime Minister Prince Khalifa Bin Salman Al Khalifa said that religious leaders have a huge responsibility to confront attempts to distort and tarnish the image of Islam and Muslims.
“Religious scholars have to shoulder such a responsibility,” he said. “It is the duty of all people to defend Islam and we value the endeavours of religious leaders in Bahrain in explaining and highlighting tolerance in Islam and its rejection of terrorism and the devastation of nations,” Prince Khalifa said on Sunday.
Bahraini authorities have been highlighting the need to combat terrorism and extremism regardless of their forms and origins.
On Friday, the interior ministry said that it had arrested suspects who had returned from Syria and who allegedly had links to terrorist groups.
In December, Crown Prince Salman Bin Hamad Al Khalifa said that the fight is not only against terrorists, but also against theocrats.
“I use the term theocrats because this war that we are engaged in cannot be against Islam, cannot be against Christianity, cannot be against Judaism, cannot be against Buddhism,” Prince Salman said at the opening of the Manama Dialogue, an international security conference held annually in the Bahraini capital.
“It is unfair to those of us who practice our religion responsibly and in the manner that I believe that it was brought to us to practice, and it sullies the name of a great tradition and a great philosophy that is divine and must be above politics.”
Prince Salman said that the war against theocrats meant putting together the military, social, political and economic policies in a holistic manner to counter the threat.
“We will be fighting these theocrats for a very long time. The question is, do we have the courage and the moral and intellectual integrity to call them out for what they are? These are people who try to govern us here on earth and in the hereafter. These are people who isolate themselves from the rest of the international community. These are people who disregard human life and do not value the social order and the social contracts that we have established among ourselves, in societies and peoples. These are people who oppress women, and these are people who slaughter anyone who does not condone, approve of or subscribe to their own twisted ideology. While politics may drag people into ideology, it is the ideology itself that must be combated. It must be named, it must be shamed, it must be contained, and, eventually, it must be defeated,” he said.
