Manama: Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz has urged all Muslim scholars to assume their duties and responsibilities towards God and foil attempts to malign Islam and present it as a religion of extremism, hatred and terrorism.

In an address to the Arab and Islamic nations and international community, King Abdullah said that scholars should be truthful in their statements and should not fear anyone in their drive to uphold the truth.

“Our nation is going through highly critical times, and history will be the witness against those who were the instruments and tools used by the enemy to disperse and tear up the nation and to distort the pure image of Islam,” King Abdullah said in his address, carried by the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) on Friday.

The Saudi monarch, who has been ruling the kingdom since August 2005, said that fitnah — attempts to create schisms or exacerbate schisms within the community — had found a fertile ground in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

“Fitnah was facilitated by those who resent or hate our nation,” he said. “They believed that their attempts have been successful and they started to fill the world with terrorism and corruption. They kept on sliding further into wrongdoings. It is a real shame and a terrible disgrace that these terrorists are doing all these negative things in the name of Islam. They kill people whereas Islam has prohibited killing and they mutilate bodies. They proudly show off and diffuse their [horrible] actions in the name of Islam whereas Islam, the religion of purity, decency and humanity, has nothing whatsoever to do with that. Their actions, insolence and crimes have smeared Islam’s reputation,” he said.

Those who are not familiar with the genuine values of Islam today believe that the action of these “traitors” reflect the message of the Prophet of Mercy, Mohammad (PBUH), the Saudi monarch added.

“In addition to all this, we see the blood of our brothers in Palestine being spilled in mass massacres that did not spare anyone and in war crimes against humanity without any human or moral scruples,” he said.

Terrorism has now taken several forms at the level of states and organisations and has become more lethal, King Abdullah said.

“All this is happening under the eyes of the international community with all its institutions and organisations, including human rights groups. This international community has opted to lapse into silence and to merely observe the dramatic events unfolding in the region, without any compassion, as if the matter did not concern it. There is no excuse for such a silence and the international community does not seem to realise that the new generation, as a result, will believe only in violence and will reject peace. It will believe in the clash, and not the co-existence, of civilisations,” he said.

King Abdullah insisted on the significance of collective community action to fight terrorism.

“I do recall how ten years ago at a conference in Riyadh we called for establishing an international centre to fight terrorism. The proposal was endorsed by the international community at the time, but we were later disappointed by the lack of a serious response. The proposal upon which we had pinned high hopes never materialised the way we hoped it would be,” he said.

“Today, we say to all those who failed in the past or fail to shoulder their historical responsibilities against terrorism because of temporary interests or suspicious schemes, that they will be its first victims tomorrow. It will be as if they did not draw lessons from the recent events that did not spare anyone,” he said.