Top Saudi Islamic body slams Muslim Brotherhood

Cairo: Saudi’s top Islamic institution, the Senior Scholars Councils, has designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group that exploits religion for mundane aims.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is a terrorist group that does not represent the Islamic course, but follows its partisan goals that contradicts the guidance of our lofty religion, acts under the cloak of religion and causes discord, sedition, violence and terrorism,” the council said in a statement.

The institution also called the Brotherhood a “deviant” group that destabilises co-existence.

“Since its establishment [in 1928], it has not shown any care for the Islamic creed or disciplines of the Holy Quran and the Prophet’s Sunnah. Rather, its ultimate aim is to reach power. Therefore, the group’s history is full of evils and seditions. It has also given birth to radical and terrorist groups that have wrought havoc, violence and terrorism as has been seen around the world,” the council added, according to the Saudi news agency SPA.

The institution warmed against affiliating to the group or sympathising with it.

In 2014, Saudi Arabia outlawed the Brotherhood, listing it as a terror organisation. In late 2013, the group was banned in Egypt, its birthplace, after a spate of violent attacks unleashed in the country following the Islamist group’s removal from power after massive street protests against its divisive rule.