Criticism
The Libyan envoy accused the group of inhumanity and violating the tenets of Islam by holding innocent people. Abdul Rajab Azzarouq, former ambassador to the Philippines, criticised the kidnappers for holding people who have nothing to do with the conflict. The hostage-takers should not use religion as a reason to keep the hostages isolated from their families, he said.
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi in Qatar has denounced the kidnapping and killings committed by the Abu Sayyaf towards civilians and foreigners, asserting that they are not part of the dispute between the Abu Sayyaf and the Philippines government. He stated that it is shameful to commit such acts in the name of the Islamic faith, saying that such acts produce backlashes against Islam and Muslims worldwide. It is known that Qaradawi supports the rights of Muslims in Philippines. Qaradawi spoke of the importance of education in the life of Muslims, stating that educational institutions in the Muslim world should review their educational philosophy in order that it may reflect Islamic values aiming to create pious Muslims good to themselves and non-Muslims as well.
The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) condemned the Sipadan kidnapping and offered to help secure their release. OIC Secretary General Azeddine Laraki who represents the world's largest Islamic body, told the Philippine government he was prepared to send an envoy to help save the hostages and issued a statement condemning the rebels. "The Secretary General has pointed out that this operation and the like are rejected by divine laws and that they are neither the appropriate nor correct means to resolve conflicts," the statement said.
Mark Bowden in a piece in The Atlantic on the Martin and Gracia Burnham kidnapping and captivity, describes the couple as "gently engaged their captors in theological discussion" and finding these jihadists to be shallow, even adolescent, in their faith. Unfamiliar with the Qur'an, the outlaws had only a sketchy notion of Islam, which they saw as a set of behavioral rules, to be violated when it suited them. Kidnapping, murder and theft were justified by their special status as holy warriors. One by one they sexually appropriated several of the women captives, claiming them as "wives".
Read more about this topic: 2009 Sulu Kidnapping Crisis
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)