BARCELONA, Spain – From France and Germany to England and the United States, mainstream Muslims in the West are raising their voices and distancing themselves from the murderous version of Islam unleashed by the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria and beyond.
Meanwhile Britain, Denmark and Belgium announced their warplanes are ready to fly alongside US-led air raids that have been pounding the militants in Iraq since last month.
In France, the first in Europe to fly bombing missions over Iraq, thousands of Muslims gathered in Paris Friday to pay tribute to Herve Gourdel, a French hostage beheaded in Algeria by a pro-IS group.
“We, the Muslims of France, say ‘stop the barbarism,’” Dalil Boubakeur, president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM) told a crowd outside the Grand Mosque in Paris.
The group that murdered the Frenchman had called on France – which is home to some nine million Muslims -- to stop attacks in Iraq if it wanted the hostage to live.
The crowd – of mostly men of all ages, but including representatives of Christian and Jewish communities as well as political groups – observed a minute of silence for the dead hostage.
The gathering had picked up the same Twitter hashtag that was started by Muslims in England -- #NotInMyName (#PasEnMonNom in French).
In Britain, which is home to some 4.6 million Muslims, the Active Change Foundation (ACF) that preaches tolerance and understanding, began the NotInMyName campaign after the killing of British aid worker David Haines and the kidnapping of other UK hostage Alan Hemming.
Last week, the ACF released a YouTube video which has amassed some 50,000 views and features young Muslims condemning the actions of the IS and explaining why the militants do not speak in their name.
In Germany, where 4.5 million Muslims live, community leaders have called on preachers to use Friday prayer sermons to protest against the IS atrocities.
The chairman of the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, Aiman Mazyek, told local media that Muslims should not stay silent when their faith is being used to enact crimes.
German Muslims staged nine large rallies in cities around the country.
Two Germans in the Philippines are being held hostage by Islamic militants since April. Images showing the captives surfaced this week on the Internet, with the group holding them threatening to kill one within 15 days unless they receive a ransom and Germany stops backing attacks against IS.
The militants are being pounded in air raids by US jets, which this week began the first strikes in Syria, backed by five Arab allies.
Lawmakers in Britain, Belgium and Denmark have given thumbs-up for their pilots and planes to join in the sorties over Iraq – but not over Syria: the Iraqi government has asked for the strikes but the embattled regime in Syria, opposed by the US and the West, has not.
The UK will be sending in Tornado jets based in Cyprus, and Denmark is dispatching seven F-16 fighter jets, plus 250 pilots and support staff. Belgium has six F-16 jets en route to Jordan.
The European Union's anti-terrorism chief, Gilles de Kerchove, has said that about 3,000 Europeans have gone to join IS in Iraq and Syria. European officials fear the return of disgruntled, radicalized citizens with bomb-making and weapons skills.
On Thursday, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said that his country had uncovered a plot by pro-IS American and French militants to attack metro systems in the US and France.
Since June, IS has made huge advances in Iraq and Syria, declaring a “caliphate” straddling both countries and claiming to speak in the name of Muslims around the world.
The militants have been enforcing a harsh version of Islam in captured territories under their sway. They have killed, displaced and tortured men and women in both countries, mostly from minority groups. Hundreds of women, mostlly from the Yezidi faith, have been taken as war booty or sold and enslaved for sex.
More than 120 Sunni Muslim scholars from around the world have joined hands in denouncing the IS, countering its murderous teachings with theological arguments.
“You have misinterpreted Islam into a religion of harshness, brutality, torture and murder,” the scholars said in a 22-page open letter to the self-proclaimed Caliph of IS Abu Bakr al-al Baghdadi and his spokesman.
“This is a great wrong and an offence to Islam, to Muslims and to the entire world,” said the Paris-datelined letter, which was endorsed by the Council on American-Islamic relations.
