Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 23
By Elmira Tariverdiyeva, Anahanum Khidayatova - Trend:
Islam is not responsible for terrorist acts that criminals are carrying out, Director General of ISESCO (International Islamic Organization for Education, Science and Culture) Abdulaziz Othman Altwaijri told reporters Nov.23 in Baku.
"Criminality is not related to any religion or culture," he said. "There are criminals and terrorists in all cultures and in all societies. We cannot attribute the crimes that are carried out by Buddhists to Buddhism or those carried out by Christians to Christianity."
The same thing refers to all other religions, he said, adding that it is not fair, not objective and not right to attribute crimes and terrorist attacks of certain Muslims to Islam.
The world should know that Islam is a religion of peace, knowledge, tolerance, respecting the diversity, director general of ISESCO said.
"We condemn strongly what happened in Paris, as we condemn what happened in Syria, in Iraq, in Yemen, everywhere," he said. "Terrorism is terrorism, and it has nothing to do with religion."
On the evening of 13 Nov. 2015, a series of coordinated terrorist attacks, consisting of mass shootings, suicide bombings, and hostage-taking, occurred in Paris and its northern suburb, Saint-Denis.
There were three suicide bombings outside the Stade de France in Saint-Denis, along with another suicide bombing and a series of mass shootings at four locations in Paris. The attackers killed 130 people, including 89 at the Bataclan theatre. The attacks were the deadliest in the European Union since the Madrid train bombings in 2004.
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