Group calls on scholars to issue fatwa on sanctity of Iraqi blood

Iraq’s Ulama and Intellectual Group urged religious scholars in a statement on Tuesday to issue a fatwa forbidding the killing of Iraqis. The group also called on the Iraqi society to put forth a mechanism to educate Iraqis to wither violence by cooperating with the country’s civil society organizations and cultural government institutions, the statement added. On the backdrop of Iraq’s shaky security situation and amid the country’s Middle Eastern surrounding, the group said that such fatwa is necessary. The group also outlined announcements made by militias from inside and outside Iraq that called for violence. Early January, the emir or head of a Jihadist Salafi group in Iraq rejected Tunisia’s Salafist call for a fresh militarized work, especially after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, the London-based newspaper, Asharq al-Awsat reported. Mahdi al-Samud'i, the Salafi leader who recently joined Iraq’s national reconciliation project, said that “whatever the emir of the Salafist jihadist in Tunisia said is far from being just.” Instead al-Samud’i said that the Tunisian Salafist’s enthusiasm is unjustified and is far from Iraq’s reality. Issues related to jihad in Iraq, he said, is up to Iraqis since they are the ones best qualified and who know best of their situation. The Tunisian Salafist emir said only now that the “real jihad” should start in Iraq after the U.S. troops’ pullout. The Tunisian who was recently prosecuted in Iraq for the 2006 bombing of a holy Shiite shrine in Samara is one of the members of Tunisia’s Salfist jihadists, he said. Iraq’s civil violence reached its peak in 2006 after the holy shrine blast. Al Arabiya