Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, imam and khatib at the Grand Mosque, on Friday urged the international community to jointly come to the rescue of the people of Syria and not use the Assad regime’s crimes against humanity to settle political scores at the expense of moral principles.
“The repressive government of Syria has committed the most horrendous and unparalleled terror crimes against our brothers by using chemical and poisonous gas that is banned internationally. This has left 1,400 dead and 6,000 injured,” Al-Sudais said in his speech on Friday.
He also appealed to the human conscience to make a swift move to rein in the savagery being committed against innocent children and the elderly in Syria.
Meanwhile, the number of Syrian children forced to flee their devastated homeland reached 1 million on Friday, half of all the refugees driven abroad by a conflict that shows no sign of ending, the UN said.
Another 2 million Syrian minors are uprooted within their country where they are often attacked, recruited as fighters, and deprived of their education, the UN refugee agency UNHCR and UNICEF said. The 1 million mark was a “shameful milestone” in the two-and-a-half year conflict that has cost at least 100,000 lives, the UN agencies said.
There is a huge risk of a “lost generation” of Syrian youth, including adolescents.
Al-Sudais attributed the crises in Muslim countries to false reformers who reduce Islam and its noble ideals to borrowed labels to promote intellectual terrorism and deviance. “That has led to armed terror and distance from the truth and confining the truth on the single idea of terrorism.”
Al-Sudais said the world community lauded the stance taken by Saudi Arabia against terror and its support for the International Center to Combat Terror.