Cablegate: Spanish Muslim Leader's 9-11 Message

VZCZCXRO9190
PP RUEHAG RUEHBC RUEHDA RUEHDBU RUEHDE RUEHDF RUEHGI RUEHIK RUEHJS
RUEHKUK RUEHLH RUEHLZ RUEHPW RUEHROV
DE RUEHMD #1795 2601100
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 171100Z SEP 07
FM AMEMBASSY MADRID
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 3427
INFO RUCNMEM/EU MEMBER STATES COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUCNISL/ISLAMIC COLLECTIVE PRIORITY

UNCLAS MADRID 001795

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

EUR FOR FARAH PANDITH

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREL PTER KISL PGOV SP
SUBJECT: SPANISH MUSLIM LEADER'S 9-11 MESSAGE

Riay Tatary, President of the Union of Spanish Islamic
Communities (UCIDE), issued a statement on September 10
condemning terrorism to commemorate the 6th anniversary of
the September 11 attacks. As the head of UCIDE, Tatary
represents what is the most organized of a variety of
somewhat poorly organized Islamic associations in Spain.
UCIDE was also the group behind the creation and publication
of the first Spanish textbook on Islam for use in Spanish
schools. Text of the statement follows.

BEGIN TEXT OF STATEMENT:

Six years after that Black Tuesday
Written by UCIDE
Madrid, September 10, 2007

Several years having passed since the terrible attack of
9/11, which moved the entire world, today we reiterate anew
that terrorism and its criminal acts against the civil
population are expressly against the Islamic creed and that
we must fight against these actors and ideologues in order to
eradicate their expansion, which corrupts the hearts and
minds of people all over the world, increases suffering of
innocent victims, and generates more hatred.

Both the Koran and the Sunna (the only sources of Islam)
prohibit and reject the very grave sin of killing another
human being. The commission of such a transgression is
equated with and compared to genocide and crimes against
humanity.

We are all united in this pain, and we condemn all terrorist
acts - whatever the armed band, whatever the ideology,
without allowance for the use of demagogical terrorist
discourse as a pretext for discrimination against wide
sectors of the population.

In this, we want to reiterate our gratitude to all the people
of Spain who, despite suffering the horrors of terrorist
violence, have had the wisdom to discern and differentiate
clearly that these terrorist attacks against civilians
originate from a minority with inexplicable hatreds that have
nothing to do with the whole of the national and
international Muslim community, nor with the Islamic
religion, and that all of these terrorist acts are against
the law of God, for which reason we must always condemn them
and work together to stop the violence at its very source.
END TEXT.
AGUIRRE

© Scoop Media