AFP reports two conflicting fatwas issued by Egyptian clerics with implications for the way editors use (or don’t use) the word terror:
On the eve of last week’s truce in the month-long war between Israel and Hezbollah, cleric Safwat al-Higazi issued an edict calling on worshippers to kill “any Zionist anywhere in wartime”….
Higazi later limited the edict to Israeli Jews, whom he said were all reservists in the army and therefore legitimate targets….
Al-Azhar mosque (pictured), the leading theological authority for many Sunni Muslims, had to step in with a counter-fatwa and banned Higazi from preaching at Friday prayers.
“Killing Jews on the Egyptian territory would be a terrorist act,” said the edict, issued three days after Higazi’s.
AFP adds that the Al-Azhar fatwa “said nothing about killing Jews in other countries.” Would Reuters honcho Stephen Jukes say one fatwa’s freedom figher is another fatwa’s terrorist?
