Excerpts: Egypt Court declares Hamas 'terrorist'.Jordan's King re Islamic
State February 28, 2015

+++SOURCE: Naharnet (Lebanon 28 Feb.’15:”Egypt Court Declares Palestinian
Movement Hamas ‘Terrorist’ “, Agence France Presse
SUBJECT:Egypt Court declares Hamas ‘terrorist’

FULL TEXT:An Egyptian court on Saturday[28 Feb.] declared Hamas a
"terrorist" organisation, a judicial source said, weeks after the
Palestinian Islamist movement's armed wing was given the same designation.

Since Egypt's military ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, the
authorities have accused Hamas of aiding jihadists who have waged a string
of deadly attacks on security forces in the Sinai Peninsula.

An Egyptian court on January 31 banned the armed wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine
al-Qassam Brigades, declaring it a "terrorist" group.

In March last year, Egypt banned Hamas from carrying out any activities on
its soil and froze the assets of the Islamist movement, which controls the
Gaza Strip.

The court of first instance issued its verdict on Saturday[28 Feb.] after
two complaints were filed against Hamas implicating it in deadly attacks
against the police force and army in the Sinai, said the judicial source.

Jihadists on the peninsula have killed scores of policemen and soldiers
since Morsi's overthrow, vowing revenge for a crackdown on his supporters
that has left more than 1,400 people dead.

Saturday's[28 Feb.] ruling comes just days after Egypt adopted a new
anti-terrorism law allowing the authorities to close the premises of any
declared "terrorist" organisation, and to freeze its assets as well as those
of its members.

SourceAgence France Presse

+++SOURCE:Jordan Times 28 Feb.’15:King says describing Muslims as
extremists, moderates ‘completely wrong’ “,by JT
SUBJECT:Jordan’s King re Islamic State
QUOTE:” ‘Idon’t know what these people are but they surely do not have any
relationship to our faith’ “

FULL TEXT:AMMAN — Daesh terror group works by intimidations, “always trying
to intimidate, scare, put fear into people’s hearts”, His Majesty King
Abdullah has said in an interview on “Fareed Zakaria’s GPS” on CNN.

“They’re trying to invent falsely a linkage to a Caliphate, linked to our
history in Islam, which has no truth or bearing to our history. To bring in
... young men and women that think that this is sort of an Islamic nation
and it has nothing with our history,” the King told Zakaria in the
interview, which will be broadcast on CNN on Sunday[28 Feb.].

“The barbarity of the way they executed our brave hero I think shocked the
Muslim world and specifically Jordanians and people from this region, that
it had nothing to do with Islam,” His Majesty added in an interview promo
released by CNN on Saturday[28 Feb.].

In response to a question on how the West should deal with Daesh and whether
the response should be essentially led by Muslims, King Abdullah said: “This
has to be unified. I mean, I’ve said this to leaders, both in the Islamic
and Arab world and to the world in general, this is a Third World War by
other means, this brings Muslims, Christians, other religions together in
this generational fight that all of us have to be in this together.”

He added that there is a short term part of this war, “which is the military
part of the issue, there is the medium part, which is the security element
of it, and then there’s a long term element of this, which is obviously the
ideological one”.

When asked by Zakaria on his opinion of US President Barak Obama’s decision
not to call groups like Daesh Islamic extremists “because he doesn't want to
give them the mantle of legitimacy by acknowledging that they're Islamic”,
the King said he thinks Obama is right.

“I think this is something that has to be understood on a much larger
platform, because they're looking for legitimacy that they don't have inside
of Islam. When we're asked in this debate, you know, are you a moderate or
extremist — what these people want is to be called extremist. I mean, they
take that as a badge of honour.”

Elaborating further, His Majesty said the term being used more often to
describe such groups is the Arabic word Khawarij.

“These are in a way outlaws that are on the fringe of Islam, and if you look
at sort of the way that they are actually represented inside of our
religion, they are, these are sort of takfiris, and takfiris inside of ...
Islam.

“If ... Islam is 1.5 billion Muslims, they represent only 1 per cent. Out of
that, maybe 200 to 500 thousand of these people are actually takfiri
jihadists … So to label Islam under the term of extremists and moderates is
actually completely wrong,” the King stressed.

“I don't know what these people are, but they definitely do not have any
relationship to our faith. When Baghdadi ... came out with his manifesto,
even extremist organisations completely backed away from what he said. So he
has nothing to do with the tenets of Islam, which is a religion of tolerance
that reaches out to other people.”

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Sue Lerner - Associate, IMRA