Top Saudi scholars ban travel to fight with ISIL militants

Fatwa from Saudi Arabia's leading religious authority says terrorism is a 'heinous crime' and groups such as ISIL deserve punishment

The Council of Senior Religious Scholars issued a religious ruling on Wednesday calling terrorism a "heinous crime" and saying its supporters and perpetrators should be punished. Hassan Ammar / AP PhoShow more

Bloomberg // Saudi Arabia's top religious clerics issued a statement banning travel to conflict zones as the country's conservative religious establishment backs the Al Saud ruling family's efforts to defeat the Islamist militant group ISIL.
The Council of Senior Islamic Scholars criticised clerics who issued fatwas justifying terrorism, saying they should be tried in court, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.
The statement comes more than a week after senior Saudi scholar Abdulaziz Al Al Sheikh called on Muslims to fight ISIL to "rid people and religion of their evil and harm".
"Terrorism subjects the nation's interests to the gravest dangers, and whoever said it's jihad is ignorant," the council of scholars said. The committee supports government efforts to crack down on members of militant groups that include ISIL and Al Qaeda, they said.
Saudi rulers have stepped up their attempt to confront the breakaway Al Qaeda group at home and abroad after it rampaged through northern Iraq and eastern Syria, and started a recruitment campaign in the kingdom. Security forces have arrested supporters of ISIL, while courts have convicted those caught recruiting Saudis to fight abroad.
The kingdom hosted a summit last week in Jeddah with secretary of state John Kerry and representatives of 10 Middle East nations that aimed to build a coalition against the militants. At another meeting four days later in Paris, foreign minister Prince Saud Al Faisal backed plans to bomb ISIL in Syria, saying that the danger posed by the group "has exceeded its geography".
US officials say Saudi Arabia has agreed to host training camps for moderate Syrian rebels fighting both ISIL and the regime of president Bashar Al Assad.
Saudi security forces cracked down on Al Qaeda militants after extremists started targeting foreign nationals and government officials from 2003, including the bombing of two residential compounds in the capital.
Although the last attack against a foreign citizen was in 2007, the threat from militants remains. Authorities said this month they arrested 88 members of a group planning strikes inside the kingdom and elsewhere.
"After the bombings in Riyadh in May 2003, the Saudis have been clear-eyed about the threat such radicals pose," said Daniel Benjamin, a former state department counterterrorism coordinator who is now director of the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College.
Meanwhile, the UAE has condemned in the strongest terms the crimes perpetrated by ISIL in Syria.
The UN Human Rights Council should the hold the militants accountable and stop them from getting away with it, said Obaid Salem Al Za'abi, the UAE's permanent representative to the UN and other international organisations in Geneva.
He was speaking on Wednesday at the council's interactive dialogue with the Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria, which has accused the group of crimes against humanity and war crimes.
* Bloomberg and Wam