Commenting on the incident at the church in Jordan two days ago, which claimed the lives of 8 or 9 people, whatever the number, even if there had been only one victim, this is a heinous crime.

First: Muslims are not required, after every crime that occurs in the world, to come out, from China to Marrakesh, declaring: “We are innocent of this act,” “This act does not represent our religion,” “This act contradicts our religion” and so on.

Because we did not commit this crime, and we do not have to declare ourselves innocent of every crime that occurs. Doing so indirectly suggests that the accusation is directed at us.

A criminal gang committed a heinous act. Everyone, near and far, agrees that this is a crime.

Am I required, whenever a tragedy occurs anywhere in the world, to come out as a Muslim and declare, “We are innocent! We are innocent!” as though we are the ones accused of every act? As though we are required to prove our innocence after every crime that occurs? This is absolutely incorrect.

No Muslim who has studied his religion, is familiar with the Quran, and has studied the Sunnah of his Prophet would disagree that what happened was a crime, an act of baseness, vileness, foolishness, and so on. No Muslim disagrees about this. But at the same time, we are not required to justify ourselves.

Yes, we condemn this act, but we do not come out to declare our innocence, because an innocent person does not need to prove his innocence. The one who declares his innocence is the accused. And we are not accused, so why should we have to prove our innocence every time?

Second: Crimes many times worse than this crime have been committed against Muslims, and we have not seen a statement from a church.

Syria was bombarded for 14 years. Fourteen years of chemical weapons attacks, bombing, and destruction. An entire Christian country, Russia, participated in this, yet we did not see a statement from a church condemning these acts.

There was even a Christian militia that committed crimes in Eastern Ghouta and Qalamoun, not far from the Jordanian border!

Yet we did not see a church or Christian representatives declaring their innocence of those crimes. Nor did we see a prominent Christian figure declaring their innocence of them.

There was also the crime committed in New Zealand in 2019, when the criminal was not filmed by surveillance cameras. Rather, he filmed himself, livestreaming the killing of 50 Muslims during Friday prayers.

Statements were issued by countries condemning that incident, but we did not see every church condemning the act, despite the perpetrator was a Christian who had studied Christian history and had written the dates of Christian battles on his weapon.

I repeat: No Muslim who has studied the Quran and the Sunnah of his Prophet would disagree that the incident at the church in Jordan was a criminal and reprehensible act.

But we, as Muslims, are not required to come out immediately after every crime that occurs in the world to declare our innocence!

The identities of those who committed this crime have not even been established yet!

And how do you know that this act was not carried out by the intelligence services of the occupation to divert attention from what is happening in Gaza?

I repeat: We are not required to come out and declare our innocence whenever something happens in the world.

This demand is made only of Muslims! Why?!

“You Muslims, whenever a crime occurs anywhere in the world, come out and declare your innocence!”

No, we are not required to do that.

It is enough that, in our religion, killing a person without right is HARAM (forbidden), regardless of that person’s religion.

And this does not apply only to Muslim lives, but also to non-Muslims.

Non-Muslims have rights in our countries under our religion, including the non-Muslim who has been granted protection (mustaman), the non-Muslim who is protected by a treaty or a contract (muahad), and the non-Muslim who lives under Muslim protection (dhimmi)….