Jordan’s Queen Rania has branded the Islamic State (IS) militant group a “bunch of crazy people” who are staining the name of Islam.
The wife of King Abdullah II urged the international community not to focus on the religious claims of the extremists and said IS should drop the “I” from their name “because there is nothing Islamic about them.”
“This fight is a fight between the civilized world and a bunch of crazy people that really want to take us back to medieval times,” she said in a conversation with media mogul Arianna Huffington at a session of the Future of Work conference in London late on Wednesday, organized by the Berggruen Institute and the World Post.
She warned against letting IS “hijack” the identity of Islam, arguing that it would allow them to set up a “battle of civilizations.”
“People call them ISIS — I would love to drop that first ‘I’ because there is nothing Islamic about them. They have nothing to do with faith and everything to do with fanaticism,” she said.
“They want to be called Islamic because it gives them legitimacy and also it means that any action taken against them would automatically be called a war against Islam,” she added. “They want that clash of civilizations that people talk about.”
The 44-year-old queen warned IS that their much-publicized displays of violence, such as the burning to death of Jordanian pilot Muadh al-Kasasbeh, only stiffened the resolve of moderates.
“The scare tactics that these terrorists were using backfired, because it just angered Jordanians,” she told the Huffington Post founder. “Instead of making them scared, it made them want to fight.”
Kassasbeh was captured by IS in December last year after his F-16 crashed in Syria while on a mission for the US-led coalition against the Sunni extremist group.
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