Misrata Imam murdered

By Taher Zaroog.

Misrata, 17 January 2013:

The iman of one of Misrata’s mosques, Sheikh Fakhri Husein Jahani, was murdered on Tuesday. He was killed when unknown assailants threw a grenade at him as he was leaving the Omar Ibn Khatab Mosque after Maghreb (Sunset) prayers. Five other people were wounded in the attack, three of them seriously. One of the wounded, a child, lost an eye in the blast.

Three people have been arrested in connection with the killing. They deny any involvement but are still being held.

The attack is unusual for Misrata which has seen relatively little of the violence that has shaken Benghazi and elsewhere in the east of the country, although earlier this month two Egyptian Christians were killed when a Coptic church in Dafniya outside Misrata was bombed.

The Imam, a Salafist, had made a name for himself preaching and campaigning against those whom he called fake Salafists. They were using Islam for their own purposes, he said. In particular, he condemned them for their practice of declaring other Muslims as unbelievers or “kaffirs”.

The incident is thought to be related to be related to similar incidents in Bengahzi and Tripoli.

For their part, Misrata’s Sufis have strongly condemned the killing.