Imam ‘happy and relieved’ ISIS leader dead

Imam Mohammed El Sadi said he has welcomed “with happiness and relief” the news that ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed during a US raid.

The head of Malta’s Muslim community said in a statement on Monday that Baghdadi was “the enemy of Islam, Muslims and humanity.”

Baghdadi killed himself on Saturday by detonating a suicide belt he was wearing as US special forces closed in on him in the house he was hiding, in northwest Syria.

“Him and his gangs hijacked Islam , abused its true human peaceful teachings and turned it into a religion of hatred, bloodshed, savageness and devastation,” El Sadi said.

“His criminal acts drove non-Muslims to hate and fear Islam and Muslims, then exposing Muslims all over the world to racism and injustice. ISIS threatened the peaceful harmonious coexistence of Muslim minorities in Europe, the United States and other parts of the world.

“Him and his gangs killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims and non-Muslims. He destroyed several cities and villages, displacing millions of their inhabitants. He persecuted the Yazidi community and enslaved their women.”

El Sadi said that Muslims were the main victims of ISIS, and referred to an 2014 newspaper article he had penned, where he had stressed that ISIS had “no future in the Middle East”, and was “a suicide project based on bloodshed, terror and plunder.”

“With Baghdadi perished, I hope that the world will not experience any other Satanic group like ISIS and any other criminal mischief like Baghdadi,” El Sadi added.