SAN FRANCISCO, March 23: Leading American Muslim organizations have strongly denounced the assassination of Palestinian religious leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, terming it an act of state terrorism.
Reacting to the mute official reaction, the organizations urged the Bush administration to condemn the murder of the leading Palestinian spiritual leader who was killed in an Israeli missile strike outside a Gaza City mosque on Monday.
The American Muslim Voice (AMV) condemned the assassination of Sheikh Yassin and said that the act of Israeli state terrorism will escalate the cycle of violence and instability in the region.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), in a strongly worded statement, said that Israel's extra-judicial killing of an Islamic religious leader could only serve to perpetuate the cycle of violence throughout the region.
"We call on the United States to join its allies in condemning this political assassination and to make that condemnation meaningful by cutting the flow dollars to Israel," the CAIR statement added.
The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) said that Israel had committed an act of state terrorism whose purpose and result could only be to profoundly escalate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"President Bush's call that both the parties exercise restraint is hollow and simply insufficient and irresponsible," the MPAC said adding that this incident represented nothing less than a failure in American foreign policy.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), strongly condemning the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, said that the murder of the spiritual leader of the Hamas movement constituted a major escalation in the conflict by Ariel Sharon.
