WASHINGTON, Sept 11: Muslims cannot allow terrorist groups like Al Qaeda to be their voice or to represent Islam to the rest of the world, says Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council American-Islamic Relations.

The umbrella group, which represents more than a dozen Muslim organisations across North America, assured people in the US and other Western nations on the fifth anniversary of the Sept 11 terrorist attacks that the overwhelming majority in the Islamic world believes as strongly in peace as any other religious group.

“This is simply unacceptable and we will not allow terrorists groups like Al Qaeda to be the voice of Muslims or the representation of Islam to the rest of the world,” said Mr Awad while responding to Al Qaeda’s taped message.

Rejecting Zawahiri’s rhetoric and his worldview, Mr Awad told a news conference in Washington that Islam teaches tolerance, freedom and compassion. “Unfortunately, for many who know little of Islam or Muslims, Al Qaeda has come to represent both,” he said.

“Al Qaeda has done a great deal of harm to Muslims in the last five years, killing Muslims and also providing justification for the policies in the West that have harmed the Muslims the world over,” Arslan Iftikhar, CAIR’s national legal director said.

Ibrahim Hooper, the group’s communications director, said that there were ‘legitimate political grievances in the Muslim world today but Islam has never, and will never, justify the killing of innocent civilians in order to achieve political religious goals.”

Mr Awad described Al Qaeda’s worldview as a complete distortion of Islam because “Islamic teachings clearly state that the killing of one innocent life is the moral equivalent of the killing of all humanity.”

In a survey published in the US newspapers on Monday, Britain’s Royal Society for International Affairs reported that Al Qaeda was weaker than it was in 2001. The respected analysis group, also known as Chatham House, said that most Muslims reject Osama bin Laden’s organisation as un-Islamic.