Turkey’s interior minister chides Murdoch for 'ignorance of Islam'

ANKARA

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch’s tweet holding all Muslims responsible for the massacre at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is “great injustice and ignorance,” Turkey’s interior minister has said.

“If we want to produce a solution for global terror, everybody should be careful when using concepts without having knowledge about them,” Interior Minister Efkan Ala said on Jan. 12, in response to reporters who asked for comment on Murdoch’s message, which sparked anger for apparently holding a religion of billions of people responsible for the actions of a few extremists.

“Islam is a religion, the name of which is peace. We refuse to even use the words ‘Islam’ and ‘terror’ in the same sentence. It is a great injustice and ignorance because Islam is a religion whose teachings reject terrorist methods in every respect,” Ala said, stressing that Islam did not discriminate against people on the basis of ethnicity, race or faith.

A tweet posted by Murdoch on Jan. 10 came after the killing of 17 people, including journalists and police officers, in three days of violence that began with the shooting attack on Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7 and ended with the deaths of four hostages at a kosher supermarket on Jan. 9. The three gunmen in the incidents were also killed.

“Maybe most Moslems [are] peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible,” Murdoch had tweeted after the attacks.