SWC: TODAY’S BREAKING DEVELOPMENTS ON LONDON’S HORRIFIC ATTACKS DEMONSTRATE NEED FOR INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY TO TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION AGAINST SUICIDE BOMBINGS

The Simon Wiesenthal Center will hold a press conference today, July 12, 2005 at 12:00 noon in the Memorial Plaza of the Museum of Tolerance (9786 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles) to call on the United Kingdom and other countries to designate all suicide bombings ‘Crimes Against Humanity’.

The leading Jewish human rights group also urged the religious leadership of the Muslim world to come together to issue a unified Fatwa prohibiting Muslims to incite, aid, or abet terrorism.

"An out of control religious fanaticism, and not frustration over Arab-Israeli conflict, is the principal cause of the London attacks and of international terrorism," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, Simon Wiesenthal Center dean and founder.

"It is the inability of many in the Muslim world to reign in the extremists that are hijacking their religion by denying the universal virtues of human dignity and pluralism and instead preaching jihad and martyrdom-- the principal motivations for 9/11, the bombings in Madrid, and the bombings in London," he added.

"The time has come for all the leading imams of the Muslim world to come together and issue a religious Fatwa prohibiting their co-religionists from joining, contributing, inciting, or aiding any Islamic fundamentalist group that preaches hatred and terrorism," he concluded.

Since 2003, the Simon Wiesenthal Center has spearheaded a campaign to have suicide bombings declared a ‘Crime Against Humanity’. The goal of the campaign is to create a legal tool for victims to go after sponsors and those who inspire this deadly culture of mass murder worldwide. To this end, Center officials have brought the initiative to EU head Javier Solana, His Holiness Pope John Paul II, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdallah Gul, Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and diplomats from 20 other countries.

In 1995, Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper met in Cairo with then Grand Mufti of Egypt Sheik Tantawi to ask for a Fatwa against what was then the new phenomenon of suicide bombings.

For more information, contact the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Public Relations Department, 310-553-9036.