Saleh attends honoring ceremonies at al-Saleh Mosque

SANA’A, Aug.28 (Saba)- President Ali Abdullah Saleh attended on Saturday an honoring ceremony for winners of the Quran competition, organized by Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs in Al-Saleh Mosque. He also attended the closing celebration of training course for 65 preachers from eight provinces, organized for a week by the National Authority for Raising Awareness. At the ceremony, President Saleh delivered a speech in which he saluted the Holy Quran memorizers and preachers, expressing his appreciation for Sheikhs who supervised on youth in the Holy Quran memorizing competition and the preachers’ courses. “We count much on preachers to perform their awareness role in inculcating moderation and tolerant teachings of Islam to ensure the move away from extremism and fanaticism”, said Saleh. He added that the scientists are not scholars of jurisprudence, religion and Quran only, but they are in various areas of life. “Not all people are extremists. The populations of Yemen are approximately 25 million citizens and most of them are moderate and good”, President Saleh pointed out. He wondered saying: “These extremist terrorist elements who kill the forbidden self, where they are from the tolerant teachings of Islam?”, he added “Their terrorist and criminal acts forbidden by law and Islam only hurt the interests of the nation”. “Islam is a religion of love, brotherhood and compassion, and Islam had never taught terrorism and banditry, but it forbade these bad acts”, President Saleh noted. He urged the scholars and preachers as well as all citizens to take responsibility as well as the state agencies to counter the deviant thoughts of that perverse group and to thwart its terrorist plans. The terrorist attacks caused severe damage to the national economy and harmed the interests of the homeland and citizens, he added. He pointed out that the unemployment has been existed due to the criminal acts of those terrorist elements, which hindered the development and adversely affected tourism and worried investors. “These bad guys are ignorant, do not understand anything in Islam, and they are drug-traffickers and drug users and kill forbidden self, bandit and attack on police stations ,military and security posts, state institutions and foreign residents in Yemen”, President Saleh explained. He said that the terrorists have turned now to target security services, which is the same mechanism followed in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they would not succeed before the firmness of Yemeni people. BA Saba