Qaeda chief: Tunisians must support Sharia

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri called on Tunisians to rise up against their country’s ruling party for accepting a constitution not based on Islamic Sharia law, according to a recording released Sunday. In an audio recording posted on militant forums, al-Zawahri said the leaders of the Ennahda party, a moderate Islamist group that formed a new government after last October's elections, are violating Islam’s teachings by accepting a constitution that does not consider Sharia the sole source for legislation. Al-Zawahri said Ennahda favours “an Islam accepted by the US State Department, the EU and the sheikhdoms of the Gulf, an Islam that accepts gambling clubs and nude beaches.” “It is strange to see a leadership party that claims to be associated with moderate Islam and at the same time it says it does not call for ruling by Islam,” he said. He said that the moderate Islam meant that an “Islam which accepts Muslims to fight alongside the American army in Afghanistan.” “Rise up to support your Sharia and incite the people for a popular uprising instigating them to defend the Sharia and tell them what about what (plot) is being hatched against Islam,” he said. Al-Zawahri took over as leader of al-Qaeda after its founder, Osama bin Laden, was killed in a US military strike last May. He compared moderate Islam that does not depend on the Shariah to “a hospital that has nothing to do with treatment, or a pharmacy that has nothing to do with selling drugs, or an army which is not interested in fighting.”