London: Senior Muslim clerics in Britain have made a direct video appeal to the Islamic State terror group to free a British hostage under their captivity.
In a YouTube video, Shakeel Begg and Haitham al-Haddad said there was no justification for holding 47-year-old Alan Henning, who was captured in Syria, captive. Henning, a taxi driver from Salford in northern England, was delivering aid when he was seized last December.
Holding him captive is "totally haram (forbidden)" under Islamic law, the clerics say in the message to IS militants in Iraq and Syria and its supporters in the UK. The video does not mention photojournalist John Cantlie, a second British man being detained by IS whose video also emerged online this week.
Begg, the imam at Lewisham Islamic Centre in south London, says in the video that he had campaigned for the release of Muslims from Belmarsh and Guantanamo Bay prisons.
"For the same reasons today I stand with Alan Henning. I urge you to understand the nature of this prisoner you are holding — a man of peace," he says. Al-Haddad, an imam from the Islamic Sharia Council, says, "Executing this man is totally haram. Impermissible, prohibited according to sharia for a number of reasons."
A third Muslim cleric who appears in the video appeal, Ustadh Abu Eesa — founder of the Prophetic Guidance institute in Manchester — said he personally vouched for Henning.
"It is not permissible whatsoever to harm a person who believes that he is safe among the people he is working with. This safety must be honoured," he says.
The appeal follows a letter signed by over 100 British Muslim imams earlier this week urging IS to free Henning, who appeared at the end of a video showing the killing of another British aid worker David Haines. His death followed that of two US hostages which were also shown in videos.
