Muslim groups across Britain united yesterday to join Prime Minister David Cameron in condemning the beheading of aid worker Alan Henning by Islamic State insurgents, with one leading cleric calling it a “despicable and offensive act”.
Prayers for the 47-year-old taxi driver from Salford in northern England were said in mosques throughout the country at the start of the Muslim Eid al-Adha festival.
Cameron called Henning a gentle, compassionate man who had simply tried to help others. Britain would do all it could to destroy his killers, he said.
Speaking after meeting the heads of Britain’s armed forces and intelligence agencies, Cameron said in a broadcast message: “We will use all the assets we have... to defeat this organisation which is utterly ruthless, senseless and barbaric in the way it treats people.”
Henning had been held captive in Syria for nine months before a video was posted on You Tube on Friday showing him kneeling before a masked knifeman against a desert setting.
The masked man spoke briefly with the same southern British accent as that of the killer of previous hostages widely dubbed ‘Jihadi John’.
He was the fourth hostage to have been beheaded by Islamic State (IS), which has faced air strikes by US, British, French and Arab fighter jets since seizing swathes of Iraq and Syria.
His case had prompted a wave of appeals for his release from British Muslim leaders and yesterday morning several expressed their shock at the murder.
They are perpetrating the worst crimes against humanity
Shuja Shafi, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, tweeted: “Saddened by reported murder of Alan Henning. A despicable and offensive act. He helped Muslims. My thoughts and prayers with his family.”
A group calling itself Muslims of the North of England called Henning a “national hero”, while Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation that aims to help young Muslims, said: “This barbaric killing is an attack against all decent people around the world.”
Henning had been part of aid convoy taking medical supplies to a hospital in northwest Syria in December last year when it was stopped by gunmen and he was abducted. Fears for his safety had grown since the British Parliament voted last month to take part in air strikes against IS in Iraq.
In the You Tube video he appears to read from a script before being killed. “Because of our Parliament’s decision to attack the Islamic State, I, as a member of the British public, will now pay the price for that decision,” he says.
Britain’s Muslim leaders have been criticised for what some critics have said is a lack of willingness publicly to confront what Cameron has called the “poisonous ideology” of Islamic extremists.
But the case of Henning, who had taken unpaid leave and left behind his wife and two teenage children to help Muslims deliver aid to children in Syria, had prompted a united response.
Last month, a letter signed byover 100 British Imams and Muslim leaders condemned Islamic State.
“The despicable threats to Mr Henning at the hands of so-called ‘Muslims’ cannot be justified anywhere in the Quran and the Sunnah (Prophetic traditions),” it read.