To win the war against extremist organizations like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a UN High Commission for Human Rights official said on Thursday that the mindset of people must first be altered.

Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said that the initial area to be addressed is to belie the ideological mindset that people outside the Islam faith must be killed. While lamenting the burning of Jordanian pilot 1^st Lieutenant Boaz al-Kasasbeh, which spurred retaliation from no less than Jordanian King Abdullah, the commissioner points out that the battlefield isn't the only venue to win the war.

Like Us on Facebook

"Just bombing them or choking off their finances has clearly not worked, for these groups have only proliferated and grown in strength," Foreign Policy quotes Hussein.

Expected to lead in the battle for the minds of Middle Easterners and Islam followers are Muslim leaders and nations. The commissioner said political and religious leaders must reassert traditional Islam as how Muslims are expected to live their daily lives.

In fact, the airstrikes - which also kills innocent civilians - was cited by Anjem Choudary as justification for the burning alive of al Kasasbeh as pilot of jets that strike as well women and children.

"In defensive jihad, whatever the Muslims can do within the realms of acceptable behavior, they are doing. And part of that is terrorizing the enemy," Choudary says.

However, even some Islam clerics disagree with Choudary's contention that burning the pilot is within the scope of the sharia law. Saudi cleric Salman al-Odah tweeted, "Burning is an abominable crime rejected by Islamic law regardless of its causes ... It is rejected whether it falls on an individual or a group of people. Only God tortures by fire," quotes Reuters.

Hussein, the first Muslim and Arab to head the High Commission, which he led in September, notes that the war for the mind of Muslims have started with a letter, translated into 10 languages, in which over 120 Islam scholar debunked the ideology being pushed by the leader of the Takfiris, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The ideology is described as cruel and harsh, Hussein explained at his address at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

TagsISIS