Radical GNA scholar calls for fighting LNA

Sharif Abdelzaher

The Muslim Brotherhood and the militias affiliated to it in Libya, as everywhere else, use religion to achieve their own goals.

The group claims that Turkey defends the Islamic religion, only because Ankara hosts Muslim Brotherhood leaders who had escaped from other countries.

Nevertheless, the Muslim Brotherhood overlooks all the crimes Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, commits.

On February 2, Muslim Brotherhood scholar al-Sadek al-Gheriani, who lives in Turkey, asked the minister of education in the Government of National Accord (GNA), which rules Libyan capital Tripoli, to suspend study in schools in the Libyan capital and send pupils to fight within GNA militias and against the Libyan National Army (LNA).

Member of the Libyan House of Deputies, Ali al-Tikbali, warned against GNA attempts to hand Libya over to militias and mercenaries.

“The scholars of the GNA issue edicts that only aim at pleasing the foreign mercenaries fighting within the militias fighting against the LNA,” al-Tikbali said. “They abuse religion to do this.”

Al-Gheriani was a strong backer of Islamist forces in Libya during the National Assembly elections. He called on voters not to vote for the candidates of the National Forces Coalition. He also asked them not to vote for Mahmud Gibril because he followed a liberal political line.

Al-Gheriani also opposed the operation LNA Commander, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, launched against terrorist groups active in Libya. He even called for fighting the LNA and its commander.

Al-Gheriani said fighting Haftar and his troops was a religious duty for all Libyans.

This radical Libyan scholar was included in a list containing the names of dozens of terrorist figures that was submitted by the member states of the anti-terrorism quartet for Qatar to hand over.

In the past few days, he asked Libyans who live in areas overrun by the LNA to go out to fight the army.