As Muslims speak out, appeals intensify for reporter's release

The Muslim Brotherhood is considered the most powerful Islamist political opposition in the Arab world.

In Iraq Thursday, the Iraqi Islamic Party, a leading Sunni Arab political party, also released a statement denounced kidnappings "because they are conducted against innocent people, who are mostly sympathetic with the Iraqis and their miseries.... The IIP urges the kidnappers to release this female journalist as soon as possible."

Saad Bazaaz, editor of Azzaman, a daily newspaper, and chairman of al-Sharqiya television channel in Iraq, in a phone call from Qatar, said that "Voices are coming from everywhere [on Carroll's behalf], even from the hardliners. And that is very good. Everyone in Iraq is talking about Jill Carroll, and they are saying the right things."

The Qatar-based Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, whose Al Jazeera program has made him one of the region's most respected and popular preachers, reiterated his previous religious ruling, or fatwa, against the kidnapping and murder of journalists in Iraq and said this certainly holds for Carroll's case.

In Cairo, eight regional Arab human rights groups issued a joint statement reminding Carroll's kidnappers of her "respect for Iraqi, Arab and Islamic norms and traditions."

"The American freelance journalist is known for her extreme sympathy towards the Iraqi people and opposition to their suffering since the outbreak of the war and the invasion of Iraq,'' they wrote. The groups "plead for her release as a sign of [her captors'] good intentions and in respect to a journalist highly respected by all.... The Christian Science Monitor has been known for its objectivity ... in covering Iraq," the human rights groups wrote.

"My daughter, Jill Carroll, was taken hostage on Saturday, January 7th, in Baghdad, where she works as a reporter. Jill's fairness in reporting and her genuine concern for the Iraqi people made her the invited and welcomed guest of many Iraqi friends.

"A video just released gives us hope that Jill is alive, but has also shaken us about her fate. So, I, her father, and her sister are appealing directly to her captors to release this young woman who has worked so hard to show the suffering of Iraqis to the world.

"Jill has always shown the highest respect for the Iraqi people and their customs. We hope that her captors will show Jill the same respect in return. Taking vengeance on my innocent daughter who loves Iraq and its people will not create justice.

"To her captors, I say that Jill's welfare depends upon you. And so we call upon you to ensure that Jill is returned safely home to her family who needs her and loves her.

Jill's father, sister, and I ask and encourage the persons holding our daughter to work with Jill to find a way to contact us with the honorable intent of discussing her release."

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