Religious leaders: Don't kill fellow Lebanese

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Fearing a slide into civil war, Lebanon's top Sunni Muslim clerics have issued a religious edict prohibiting Muslims killing their fellow countrymen - especially Muslims - or attacking private and public property. Last week, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Shiite Muslim Hizbullah that has led a two-month campaign of protests against the government, issued a similar fatwa, or religious ruling, following one of the nation's worst violent sectarian clashes in years. Maronite Christian clerics also called for a "truce among the nation's sons." "It is religiously prohibited to engage in fighting with fellow Lebanese in general and Muslims in particular and to attack private and public property," said a statement by the Council of Lebanese Scholars, a Sunni body that was published in Lebanese newspapers Friday.