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Amanpour

The Backlash Against ISIS; Imagine a World

Aired February 04, 2015 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN HOST (voice-over): Tonight: "This is not Islam," the words of my guest, prominent Syrian cleric, Sheikh Muhammad al-Yaqoubi,

who is standing by live for us, as the king of Jordan vows to stand firm after the brutal murder of one of his pilots.

Also ahead, reaction from the former British foreign secretary William Hague during a wide-ranging interview on this and crucial upcoming U.K.

elections.

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WILLIAM HAGUE, FMR. U.K. FOREIGN SECRETARY: . people are so outraged all over the world, by, as you say, this latest depravity that its friends in

the coalition against ISIL or ISIS.

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AMANPOUR: Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the program. I'm Christiane Amanpour.

Getting back at ISIS, Jordan will step up its airstrikes against the militant group and it has already executed two death row terrorists in

swift revenge for the killing of pilot Maaz al-Kassasbeh.

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AMANPOUR (voice-over): Shocking video of the 27-year old's immolation emerged yesterday as ISIS breached a new frontier of depravity and prompted

shock and outrage around the world, especially in the Muslim world because, of course, the victim himself was a young Muslim.

Leading the condemnation with the Arab League, senior Muslim cleric, some political leaders in Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Allahu akbar.

AMANPOUR (voice-over): Now in Jordan there were scenes of prayers and grief and, of course anger with Kassasbeh's father calling on his

government to, quote, "annihilate" ISIS.

Now if ISIS had hoped to force Jordan out of the coalition, it seems to have failed with the king's pledge of a crushing response.

But what of the group's appeal in the Muslim world now?

Will this deter or attract more sympathizers and foot soldiers?

Joining me to discuss this is Sheikh Muhammad al-Yaqoubi, a preacher at one of the most important mosques in the Middle East, the Grand Umayyad Mosque

of Damascus. He, of course, was an early critic of President Bashar al- Assad and has been in exile from Syria since the war began there in 2011.

He joins me right now from Rabat in Morocco.

Sheikh Yaqoubi, thank you for joining me and welcome back to the program.

Let me begin by asking you what was your immediate response and reaction to the terrible carnage of poor Maaz al-Kassasbeh?

SHEIKH YAQOUBI, PREACHER, GRAND UMAYYAD MOSQUE OF DAMASCUS: Thank you, Christiane. First of all, Maaz is a martyr. He was not a criminal. He

was a prisoner of war, should have been treated with respect and dignity. He was fighting on behalf of every one of us, for a great cause.

Now his martyrdom marks, in my opinion now, a new phase in the war against ISIS and against terror. Now ISIS wanted to instill terror and fear in the

hearts of its enemies, Muslims and people around the world.

Now what's happening is the opposite. The martyrdom is of Maaz is uniting, has united Muslims and people around the world and I say here especially

Muslims, most importantly, Muslims uniting, Muslims against ISIS, leaving no slight rule of doubt that these people do not represent Islam. They

represent savagery and terrorism and extremism.

AMANPOUR: Sheikh Yaqoubi, are you sure that despite the loud words of condemnation, very clearly from yourself, from other clerics, from Muslim

leaders, world leaders in that region, are you sure that the so-called foot soldiers, those who believe that ISIS is somehow doing something for Islam

will also be swayed by this latest brutal act of setting a fellow Muslim on fire?

YAQOUBI: I'm sure a lot of people, especially those who are standing in between and many of the fighters now with ISIS as we have heard in the news

that ISIS is executing some of the fighters who are trying to escalate and defect and return to their homelands, so I'm sure that the killing of Maaz,

Maaz paid his life not in vain. His martyrdom is now marking a new phase. And there will be a lot of defection from ISIS and there will be now --

they lost the ground in one war. The lost the ground on which they were standing, that they representing Islam.

This is not Islam. Prophet of Islam made it very clear in the soundest statements related in the Books of Tradition that no one, no human being

should torture by fire, not even an imams are allowed in Islam, Islamic law, to be tortured or burned by fire, whether alive or dead. It's about a

human being and a prisoner of war.

And by the way, Maaz did not kill any civilians. Civilians killed in Raqqa, their headquarters, were killed by bombings and shellings of the

Assad regime, not by Maaz. Maaz went on a mission, on a specific mission with specific targets and he was brave when he was doing his mission. He

was brave when he died.

AMANPOUR: Why do you think, given that you say this is obviously so proscribed, banned in the Quran, that it is truly subhuman that they have

beheaded Westerners, that they reserve this particular death for a fellow Muslim?

How could they have so miscalculated or what do you think they were trying to do?

YAQOUBI: Well, they know that their ground is surrounded by Muslims and Muslims are against them. They want people to fear them. They think they

can rule by fear. And this has never worked in history. And it won't work with them. Actually, killing Maaz in that savagery way will mark the end

of ISIS. I believe now they declared themselves to perish and to end because Islam is mercy. Islam is love. Islam is peace. And even at war

times, there are rules of war. Prophet of Islam forbid the killing, made it forbidden to deform people's bodies when they are killed, let alone

torture them when they're alive or burn them alive. This is totally anti- Islamic.

AMANPOUR: You talked about Maaz al-Kassasbeh being part of an important -- I think you said a glorious campaign and in -- with that in mind, one of

your tweets after he was shown to have been killed, you said, "We call Syrians to rebel against ISIS and not to be lured by their claims of

following Islam. Islam is not this; victory is imminent."

What are you asking the people in Syria to do? Because they're obviously caught between Bashar al-Assad's forces, ISIS forces and all the rest.

YAQOUBI: Well, you know, Christiane, that without troops on the ground, ISIS will not be defeated. And the best people who know the terrain and

the best people also who have been suffering from both the Assad regime and ISIS are the Syrian people to fight.

So let's unite the Syrian people. That was my suggestion here, uniting the Syrian people together, pro-Assad, against Assad, getting them together.

And the only way to do this is by getting rid of Assad, uniting the Syrian people and then getting rid of these terrorists, getting rid of ISIS. The

Syrian ones are just a marginal minority. And most of these -- their fighters are foreigners.

AMANPOUR: So you think most of them are foreigners because clearly they have a lot of the tribes, a lot of people from that part of the world, the

Iraqis, too, no?

YAQOUBI: Yes, we know that Iraqis have been actually bitter about the operation they suffered from in the past years as Sunnis, I believe

establishing some justice and changing the status quo about Sunnis in Iraq, will encourage Sunnis to fight against ISIS and join the alliance against

ISIS. It's not a big problem.

Syrians already suffering from ISIS and hundreds have been killed, beheaded by ISIS, Syrians. And Muslims and Sunnis.

AMANPOUR: So what do you think is the next step?

And how will this be finally defeated? Because you say, you know, nothing will happen without ground forces. Well, apart from the people on the

ground, the residents, there doesn't seem to be any armies going in except from the air.

YAQOUBI: Well, number one, you know, Christiane, that any war needs an ideology and now we've got the ideological, this theological foundation to

fight ISIS with all Muslims being convinced that they do not represent Islam.

Second, we need now troops on the ground to fight ISIS and defeat them. We need to unite Syrians; we need to get some support on the ground to fight

ISIS. We've see the first defeat now in Ayn al-Arab, called Kobani, in the Kurdish city, in the north of city borders with Turkey. And this is the

beginning of the defeat. We've seen also several defeats in Iraq. They think that they are unbeatable or they can't be defeated. Well, it's

proved the opposite now. And they say that the state is remaining. I believe their state is remaining until its end. And this is very soon.

AMANPOUR: Sheikh Muhammad al-Yaqoubi, thank you so much indeed for joining me from Rabat in Morocco tonight.

YAQOUBI: Thank you.

AMANPOUR: And so challenges ahead for the Arab world and for the rest of the coalition.

And after a break I speak to a veteran politician and diplomat about what's next in the fight against ISIS and deterring Russia's President Putin's

move on Eastern Ukraine. That plus the high stakes for Britain in its upcoming election with the former foreign secretary, William Hague, after a

break.

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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

Now in three months, Britain holds what is billed to be one of the most critical general elections in years. The economy, immigration, health care

and, of course, Britain's role in Europe, all issues that'll be at the fore in the campaign trail.

Leader of the House of Commons William Hague joined me in the studio to talk about these upcoming elections and some of the key foreign policy

issues that's testing Britain right now, like the stream of British jihadis joining ISIS.

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AMANPOUR: Foreign Secretary, welcome to the program.

HAGUE: Not the Foreign Secretary --

AMANPOUR: I know, but that's how we do it in Americana. You'll always be Foreign Secretary.

I'm going to continue because I want you to put your foreign secretary hat on, actually, for just a moment.

This depravity, this new low that ISIS has sunk to, what do you think it will do to the coalition, particularly to Jordan and the Arab members of

the coalition?

Do you foresee they will stay with it?

HAGUE: I think they will stay with it and I think actually people are so outraged all over the world, by, as you say, this latest depravity that its

friends in the coalition against ISIL or ISIS certainly will intensify the determination of people in this country, including to work with our friends

and allies in Jordan and other countries in the region.

So I don't think they will have achieved anything for themselves by this atrocity.

AMANPOUR: How does one counter this mindset?

I know that's something that you're interested in and many people are interested in trying to counter this mindset. And I ask you that because I

just spoke to a former ISIS hostage, a colleague of mine, who said that the British jihadis, people like Jihadi John, were amongst the most

psychopathic, psychotic and violent.

HAGUE: Well, I think we have to show what is really happening. I think we have to help people understand what this really means. As you know and as

we've often discussed before, I'm passionate about preventing sexual violence in conflict.

And this is another aspect of ISIS, of the deliberate commission of sexual violence, the enslavement of women. I don't believe that this is something

that people across the world support in any way, but this is what is happening.

And so part of understanding what this organization is really like is to understand the depth of the crimes they commit.

AMANPOUR: It's a big job ahead; another huge job is right inside our continent, Europe, where, as you know -- because you dealt with this --

Russia, Ukraine is still a very, very destabilizing force. You've said recently that it is very dangerously deteriorating; there is a big move now

or call to try to further deter President Putin.

Do you agree that, while the sanctions may have hurt, it has failed, they have failed to change his behavior?

HAGUE: Well, clearly, the behavior has not change and indeed we've seen an intensification of fighting in Ukraine. But I do believe that Russia will

harm its own interests by continuing on this course.

I argued when I was foreign secretary, I was arguing nearly a year ago that they would damage their own interests by turning a large part of Ukraine

against them by harming their own economic interests, by damaging their influence in the whole region.

Actually, even I didn't expect those things to come true so quickly. And Russia is being harmed by the policies that the Russian leadership are

pursuing.

So I think that will become ever more evident and could even speed up. And so they do face a choice about increasing international isolation and

increasing damage to their economy for abiding by agreements that have been made, such as the Minsk agreement.

AMANPOUR: And there are going to be ministerial meetings; defense ministers and also Secretary Kerry is going to Ukraine.

Do you think this government, for instance, is ready to provide Ukraine with lethal defensive military aid now?

HAGUE: Well, we supply non-lethal aid --

(CROSSTALK)

AMANPOUR: I know, but there's a call for all the West to step that up to lethal aid.

HAGUE: -- but we haven't looked at any proposal to change that. We're not proposing in the near future to change our policy on that. Our policy is

to supply non-lethal assistance to Ukraine and the foreign secretary and defense secretary have said that. So that remains our policy for the time

being.

AMANPOUR: So far President Putin seems to have the people behind him to an extent. He is not bound, apparently, or constrained by the same kind of

democratic forces that you are here in Britain and the people in the rest of the democratic world.

There is an election coming up here that the world is looking at, perhaps more keenly than any recent British election. And you said that it's

possibly the closest one, the biggest cliffhanger that you've seen in your lifetime.

HAGUE: Well, certainly since the election of 1992 -- and probably a lot of people listening to us will remember the British election of 1992, where

that was a very close one between John Major and Neil Kinnock, the then- leader of the Labour Party -- won, I'm glad to say, by John Major, the conservative prime minister at the time. And I hope and believe that is

going to be the outcome this time.

But clearly, in opinion polls, it is a -- it's a very close race. There's three months to go until the election day on the 7th of May and I think the

conservative message is starting to get through. But we have a lot of hard work to do.

AMANPOUR: People are suggesting that there's a lot of disillusion and distrust of the political system in general. If you look at various

barometers like the Edelman Trust Barometer and others, that, you know, faith in traditional politics is diminishing and that it could be hung

parliaments for a long time and coalition governments.

What are you all doing wrong?

HAGUE: Well, I think that disillusionment builds -- it's very true, the Western world, in general, I think, and we've seen many examples of it

around the rest of Europe, of deep disillusionment with establishment politics.

I think there is something of a time lag on these things. I think that has built up over some decades of disappointment.

I actually think this government in Britain, the coalition government we've had of the last 4.5 years, has delivered on what we said we were going to

do. And we have brought about the most remarkable turnaround in the British economy, creating as many jobs in Britain as in the whole of the

rest of Europe put together.

And so I hope this is a period that will contribute over the next few years to a restoration of trust in government and politics. We will see in this

election and future elections whether that works. But I think we've done a lot of things right in the last 4.5 years in the U.K.

AMANPOUR: Well, people like Nigel Farage, head of UKIP, U.K. Independence Party, has been trying to chip away at that. And he's basically been

saying the Tory Party and the government has actually failed in its immigration, that its E.U. policy, all of that has actually failed.

And for a long time, the prime minister, despite the successes that you're talking about -- and it's factual; the economy is doing much better --

HAGUE: It really is.

AMANPOUR: -- but despite that, despite that, has sort of been tacking, trying to out-UKIP UKIP.

Has he figured out, do you think, that that doesn't need to happen, that actually Britain is doing well and he doesn't need to flank to his right so

much?

HAGUE: Well, we won't be trying to out-UKIP UKIP; the Conservative Party has long pressed for a referendum on the European Union. We wanted a

referendum on the last European treaty, the Lisbon treaty in 2009. But it was all ratified before we came to power.

It's consistent with our position that we are standing in this election for a referendum on leaving or staying in the European Union by the end of

2017.

We've always had a policy of tightening up on immigration into Britain. And we have done that. We don't have the power at the moment to do it

sufficiently on European immigration. That's one of the things we want to negotiate a better deal on.

AMANPOUR: Britain engaged in a very democratic exercise that turned out in your favor, the Scottish referendum. It turned out in your favor. But in

order for that to happen, you promised a lot: devolution, more and more of that.

And now there's this whole issue, which you've been very, very much involved in, leading this issue of who votes for what, British laws,

Scottish laws, who's going to affect who.

What can you tell the English people about the influence that the SMP or Scottish voters will have on their laws, on matters that affect the English

people?

HAGUE: Well, what I say or what the proposals mean that I unveiled yesterday that a conservative government will introduce is that we will

stay in a Westminster Parliament to the United Kingdom altogether, voting on our laws. But laws that only affect England -- and there will be quite

a lot of those, given the extent of devolution to stop them --

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AMANPOUR: Give me an example of that kind of a law.

HAGUE: Well, that would be a law, let us say, about the health service in England. Or it would be the rate of income tax in England, importantly,

after income tax, the setting of income tax rates has been devolved to Scotland and to Wales.

You're then left setting an income tax basically for England, for England and Northern Ireland.

Now I say in those circumstances, not all MPs will continue to vote on that. It will require the consent of the English MPs; that is democratic;

that is accountable. Otherwise, of course, you could have Scotland introducing, let us say, a lower rate of income tax in Scotland. And then

the Scottish MPs coming to London to vote for a higher rate of income tax here.

Well, that, it would be an unsustainable situation.

AMANPOUR: Would they have a veto? Could they --

HAGUE: The English MPs would have a veto --

AMANPOUR: -- and the Scottish, the SMP?

HAGUE: Well, they have their own parliament. So they would be deciding their income tax levels or how to run their health service separately

anyway. They don't need a veto. They have a separate parliament to do that.

Now I know that people from other countries particularly federal countries, come and say to us, well, why don't you just have a federal system then

like Canada or the United States or Germany?

But Britain doesn't lend itself very well to that. England is one of four nations in our nation and that it's 85 percent of the population and the

economy and so a federal structure would leave England in an incredibly dominant position and probably be an unsustainable structure in itself.

AMANPOUR: William Hague, thank you very much indeed.

HAGUE: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And of course we will have much more coverage leading up to the U.K. election with major figures from all parties in the coming few months.

And after a break, imagining how to deter President Putin and to deal with the human cost of the war in Ukraine -- after this.

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AMANPOUR: And finally tonight, imagine a world where two warring sides sign a cease-fire and the guns keep roaring. That is the situation in

Eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists have ensured that violence remains part of people's desperate daily lives.

Residents try to scrape together a living and survive amidst the constant shelling. This elderly woman collects snow so that she can have water in

her home.

A hospital ward in the strategic railway town of Debaltseve near Donetsk was hit, killing three and injuring dozens of staff and patients. So

people who had been on the road to recovery now again have to begin the cycle of healing. And they are the lucky ones.

In the past few weeks alone, hundreds have died, thousands have fled while Russia continues its war of deception, insisting that it is not involved

and Ukraine and the West point to satellite evidence of Russian combat troops to refute that.

The U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visits Kiev to try once again to get the guns to go silent. And tomorrow on this program, I'll be speaking to

NATO's Supreme Allied Commander General Philip Breedlove about the dangerous new turns of this war, which is in the heart of Europe.

And that's it for our program tonight. But in just 15 minutes, I'll be taking your questions about our top story, which is ISIS, as it sinks to

that new level of depravity. And that's on my Facebook page, facebook.com/Camanpour.

And remember you can always see the whole show online at amanpour.com. Thanks for watching and goodbye from London.

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