The institutional voices of Sunni Islam have been slow to respond to the orgy of beheadings, mass-executions and sectarian cleansing promoted by jihadists of Islamic State (is) in their so-called caliphate. So slow, in fact, that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia last month publicly chastised the ulemo, the body of clerics and scholars to whom ordinary Muslims are meant to turn for religious guidance, for their silence and "laziness". More recently, though, religious figures from across the spectrum of Sunni Islam have grown more strident. One group of liberal-leaning British preachers issued a warning for Muslims to shun the group, which it described as heretical, extremist and poisonous. Saudi Arabia's senior official cleric, who represents the puritan Wahhabist school of thought, pronounced is "the number-one enemy of Muslims".
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