King Abdullah II of Jordan is seen during a meeting with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office at the White House on December 5, 2014 in Washington, D.C. UPI/Kevin Dietsch | License Photo

AMMAN, Jordan, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- Muslim leaders were united Wednesday in their denunciation of the Islamic State's killing, by burning, of a Jordanian pilot.

Calls for punishment came from across the Muslim world, with regular reference that the death of Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh, burned to death by IS militants while alive and standing in a cage, was an affront to Islam. IS posted the gruesome images of his death on social media.


Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Sheik of Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's scholarly seat of religion and education in Cairo and regarded as a standard of moderation and tolerance in the Sunni world, said IS militants deserved torture and death, in accordance with Islamic law, adding in a statement "Islam prohibits the taking of an innocent life."

"This vile terrorist act requires punishment as cited by the Quran for oppressors and spoilers on earth who fight God and his prophet, that they be killed, or crucified, or their hands and legs cut off."

Secretary General Iyad Madani of the 57-nation political bloc Organization of Islamic Cooperation, said IS "utterly disregards the rights of prisoners Islam has decreed, as well as the human moral standards for war and treatment of prisoners," noting the "intellectual decay, the political fragmentation and the abuse of Islam, the great religion of mercy."

A statement from Qatar's Foreign Ministry called al-Kasasbeh's death "a criminal act contravening the tolerant principles of the Islamic faith, human values and international laws and norms, and similar comments were made in official statements from Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Jordan's King Abdullah II, on his return home from Washington Tuesday, ordered the execution of two convicted Iraqi terrorists in Jordanian jails.

Col. Mamdouh al-Ameri, Jordanian military spokesman, said earlier of retribution for al-Kasasbeh's death that "the revenge will be equal to what happened to Jordan."