WASHINGTON – Muslim groups in the US voiced support for the country’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) released a written statement late Tuesday, hailing President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw the US military from Afghanistan by the Aug. 31 deadline.

“USCMO calls on all actors in Afghanistan — including the Taliban — to materially demonstrate the values of Islam by pursuing a sincere and just reconciliation that includes and respects all the people of Afghanistan, especially Afghan women,” it said.

The organization also called upon the “Afghan leaders of all political and communal backgrounds” to reconcile through peaceful civil engagement, bring about inclusive societal safety for all the people “they claim to represent,” and “shepherd Afghanistan into a thriving, just, and secure future.”

The USCMO went on to call upon Taliban leaders to implement a “secured and unimpeachable guarantee of human morality, individual freedom and mobility, and its incomparable standard of human equality for all, especially society’s most vulnerable-women, children, the poor, and political and communal minorities.”

It called upon the US government to “learn lessons” from the “horrendous” reality of two decades of “dealing out death and destruction in feckless projects of oxymoronic ‘nation-building’.”

The organization also urged Biden and Congress the cease all American support for “dictatorships, unrepresentative factions and military juntas.”

The USCMO is a coalition of national, regional, and local Muslim organizations and Islamic institutions in the US.