The U.S. unleashed a new round of airstrikes against ISIS in eastern Syria late yesterday, targeting a dozen small oil refineries.

The group of militants operating in Iraq and Syria refers to itself as the Islamic State, but are they truly following the tenets of Islam?

Most definitely not, according to a group of Islamic scholars and Muslim leaders in the U.S. and abroad.

They have issued an open letter in Arabic and English refuting the ideology of the militant group, signed by more than 120 scholars and groups, including The Council on American-Islamic Relations and The Fiqh Council of North America.

Addressed directly to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed leader of the Islamic State, and the group's followers, the letter lays out the case for why killing "emissaries," such as diplomats and journalists, is forbidden in Islam.

"You have mercilessly killed the journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff even after Sotloff's mother pleaded with you and begged for mercy," the scholars write in the letter. "Aid workers are also emissaries of mercy and kindness, yet you killed the aid worker David Haines. What you have done is unquestionably forbidden (haraam)."

For more, Nihad Awad, executive director with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, spoke to Take Two.

Read the full 29-page letter here.