Tuesday, 2 March 2010

As I mentioned on Friday Dr Tahir ul-Qadri has made his anticipate fatwa condemning suicide bombing. I have no reason to doubt thathe is sincere. I know that for some Muslims he will be the wrong kind of Muslim, as bad as a non Muslim or apostate. But there will be some to whom he is a figure whose advice is worthy of consideration. This is from the Times.

A prominent Muslim organisation in Britain has issued a fatwa on suicide bombings and terrorism — declaring them “un-Islamic”.

Minhaj-ul-Quran, a organisation based on Sufi principles which advises the Government on how to combat radicalisation in Muslim youth, launched its 600-page religious verdict in Central London this morning, condemning the perpetrators of terrorist explosions and suicide bombings.

The fatwa condemns suicide bombers saying that they are destined for Hell, countering extremist propaganda that Islamist terrorists will enter paradise after death.The fatwa, first launched in Pakistan in December, uses texts from the Koran and other Islamic writings to argue that attacks against innocent citizens are “absolutely against the teachings of Islam and that Islam does not permit such acts on any excuse, reason or pretext”. I believe that he was expected to continue to define 'innocent' in terms which include non-muslims and civilians, unlike some schools of Islamic thought which define all non Muslims or the wrong sort of Muslim as fair game.

The document is written by Muslim scholar Dr Muhammed Tahir ul-Qadri, a former government adviser in Pakistan and friend of the former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and the founder of the increasingly influential Minhaj-ul-Quran movement.

A spokesman for the counter-extremist think tank Quilliam said: “This fatwa has the potential to be a highly significant step towards eradicating Islamist terrorism.Fatwas by Wahhabi-influenced clerics and Islamist ideologues initiated modern terrorism against civilians. Terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda continue to justify their mass killings with self-serving readings of religious scripture. Fatwas that demolish and expose such theological innovations will consign Islamist terrorism to the dustbin of history.”