4 Mar 2010

"Violence is violence. It has no place in Islamic teaching", says a leading Muslim scholar in a fatwa, an extended religiously-based argument, directed at those who justify hatred and terror in the name of faith.

Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri Ul-Qadri's 600-page analysis is "arguably the most comprehensive theological refutation of Islamist terrorism to date," according to the Quilliam Foundation, the London-based counter-terrorism think tank.

"Terrorism is terrorism," Ul-Qadri, founder of Minhaj-ul-Quran, an organisation claiming hundreds of thousands of followers in South Asia and the United Kingdom, declared.

Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri is regarded as a mainstream Muslim scholar who is a "widely recognised and respected authority on Islamic jurisprudence."

At a press conference earlier this week, he criticised Muslims who, in justifying terrorism, say it furthers the goal of correcting wrongs done to Muslims.

"No good intention - even one thousand good intentions put together -- cannot justify a wrong and forbidden act," Ul-Qadri said. "Good intentions cannot convert a wrong into good."

Perpetration of murder and violence in the name of Islam separates people from Allah and from the destiny of paradise, the fatwa says.