TUESDAY, 9 MARCH 2010

A leading pacifist Muslim intellectual is trying to break the ice between Islam and other religions.

Professor Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, the founder of Minhaj-ul-Qur'an International, addressed a lunch in London just under a week ago. The scholar described al-Qaeda as an "old evil with a new name" that has not been sufficiently challenged - and then issued a fatwah against all violent terrorism.

The event may have passed you by (it had me until now) which is a pity because the professor's ruling was not only symbolically issued from London - a major target for Islamist terror-bombers - but for perhaps the first time the fatwah is devoid of any strings at all. Writing in The Independent, the two prominent Social Cohesion members Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens & Houriya Ahmed stated that:

'It is an unequivocal denunciation of suicide bombings and terrorism. Addressing the audience at the fatwa launch in Westminster he said: "A total condemnation should come from the Muslim world without playing with ifs or buts. No pretext, no foreign policy, no talk of occupation."'

I hope policymakers both here and in the US are taking heed. We are being handed a golden opportunity to start separating ordinary peacable Muslims from the nutters. It would be foolish not to build on it.

Minhaj-ul-Qur’an International (MQI), is an organization with branches and centres in more than 90 countries around the globe, working for the promotion of peace and harmony between communities and the revival of spiritual endeavour based on the true teachings of Islam.